Statsguru: 160,000 Indians gave up citizenship in 2021 for greener pastures

A recent reply in the Lok Sabha noted that over 160,000 Indians had given up their citizenship in 2021 alone. The number surges to nearly 400,000 if one includes the previous two years. The total number of foreigners taking Indian citizenship numbered fewer than 4,000 in the same period (see chart 1).

The top countries for which Indian citizenships were relinquished include the US, Australia, Canada, the UK, and Italy (see chart 2).

International agencies provide information on migration across countries. Net migration, or the number of people leaving adjusted for the number of people coming in, has generally been going up over the decades in absolute terms. There were periods in which India received more people than exits, including an extended period from the start of the 1970s and stretching into the 1980s (see chart 3).

Migration had surged around the time of the war with Pakistan in 1971, which resulted in the creation of Bangladesh. India’s net migration based on a five-year estimate as of 2017 accounted for around 23 per cent of the total of all lower middle-income countries. This share is higher than has been the case previously. It was less than 9 per cent in the 1990s.

The total strength of the Indian diaspora has increased significantly since then, touching nearly 18 million according to United Nations numbers for 2020 (see chart 4). Gender differences have come up with women accounting for an ever smaller proportion of migrants since the year 2000 unlike in the rest of the world (see chart 5).

Those who are abroad have been sending back increasingly larger remittances. The pandemic has adversely affected those employed in the informal sector abroad, particularly in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, which resulted in the US emerging as the biggest source of remittances. Maharashtra displaced Kerala as the largest recipient. The overall number continued to climb. Total remittances touched $89.4 billion in 2021 compared to $2.4 billion in 1990 (see chart 6).
 

StatsGuru is a weekly feature. Every Monday, Business Standard guides you through the numbers you need to know to make sense of the headlines