As India Becomes Wealthier, More Indians Moving Abroad: Study

More and more Indians are moving out of the country as the country is becoming wealthier, says a new study.

In 2017, close to 17 million Indians were living abroad, making India the largest source country globally for international migrants, up from seven million in 1990 and a 143 percent increase, news agency IANS reported quoting an IndiaSpend analysis of data from the United Nations Department of Economic Affairs.

In the same period, India’s per capita income increased by 522 percent (from $1,134 to $7,055), enabling more Indians to travel abroad in search of employment, it reported.

At the same time, the number of unskilled migrants leaving the country has been falling: An estimated 391,000 left India in 2017, almost half the number in 2011 (637,000), the news agency cited from a new report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The news agency also said that none of these mean that an increasing number of India’s emigrants are higher skilled people that policymakers should be worried about a rise in “brain drain.”

These figures are for unskilled migrants traveling on Emigration Check Required (ECR) passports and changes in the government criteria used to classify workers as unskilled, leading to more migrants traveling on non-ECR passports, could be part of the reason for the declining trend, the news agency added.

The news agency also added that international emigration normally moves up with economic development as more people have the financial means to travel abroad and starts to reduce when countries reach upper-middle-income status.

Labor demand driven by constrained local employment markets is a key motivation for international migration, with 73 percent of all migrants globally entering the workforce in their host country, the news agency quoted the ADB report as saying.

India’s working age population is currently growing by 1.3 million each month, worsening a stagnant job market that is further afflicted by a lack of employment, IANS said.

For almost three decades between 1990-2017, India witnessed waves of skilled and unskilled labor emigration. Indian migrants in Qatar increased 82,669 percent –from 2,738 to 2.2 million — over 27 years to 2017, more than in any other country. In the two years between 2015-2017, the Indian population in Qatar more than tripled, the news agency added.