Exporting Talent Is a Necessity, Not a Strategy

Exporting Talent Is a Necessity, Not a Strategy

TAN's position is straightforward. India's long practice of sending its workers abroad, from indentured labourers to H-1B engineers, has mainly reflected a shortage of opportunity at home. It should be managed carefully, but it should not be celebrated as national strategy. With other countries tightening their migration rules, India cannot rely on it either.

The Reasoning Under

British rule, an estimated 1.3 to 1.5 million Indians were shipped abroad as indentured labourers between 1834 and 1917-1920. They were known as girmitiyas, after the "agreement" they signed. They left because colonial India offered them little at home.

After Independence, the forms changed: professionals to the West, workers to the Gulf and now government-negotiated mobility agreements, such as the November 2023 framework with Israel and the February 2024 MoU with Taiwan.

India has also long sought multilateral rules under WTO Mode 4 for the temporary movement of service professionals. The main reason has remained the same. India has not created enough good jobs at home for the workers it produces.

When a young, underemployed country meets ageing economies that need workers, migration follows. That is a necessity. Calling it a strategy confuses a response to a gap with a plan to close it.

The Strongest Counter-Argument

The case on the other side is strong. In this view, emigration is not a loss but brain circulation. Scholars such as Devesh Kapur argue that skilled emigrants link India to global knowledge, capital and markets and that returnees and diaspora networks have helped build India's technology sector.

The numbers support part of this: India received a record $135 billion in remittances in FY25, a major support for its foreign exchange reserves. On this view, Indians abroad are a national asset and treating them as a loss misunderstands their value.

Why the Position Still Holds

That argument is correct about remittances and networks, but it does not answer the question Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal himself raised: what would have happened if these professionals had built their firms and research in India?

Remittances largely fund household consumption and add to reserves. They do not build research laboratories, universities or companies in India. Brain circulation also depends on people returning. Over 18.8 lakh Indians renounced their citizenship between 2011 and 2023, which suggests many are leaving for good.

And the circulation channel is controlled by other governments. The US suspension of firms from its green-card process in October 2026 shows how quickly that access can be restricted.