by Vinay Kamat; The Times of India; Monday, January 31, 2005

Why do you insist on calling me an NRI?” said the Mysore-born, Pune-graduated, NYC-chiselled, Seattle-based high-flier. He was very much like Pico Iyer’s global soul or Steven Spielberg’s ‘terminal’ man, who took the idea of home to every nook, corner, and airport he visited. He was neither American nor Indian. He called himself a floating citizen of the world. With a new set of home-truths, he began unravelling a vision called India. In essence, he was an MRI (multi- resident Indian). The Manmohan Singh administration had taken the idea of MRI forward when it granted him dual citizenship.

To his RI (resident Indian) friends, he was a simple statistic. Spread across the globe, predominantly in North America, his fellow PIOs (people of Indian origin) have an annual income totting up to $370 billion. But seen in the context of India, whose GDP is around $570 billion, their earnings acquire a new meaning. They quickly up India’s GDP to $940 billion. “Statistics only give you part of the story,” said the MRI. Just imagine PIO earnings equalling, or doubling, India’s in the next few years. That success story is my Vision India. India is about cultural plurality seeking distinct global identities; it’s about realising its das-avatar across the globe. India’s multiplicity is evident in squalor, splendour, sculpture, software, and spirituality. Its persona is as singular as the Taj and as diverse and versioned as an open-source code.”

In India’s diversity lies its invisibility. It must become as palpable and poignant as it becomes imperious and invisible. “India’s concerns are borderless; they have a global dimension. It must provide space and voice to its global envoys, the diaspora, in Parliament. It’s a constituency that will outgrow India in influence in a few years. Why not create a third house? You could call it Vishwa Sabha, after Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Vishwa Sabha will help Parliament to focus on Boston and California, instead of being obsessed with Bihar and Kashmir”.

Of course, the idea of Vishwa Sabha is not just restricted to India. “It would in due course be visible in US Congress and European parliaments as well. It’s already happening from within the well-encrusted diamond diaspora, the ever-replicating software community, and the infectious academic. They have already made Vision India tangible through their presence, size, and influence. Soon, legislators like Bobby Jindal will have a bigger say. And as local issues become global concerns, legislators could cross-represent economies. Why can’t Congressman Bobby Jindal become an Indian MP as well?”

The individual has already woken, and is waking the nation to a bigger opportunity. “Look at me,” said the MRI, describing his economic pilgrimages across the world. “I have an invisible citizenship. I visit Vietnam and the Philippines regularly to scout for outsourcing opportunity; I’m in China once a month to supervise manufacturing tie-ups; Warsaw and Istanbul are second homes; Hyderabad and Bangalore will soon be on my frequent-flier schedule. I am just a unit of the diaspora. As an Indian, I have instinctively learnt to develop roots in cultural plurality, barter my identity in a borderless world, and distinguish myself in free-market global capitalism.”

It is not the Indian who makes India but “India” makes the Indian, says Raja Rao. By India, Rao does not mean a country, but a ‘perspective’ and a ‘mood’. “Today this perspective is defined by the Indian. It’s through his Indianness that the world is seeing, and seeking, India. India is a collection of virtual nation-states both inside and outside. Inside, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Gurgaon are becoming global economic engines. Outside, the diaspora is spawning mini-Indias from San Jose to Montreal to London to Dubai to Singapore to Melbourne. It’s a fresh perspective of India seen through the evolution, and contribution, of the global Indian,” explained the MRI.

India’s entrepreneurial spirit, its soluble culture, its adaptable identities, and its ambition to grow even bigger are not threats to global society. They are the abiding traits of globalisation. India’s new mood must be that of imperialism. But India must distinguish between the zeal of Alexander and the resolve of Ashoka. The idea of Vishwa Sabha, Parliament’s new avatar, is not just about providing a voice to the diaspora. It’s about focusing on India’s domestic economic engines and its influential international communities to redraw the map of India; it’s about seeking a new role; it’s about mixing liquid localism with a natural global ethos to create an empire of Indianness; it’s about a quest for an Indian self. Indeed, it’s just about the quest; for, the quest to be different is India’s underlying identity.

The MRI was in a hurry to put India’s quest in perspective. “Guess what? ‘The enormity of Vision India comes from the origin of the word itself’, says my Swedish friend. Sindhu, as the first Indians visualised it, was not a river but a sea.”

As the history of India shows, the sea was never an illusion, always a reality. The true spirit of India is its enormity. Borderless in geography, inclusive in culture, cosmic in character, India even transcends the notion of India. That’s its peculiarity.

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Everything has its beauty–but not everyone sees it.