The Great Demographic Heist: Illegal Migration is Rewriting India's Future

If India were a revolving door, it would be spinning so fast that even the ghost of Gandhi might pause for breath.

- Ravi Shankar

On one side, the country's best and brightest are leaving with passports, visas, and resignation letters in hand. On the other, a steady stream of undocumented immigrants are arriving without papers, without plans.

India has the world's largest diaspora: over 35 million people. Each year, around 2.5 million Indians left the country in search of better air, better jobs, and better governance. Over 3,98,000 received official emigration clearances in 2023. Add students, startup founders, and HNW individuals relocating to Dubai condos and Canadian townhomes, and you begin to grasp the scale of the churn. Nearly 2,26,000 Indians renounced citizenship in 2022. This may seem small compared to India's 146.39 crore population, but their contribution to the economy is way disproportionate: a PRICE study says by 2030-31, the middle class and high-income segments would contribute nearly $2.7 trillion to incremental consumption. Imagine the loss from each citizen leaving town. What's causing this haemorrhage? Bad roads and worse governance. Draconian tax regimes. Courts that take decades to deliver verdicts. Public hospitals that function like holding pens. Police stations that intimidate the complainant. These emigrants aren't unpatriotic. They're just done waiting. Meanwhile illegal migration floods the informal labour market, driving down wages and increasing competition for welfare. Try questioning it, and you'll be branded as heartless, fascist, or worse.