India’s aspiration paradox: Lessons from Vietnam, China

India must build a real ecosystem for global talent, one that matches aspiration with infrastructure and pride with pragmatism

- PATRALEKHA CHATTERJEE

Every society aspires. But in India, aspiration has long been framed through the prism of exit.

For many in the middle class, success means leaving whether on a temporary work visa like the H-1B, through a Golden Visa that trades long-term residency for a sizeable economic investment, or symbolically through foreign validation. Here, ‘leaving’ is cast as ‘arrival, proof that one has broken through the constraints of the domestic system, Families boast of children “settled abroad” as a badge of honour, When a country announces visa-free entry for Indians, social media lights up with hashtags and headlines, celebrating it as proof of India’s rising global stature. Yet, beneath the euphoria lies a deeper contradiction—one exposed by the US's $100,000 H-1B visa fee for new applicants, effective from September 21, 2025. The Trump administrations move disproportionately affects Indian nationals, who make up over 70% of H-1B holders, and tosses India’s projected $280-billion tech services industry and thousands of skilled workers into uncertainty. What began as patriotic pride quickly turned to personal grief, as the rhetoric of self-reliance collided with the reality of exclusion from a system many Indians aspire to join.

For decades, the H-1B visa symbolised Indian ambition: the engineer in Silicon Valley, the consultant in New Jersey, the family “settled abroad”. In recent years, more and more of India’s wealthy have been moving out. And not just to the United States. As Sanjaya Baru notes tellingly in his book, Secession of the Successful: The Flight Out of New India, “It is a comment on our times and on the values that have come to define the power elite of the so-called ‘New India’ that many among them view this flight of the wealthy as a sign of progress.”