Non-Resident Indians Feelings About India :A Perception-based Global survey
Manama, Bahrain, December1, 2006: The Non-resident Indians (NRIs) are considered as ambassadors for Brand India in
foreign lands. They try to remove a lot of misconceptions that foreigners may have about India. It is seen that most of
the time they try to highlight the positives instead of the negatives about India. Furthermore, they play multifarious
role by contributing to the peace and prosperity of India and Indians around the world not just restricted to sending
remittances. According to one estimate, their contributions in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) of India have been about
18-20%.
The NRIs population is estimated over twenty two million, living in different regions of the world. Over 44% of them are
concentrated in Asia, Middle East, Australia and New Zealand and approximately 26% are in North and South America. This
is a significant population that is talented, resourceful, and quite sensitive towards the developmental issues.
Majority of them are technically qualified people who immigrated to other countries for various reasons and have been
playing a key role in transforming their socio-economic environment of these regions. They are one of the main investors
in India. The presence of several hundreds NRIs making waves abroad and through their influence also help Indian
organizations to get outsourcing projects, collaborations, joint ventures and flow of capital into the Indian
businesses. NRIs are now showing long term commitments to integrate with the local businesses in India
Recently, there have been a lot of discussions on NRIs to the effect that once they leave India in search of green
pastures e.g. to North America and Europe, they start berating India. Influenced by such contentious discussions, Dr.
P.L. Joshi, who hails from Uttaranchal, India and currently a Professor at the University of Bahrain, has conducted
perhaps the first global survey of its kind on NRIs attitudes examining “what makes them feel proud of India? Using a
convenient random survey technique, 1441 questionnaires were sent by emails to NRIs living in 29 countries. Ten
statements, which may make the NRIs to express their proud feelings towards India, and five statements, which may
hesitate not to say so, were included in the questionnaire after a two-stage Delphi method was used to develop the
questionnaire. A total of 162 replies were received; however, only 90 questionnaires were usable. A Likert scale ranging
from strongly agree (5) to strongly disagree (1) was used to measure the responses. There was some response bias
particularly from North America where the maximum number of questionnaires was sent. More than 50% of the respondents
were executives and managers together with a few business people. Over 31.1% of responses were received from Middle East
alone in which over 40% of NRIs population live. Again, over 50% of them have post-graduate qualifications and over 45%
were in the age group of 36 to 54 years who responded to the questionnaires. The survey provides a number of insights
and the respondents also offered several comments. The main findings were:
1. On an overall basis, NRIs strongly feel that (1) ‘the history and rich cultural values of India”, (2) ‘India’s
third-largest pool of scientists and engineers in the world (technical human resources)”, and (3) ‘technology, software
and other developments” are the three main achievements/characteristics of India, which make them feel proud of
contemporary India. These three variables received more than 80% responses from the respondents in this global survey.
The findings reflect that the NRIs still take pride in Indian customs, traditions and cultural values for the simple
reason that perhaps it is the only country in the world with multicultural diversity, immense demographics and ethnic
communities living in peace. Of course, there were statistical differences in their perceptions when data was analyzed
by NRIs living in developed versus under-developed countries, Middle East region versus rest of the world . The
respondents living in developing countries gave higher score on the ten variables compared to NRIs living in developed
world.
The respondents were not very much impressed with the claims that India has become self –sufficient in agricultural food
grains. It received seventh ranking in the ranking order and only 36.7 percent of respondents agreed that India has
achieved self-reliance in food grains. The perceptions of respondents living in developed countries and developing
countries were similar on this point.
Furthermore, it seems that respondents’ attitudes towards India from the Middle East and Asia were more positive than
NRIs living in the Western countries. The reason may be that NRIs in Middle East are unique as they are not naturalized
there and ultimately will return to India (Non-Returnable Indians). For nine statements, the average score from
respondents from Europe were below 80 percent. The NRIs from Europe also ranked “India’s third largest pool of
scientists and engineers in the world (technical human resources)” as the main characteristics/achievement of India
(Chart –1).
A few hard comments were also stated in the above context. For example, one respondent from North America argued, that “
I belong to a minority which is concerned with the essentials of culture, which is not the priority of the elites and of
the middle class. That is why I view India as a cultural failure”. This is a reflection of a stereotypical NRI’s point
of view on India’s perspectives.
The respondents a were also well familiar with the fact that India has one of the largest entertainment industries in
the world and India’s international recognition of economic and military power (e.g. its ability to compete with China
and EU) also motivate them to have a positive thinking towards India. Many of them are really Bollywood fans.
Ends