A passage to India

When my parents emigrated from India in the 1960s, they sought what might be called the ‘-British dream’: stability, opportunity and the chance of a better life in the world’s third-largest economy. So when I told my parents that I was moving to India for the same sort of reasons, they were shocked. India may be going up in the world, but what about the corruption, bureaucracy, pollution and overcrowding? Would I really earn enough money and live in a nice house? It made no sense at all to them that, aged 32, their daughter had chosen to go east — and join a steady exodus which is passing almost entirely unnoticed.

Immigration has dominated the British debate so much that there has been little discussion about the opposite trend: that each day, about 1,000 people pack their bags and leave. That any Brit might leave for Mumbai seems strange even to Indians of my parents’ generation.