In India, those with some education or skills dream of going abroad for a life that promises higher incomes, greater career opportunities, and better possibilities of realising ambition. The latest World Development Report published by the World Bank estimates that Indian workers who go abroad enjoy a 120% increase in income as against only a 40% rise if they migrated to another location within Indian territory. The report also reveals that low-skilled Indians migrating to the United States of America are likely to get a 500% hike in income. This would be 300% if they migrated to the United Arab Emirates. The gains are, expectedly, much higher if the migrants belong to the high-skilled category of workers such as computer engineers or doctors. Economic migrants like information technology professionals stand to gain the most. Unsurprisingly, India falls among the most active international migration corridors, such as the India-US, India-Gulf Cooperation Council nations and Bangladesh-India. Indians move out, earn more, and remit greater money back to the country.

However, migration is not all about economic gains. Being a migrant in a foreign land can be stressful, even dangerous. As global migration swells, the animosity towards migrants is also increasing. Local populations consider migrants to be a competitive economic threat and, culturally, a disruptive constituency. Being the most populous country in the world, India has a surfeit of human resources that it cannot retain through attractive livelihood opportunities and career paths. Hence, more skilled people leave India than is necessary. Shortages in other countries determine opportunities for migration on the lower end of the spectrum of skill and education. Hence a plumber or an electrician can earn two to three times more by migrating out of India. The country has always had a portion of the labour force that is uneducated, unemployed, and without any marketable skill set. This trend is a cause for concern. While the nation can take legitimate pride in Indian-origin chief executive officers manning the ships of global enterprise, the average quality of the workforce in India makes worker productivity low. The fact that India is producing and supplying top talent across the world — the migrants who leave early — is good news. On the other hand, many corporate bosses believe that most of the graduates churned out of Indian colleges are not even employable. The best will migrate out of the country. The labour force in India will be increasingly straddled with unemployable debris. That is something the nation needs to reflect upon.