South Asian Diaspora: A Changing Landscape

This paper is an attempt to expand the debate on the impact that the South Asian Diaspora groups are having on the countries of their origin. It goes beyond the discussion of the quantum and structure of financial resources that flow from the expatriate communities to the countries of their origin. While those financial resources are large – they touched US$100 billion for all South Asia – the story of the impact of the Diaspora groups on what were once their homelands should extend beyond matters of finance. We should look into how the size, structure and pattern of South Asia’s middle class, by now nearing one billion people and expanding at a rate three to four times the increase in population, are being influenced by the Diaspora groups. The upper end of the South Asian middle class is increasing because of the growth in national incomes in the region. As is now recognised, a significant increase in the incomes resulting from economic growth is being captured by the well-to-do segments of South Asian societies. At the lower end of the income distribution scale, the increasing size of the middle class is largely the consequence of the amount of remittances received by the households in the space between the poor and the not-so-poor.