The movement of people across the world in the last 50 years has been one of the great dramas of world history, and India has been central to it. The number of international migrants has more than tripled since 1970. Their share of the world population has increased to four per cent. India has the largest national diaspora in the world, with more than 3.5 crore people — nearly one in 40 Indians — living abroad. Indians form a sizeable proportion of the almost 300 million living outside their countries of birth. India is, by a wide margin, the largest recipient of migrant remittances, receiving almost $130 billion annually. These inflows, which have rapidly grown, dwarf the $42 billion contribution of inward foreign investment and have been vital for covering India’s chronic trade and current account deficits and building up foreign exchange reserves. They are now predominantly from advanced economies rather than from the Gulf.

The unprecedented movement of people, enabled by push and pull factors including demographic and income differences between countries and greater ease of transportation and communication, is creating new economic, cultural, and political links. The minister of external affairs has recognised that for the young, especially, the world is increasingly India’s workplace. Making it possible for Indians to find work abroad is now an explicit aim of foreign policy, and Indians abroad are seen as assets. But are they treated that way?

The 25th anniversary of the Report of the High-Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora is fast approaching. The committee stated that “it is of the opinion that dual citizenship has become a rallying point for the Indian Diaspora’s solidarity with Mother India and that dual citizenship is an idea whose time has come”. It argued painstakingly that there was nothing in the Constitution or legislation that obstructed dual citizenship. The Committee surveyed trends in favour of dual citizenship in other countries (since strengthened) and found........

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