Aspirational Touring Of The US Europe Other Places Had Over 10 crore Indians Spending $ 35 Billion Between 2017 and 2022 Plus Shopping Eating Hotels Sight Seeing- Permanent Immigration To The US Canada Australia Is Also In Top Gear

The Indian Middle Class, like the rest of the population, is growing exponentially, with constant migration to the cities that now includes more than 20 tier 2 cities. The percentage of the population employed in farming and services in rural areas is declining in keeping with mechanisation and international trends, even as rural prosperity is increasing alongside the GDP.

The easy access to social media, smart phones, streaming, TV, films, has increased exposure to the outside world to an unprecedented degree amongst all sections of the population. It is not surprising that most Indians now see the world as their oyster. Socialism is largely dead, replaced by welfare, aspiration, education, greater life expectancy, nutrition, health, higher income, and the realisation that India will soon be the third biggest economy in the world. It will have more than $ 10 trillion in GDP by 2030. Every day, the road, rail, air, infrastructure in the country is also being rapidly transformed.

The Opposition bemoans the unemployment situation and high food prices in the lead up to multiple elections. They do it so often that one might be forgiven for thinking that things are going very badly indeed despite Prime Minister Modi pointing out all the progress we have made in the last 10 years. Progress greater by far than ever before. But here you have it. Astounding overseas and domestic tourism figures that cannot happen without money in hand.

Now, in the second decade of 21^st century, and post Covid, international travel seems to have exploded amongst Indians. Who can say there is not enough disposable income amongst the Indian middle class? A middle class headed towards a third of the overall population of 1.44 billion. It may be too disparate  and opinionated to be a force  in elections, but even that will change.

Indians account for 10% of all visa applications at present to countries that require them. This despite a rupee/US dollar rate of exchange approaching an astronomical Rs. 85 to the dollar.

America with its B1/B2 visit visas, backed up for more than 400 days for Indians, still had 5.1 lakh desi visitors in the April-June 2023 quarter. Canada sent 26 million visitors to the US, but they don’t need visas.

India’s statistics are just behind the United Kingdom (who don’t need US visas either, being cousins from across the pond, firm US allies, and former colonial overlords), at 9.7 million visitors.

Mexico, next door, sent 7.2 million. Germany (at 4.7 million), and others from Europe, like the French, sent less tourists to America than the Indians in the April-June 2023 quarter.

Similar things are happening to domestic travel for leisure, pilgrimage, with the advent of the Vande Bharat trains, great highways, more airports and airlines, high car ownership. So much so, that the airlines have had to lower their domestic fares by up to 30% to try and compete with the vastly improved trains.   

Indians have spent $ 11.44 billion on overseas travel in the nine-month period of the current fiscal, between April to January. This is not counting shopping, and sight-seeing, entertaining, hotels, eating and so on, once abroad. This could easily double this figure if totted up. There is no restriction on how much foreign currency Indians can take abroad, provided that if it is more than $ 10,000 in currency or traveller’s cheques, it must be declared. And then there are the credit and forex cards. Till February 2023, the figure rose to $12.51 billion, up 104% over the same period last year.

It is estimated that the number of Indians travelling abroad for holidaying will treble by 2025. That means about 40% of international travellers will be from India. Its no wonder that Switzerland reckoned Indian tourists were accounting for two or three percentage points of their economy even two decades ago. It is why they have welcome boards out for Indians. Many others are following suit.

This is now being further driven by aspirational travel from tier 2 cities and budget carriers. The well-off, a category being upgraded all the time, will number more than 100 million people by themselves.

Overall, 10.3 crore Indians travelled abroad between 2017 and 2022 with 3.8 crores amongst them seeking to emigrate or acquire permanent residency in foreign countries like the US, Canada and Australia. Who are these people? Most of the 18 million Indian diaspora, the largest in the world, are temporary migrants to West Asia who remit home most of the USD 100 billion per annum now. Others are students, most of whom do come back to India.

In the 19^th century, aristocratic British in the heyday of the British Empire undertook at least one ‘Grand Tour’ to widen their perspective. It was to the ‘Continent’, that lasted, in those horse and carriage days, from Paris and Vienna, Switzerland and Germany to the South, about a year. Lingering in warm, artistic and cultured Southern Europe, in Italy and Spain, was particularly popular.

Going on the steam ship to America was also attractive to some, crossing on luxurious ocean liners to New York. But America, beyond her main cities like New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, New Orleans, St Louis, and Los Angeles, tended to be exotic in the 19^th century. The travel, over vast expanses, by the newly established train lines, or the horse drawn mail carriage, with armed guards, or both, was a little dangerous. Much of the hinterland, rivers, forests, mountains, the wild life, Bisons, the native Red Indians, was still relatively untamed. The Wild West was not a myth. Many witnessed the Wild Bill Hickock live travelling shows to form an idea.

Authors, poets, journalists, extolled the virtues of this travel and destinations for the others who could not afford it. There was, of course, no TV or radio, let alone social media. Even photography was relatively new. People relied on painters and landscape artists.

In the 20^th century, with the advent of early air travel in the 1930s, again it was the rich that could afford to go abroad by the smallish aeroplanes that could take about 30 passengers. The old Victorian era sea-side resorts within Britain had to suffice for the rest.

It was much the same for Indians. The Maharajahs sailed, some with a year’s supply of Ganga Jal for their drinking and cooking. Others flew, when the planes presented themselves, making multiple stops to Europe and back.  By the latter part of the 20^th century, after the two world wars, passenger ships had largely retreated from the travel map, except for the huge cruise liners, and air travel had been democratised.

Cheap tickets, charter aircraft tours, had secretaries and office boys jetting off to Spain for two weeks. And of course, farther afield to Asia, Africa. But it was still the province of the affluent West in the beginning.

Later, the same packaged tours and individually curated visits, some with Indian vegetarian and Jain cuisine cooks in tow, came to places like India, which were neither rich, nor had oil to sell for petrodollars. But, nevertheless, the international travel bug had bitten. If not multiple times at first, certainly once in a lifetime. If not Europe and America, then certainly Dubai and Thailand was possible.

 In addition, since 2011, more than 1.6 million have become citizens of foreign countries including 1,83,741 in 2022 alone.

1,63,370 Indians renounced their citizenship in 2021.Of these 78,284 became US citizens, followed by Australia 23,533, Canada 21,597, and Britain 14, 637. Of course, given our population of 1.4 billion plus, the emigration numbers are very small for us even as they are significant at No.1 for the host countries. Many are following their relatives already settled abroad. Others are minorities such as Christians who feel comfortable emigrating to Christian countries in the  First World. Or Jews, the younger of whom emigrate to Israel. The Anglo-Indians have gone. So have the Armenians. Now even a few of the young Kolkata Chinese. But the largest minority, nearly 200 million Muslims, have largely stayed put. It is therefore ironical that parts of the Western media call the present administration communal and anti-Muslim.

As India continues to prosper and acquire international influence, the people who want to renounce their citizenship may decline further, even amongst such pockets.  The Times, as Nobel laureate Bob Dylan put it in his youth, are-a-changing.

(1,393 words)

October 25^th , 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

 

 

Always The Means To Justify The Ends For Indian Communists

The Communist Big Wigs like Sitaram Yechury, were quick to jump to the defence of Newsclick, a digital website in India financed by Red China to spread anti-India propaganda. It was recently raided and shut down by the NIA, and its chief operators taken into custody.

The other organisation quick off the mark to the same end was Congress, its leader Rahul Gandhi and the eloquent ex diplomat Shashi Tharoor. They took to X, formerly known as Twitter, with alacrity. It is rumoured that both the CPI/CPM and the Congress are also financed by the Chinese now that the Soviets are out of business. And pleasing one’s benefactors is mandatory.

Both tried to paint the sedition of Newsclick in terms of an attack on press freedom, freedom of expression, and called it the action of an Undeclared Emergency by the ruling dispensation. Various left-leaning journalists decided to sit in the decrepit Press Club yard in New Delhi on plastic chairs in silent protest.

In the series of efforts, national and international, to destabilise the NDA government and get rid of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, another programme is in the works. It is designed to stir the caste cauldron in a manner not seen since the Mandal Commission Report was released by an opportunist VP Singh 30 years ago. Fiery protests erupted then, soon after, and made short work of VP Singh’s prime ministership. But the new effort has learned nothing from that history. If it backfires, The Hindu voter could cling more desperately to the BJP for faith and succour.

Nevertheless, three decades later, Nitish Kumar hanging on to his chief ministership by his fingernails has released a caste census for Bihar. This is after many failed initiatives such as his leaky and farcical attempts at prohibition to please the female voter.

 Congress ruled Karnataka may well be next to release a caste census that will annoy both the Vokkaligas and the Lingayats. Do they understand the implications?

This follows on from virulent attacks on Sanatan Dharma by MK Stalin’s son Udhayanidhi Stalin, and several other DMK ministers. The chief minister of Tamil Nadu meanwhile provides full support to the process.

All of it is meant to attack the monolithic approach to the Hindu vote bank by the BJP. This has resulted in most Hindus voting for the BJP in 2014 and 2019. The looming election of 2024 is seen as a do-or-die contest by the opposition combine I.N.D.I.A.

The Ayodhya Ram Temple to be inaugurated in January 2024 is also deeply worrying for the opposition. So is the possibility of a Uniform Civil Code and One Nation One Vote all seen to favour the ruling NDA if implemented.

So now, the idea is to shatter the perception of a unified Hindu vote bank into many caste shards. Rahul Gandhi, eager to woo the OBC and Dalit/Mahadalit sections, which constitute some two-thirds of the total in most states. This is apparently up from the Mandal Commission’s 52%. He has coined a new slogan -Jitna Abadi, Utna Huq in more or less record time.

His haste has quite ignored his, and indeed most of the opposition’s assiduous wooing of the Muslim minority vote since the very beginning. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was quick to point this out, and wondered what was to become of the Muslims under opposition rule. This, even as he promised to look after them as part of his Sabka Vikas, Sabka Viswas umbrella.

Is I.N.D.I.A abandoning the maximum of 17% of Muslims nationally, in favour of the 66% of Hindus under the various backward castes? Is the desire to wrest them away, particularly the Mahadalits who have been voting en masse for the BJP, now overwhelming? Or do they believe the Muslims have nowhere else to go anyway?

Can they possibly succeed? What will their credibility be if they fail, given their poor grassroots organisation, and not enough time left to make the new pitch stick? Could it all go horribly wrong, as it did for VP Singh by stirring up the aspirations of the neglected, without any of them being met?

It is true that reservations have only worked fitfully in all the years they have been used, with the creamy layer within the caste groups, garnering the benefits. The concept of any of it reaching the last man has been no more than theoretically possible so far.

Also stirring up the demand for reservations may mean reservations for too many for any of it to be meaningful. Can reservations already given to some be withdrawn in favour of others? Cutting into reservation blocks, as is the demand from Congress and others in the Women’s Reservation Bill just passed after 27 years of wrangling and non -starter attempts, could leave all sides disgruntled.

This entire caste census and its aftermath, reservations within reservations like so many Matrushka Dolls, could be the opening of a Pandora’s Box. Many analysts have begun to point this out.

The Communists have little to lose. They only control Kerala now, and seem in no danger of losing it. So, taking a Trotskyist line on the means justified by the intended ends suits them.

Congress is taking a bigger and wilder gamble and could come unstuck.

TMC is not in favour of this caste ploy because it is well entrenched with the Muslim minority in West Bengal.

DMK is strong in Tamil Nadu and has cast the Sanatana Dharma calumny as a contribution to the I.N.D.I.A alliance for what it is worth, and a sneer at the Cow Belt North. It does not have ambitions outside the state, and is not receiving any criticism over this overt attack against high-caste Hindus from its chief rival the AIADMK.

Besides the Stalins and others in DMK are quite largely Christian.

Leon Trotsky was the chief theorist of the early Russian Revolution known for his seeming ideological flexibility. After the early demise of Lenin soon after the Communists came to power, the pragmatic Stalin, from peasant and non-intellectual stock, had no use for Trotsky’s sophistry.  Trotsky fled to Mexico fearing for his life, but Stalin’s goons found him there and killed him.

The Indian Communists practice a form of Trotskyism all the time, speaking against caste and religion when it suits their objective, and the opposite at a time like this. They feel safe in the knowledge they are unlikely to be assassinated here in India. So why not exploit the benefits of democracy by calling it the worst kind of fascism? And why not take from the Chinese when they offer it?

Trotsky once said, to paraphrase the cynicism of his thinking, lay out the various lies in front of me and I will pick out the truth from amongst them. His exact quote was ‘Tell me anyway-Maybe I can find the truth by comparing the lies’.

Sitaram Yechury, with the most Hindu of names, a Brahmin as it happens, is not only a survivor, but a good student of Leon Trotsky.

(1,168 words)

October 4^th, 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee