Home and the world

The name of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, today identifies the richest Southasian (male) to the world. Lakshmi Mittal, of Mittal Steel, is an Indian based in the United Kingdom. He made his money in the Soviet Union, and is suddenly in the limelight because he has dared to invade the bastion of Western Europe, attempting a hostile takeover of the French steel-maker Arcelor.

And so the name of the goddess – depicted in calendar art with a mouse for a consort, and assorted swans and white elephants hanging about in a paradisiacal grotto – is one that generates concern throughout Western industry for the acumen of can-do Indians. Truth be told, the ten richest men of Southasia, according to this year's Forbes list of the world's most wealthy, may be Southasians, but they are all Indians – from Azim Premji of Wipro and Kushal Pal Singh of DLF, to the Birlas, Godrej's and the Ambani brothers. And there is a pleasantly disproportionate representation of Calcutta, rather than of Bombay or Delhi, in terms of the schools and colleges these heavyweights have attended.

As Mittal and the others make the financial headlines, the infiltration of the Occident by Southasians continues apace. In the United States, for example, the robust dimensions of this presence can now be seen in the undergraduate college graduation rolls. For example, the list of the graduates of Columbia College class of '06 in New York shows a significant proportion of what some like to call 'desi' surnames.

But analysis of this list again shows the great preponderance of graduates of Indian origin, whether they are children of US citizens or foreign students. While Muslim names may be from other parts of the world as well, it is fair to say that Muslim Southasia is little represented in this list, and there are more individuals of Bangladeshi than Pakistani origin. There is not one Sinhala name there, while Nepali and Sri Lankan Tamil, or Fijian or West Indian names, would be hidden in their one's or two's, if at all.

The size and weight of the Southasian community in the US is going to become more obvious by the day, because the tide of immigration that started in the 1970s by dint of hard immigrant labour is now rising to middle- and upper-income categories. As such, they will become advertising targets. In the New York subway this summer, there is an advertisement for the La Guardia Community College, which as a matter of course shows a man of Sri Lankan origin as the model student.

Today, the Southasian may be over there, sinking roots deep into Western societies and making good for themselves and immediate families. But when all is said and done, those who will do the most good for the home country and region are the labourers who remit money – not those from the middle class who go with the ability and intention to migrate, and gain green cards and citizenships. Thus, it is not the Nepali migrant to the United Kingdom or the United States who has helped the economy of Nepal survive through these past years of violence and political turmoil. Instead, the liquidity of the economy has been guaranteed by the labour – village migrants – working under harsh conditions in Malaysia, Korea and 'Saudi'.

Thus we have the big name of a Mittal, a Shashi Tharoor or an Amartya Sen, along with tens of thousands of other Southasians, all seeking success on Western shores — even if some of them may hold 'desi' passports. They may make us all proud, these Southasians of the globalising world economy. But it is the migrant workers traveling east and west who help keep the home economies buoyant, whether it is in Kerala, Bihar, Khulna, rural Punjab-Sindh, or the Nepali midhill and tarai. These unsung, unglamorous migrants are the ones who will be returning before long to be the real engines of growth in the backward regions of Southasia.

The wheel will turn, and the poorest regions of Southasia, those that export this migrant class, will be the ones to benefit from the return. The poor shall yet, we would all hope, inherit the earth.

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Himal Southasian
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