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Indian's going abroad is not a recent trend. The numbers may fluctuate but Indians have been travelling oversees for many reasons from over decades now. The recent development in the Indians pursuit for other nations show that the flocking has stooped low from before of the pandemic. But this year has seen an impressive rise of 137% compared to 2021.
The data from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Bureau of Immigration (BOI) says that the year 2022 from January to November saw 18 million Indians traveled abroad. The elephant in the room being the students who like to study oversees for better lifestyle and better opportunities. So, more than 1.8 crore people travelled abroad from India between January to November.
The BOI collects all these data by keeping a track on the Indian passengers manually by capturing the purpose of their visit or the destination there are headed to. According to MHA, "It is based either on their (passengers') verbal disclosure or the type of visa of the destination country produced by them at the time of according immigration clearance."
When it comes to higher education and studies, the report shows that exactly 1,33,135 Indian students went abroad for studies this year, as on March 20. Minister of State for External Affairs V. Muraleedharan informed the Rajya Sabha by adding the exact number to the previous year's data, that will be 4,44,553 students in 2021 and 2,59,655 in 2020.
He also said that granting visas is the sovereign right of a country and various countries have been granting visas to Indian students for studying in universities of their countries. However, if there is temporary restriction or delay in the grant of visa then the Ministry and the respective Indian Mission take it up proactively with the country concerned.
The External Affairs Minister also responded to a query by CPI member K Soma Prasad that his Ministry is closely working with the Indian students going abroad and staying abroad and they can easily communicate with the ministry by stating their problems and exactly providing the right information like their course, institutions, contact details, emergency contact etc.
The minister also stressed the bonus of social media and how they are using such platforms to communicate with students.
Minister of State for External Affairs Meenakshi Lekhi, while responding to a question informed the Upper House that overall, 22,500 nationals have returned to India since February 2022 after the Russia-Ukraine war broke out in February.
Madam Minister also briefed about the Vande Bharat mission that was launched by the central government during Covid-19 and how it has been helpful in repatriating Indian nationals and has facilitated travel of passengers between India and other parts of the world.
She also stated, "Around 40-50 Indian nationals are still in Ukraine, of which only a few are willing to return to India and their return is being facilitated by the Embassy.
Around 2.97 crore passengers (in-bound and out-bound) have been facilitated in the flights operated under the Vande Bharat Mission and Air Bubble Arrangements till date."
In her briefing, Minister Lekhi gave the exact numbers and ways in which a few other evacuations were made. Which includes a total of 669 people evacuated from Afghanistan.
This also includes 448 Indian nationals, 206 Afghans (including Hindu and Sikh community members) and 15 people of other nationalities (Nepal, Lebanon and Uganda) in seven flights (six flights operated between August 16 to 25, 2021 and the last flight on December 10, 2021), Under operation Devi Shakti. The minister also claimed that all Indian nationals who had sought repatriation to India were evacuated.
51.6 lakh people left country to set up businesses oversees
Minister of External Affairs, V. Muraleedharan told Rajya Sabha in a written reply that according to information received from the BoI, the top preferred countries for education in 2021 were the US, Canada, and the UK.
The BOI also informed that, 40% of all the Indians travelling abroad are for 'residency' this year. Which is more than 72 lakh. While the rest 71 lakh Indians were tourists or went out on visits.
Over 21 lakh Indians left the country for employment while other were travelers who went on pilgrimage, medical treatment and so on. After a significant fall in the numbers in 2020, when only 85,256 people gave up citizenship, the number increased to 1.6 lakh in 2021, about 14% more than the 1.4 lakh in 2019.
In the first 10 months of this year, over 1.8 lakh people have given up Indian citizenship, which is nearly 28% more than the figure in 2019. Comparatively, India granted citizenship to 546 people in the year 2022 is reported to be only 60.
According to the statistics 51.6 lakh people have left the country to set up businesses oversees. Separate data from the MEA shows that in the same period, more than 8.4 lakh Indians have given up their citizenship in order to gain citizenships of other countries. So the number of people travelling for employment stands at 1.2 crore.
To sum it all up, between January 2017 and November 2022, over 10.3 crore Indians have travelled abroad. To break it all up, more than 3.8 crore left the country seeking residency, 2.4 crore people were tourists and 1.6 crore flocked for personal visits. "The number will further increase," says an immigration expert.
