BENGALURU – More than 225,000 Indians gave up their citizenship in 2022, the most in over a decade, according to data from India’s Ministry of External Affairs. This is a spike from the average of around 150,000 a year since 2011.

The top countries that granted them citizenship between 2019 and 2021 were the United States, Canada and Australia, statistics from India’s Ministry of Home Affairs showed in 2022. Singapore was the seventh-most popular destination, with around 7,000 Indians getting the red passport over the same period.

With the world’s largest diaspora population, India can tap overseas networks and wealth, but emigration also leads to talent drain for one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

“Many Indian nationals have chosen to take up foreign citizenship. The government is cognisant of this development and has undertaken a range of initiatives... that would harness their talent at home,” said External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in Parliament in July, when the latest numbers were revealed.

“A successful, prosperous and influential diaspora is an advantage for India,” he said, adding that the country’s approach was to tap the diaspora networks for “national gain”.

A World Bank report estimated that remittance flow to India would see a rise of 12 per cent to US$100 billion (S$134.5 billion) in 2023. This estimate includes remittances from overseas Indians who still hold Indian passports.

According to a 2020 report by the Population Division of the United Nations, India had 18 million people living outside their homeland, with the United Arab Emirates, the US and Saudi Arabia hosting the majority.

Indian citizens living abroad are so significant to politics and the economy that the Indian government has attempted since 2020 to find a way to allow them to cast their votes.

But those who take up foreign citizenship must renounce their Indian status, as India does not recognise dual nationality.

Since 2011, more than 1.75 million people have renounced their Indian citizenship for foreign passports. The most popular destination is the US, followed by Canada, Australia and Britain.

In the first six months of 2023, 87,026 have taken up foreign citizenship.

Many more are on their way out soon. Marketing professional Amit (not his real name), 36, and his wife, 32, who works in the entertainment industry in Mumbai, received their permanent residency in Canada earlier in 2023 and will move there soon. It puts them on track to get Canadian citizenship in a few years. 

The couple first considered leaving India three years ago, when they saw most of their closest Indian friends living abroad.

“We were also feeling that living in India was not going to become easier any time soon. The quality of life, the public goods, infrastructure, what the city offers, is just not commensurate with your income after a certain point,” said Mr Amit.

He added that the poor roads, unreliable public transport, pollution and severe water shortages defeated even the upper class in Mumbai, the financial hub of India.

He said he had no second thoughts about what was “a practical decision” for the Dink (dual income, no kids) couple.

“Changing my passport is only changing my nationality on paper. My Indian-ness hasn’t changed, except that my civic engagement with the new place may actually count for more than it does in India,” he said, referring to his frustrating attempts in India to participate in social work.

The Straits Times spoke to a dozen Indians who have emigrated. They described their decision to change citizenship as a natural, practical extension of seeking better prospects in their education, career path, or family life.

One high-income overseas Indian said the priorities of developed countries, such as tech innovation in the US and Canada, tend to be more aligned to his, while India, the world’s most populous nation with more than 1.4 billion people, still had to balance its emerging economy with electrifying large swathes of the country and lifting millions out of poverty.

“India is improving of course, but in a developed economy, things work already. I can take a lot more for granted,” said another emigrant, citing the more comfortable housing, greenery and quieter setting for moving to Australia.

All of them requested anonymity, lest they be judged for giving up their Indian citizenship.

Some said they were anxious about talking to the media, in case the Indian government cancelled their Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card (a permanent visa for persons of Indian origin), like it did for British-American writer Aatish Taseer in 2019 allegedly for concealing that he had a Pakistani father.

Mr Taseer, however, said he was estranged from his father, was brought up by his well-known Indian journalist mother, and that his OCI was cancelled over his May 2019 Time article critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

A Mumbai-born doctor who became a British citizen in 2019 decided to apply after living there for 16 years.

“The reason was not to get a permanent job or career progression. The reason was mainly family. My son is UK-born and essentially thinks he is British. After 16 years, the UK is my home too, so I felt comfortable changing my nationality,” Dr Kavita (not her real name) said.

“It is also easier to travel to Europe and America with a British passport,” she added, a rationale other overseas Indians in the US and Singapore also cited. 

A study by the US-based National Bureau of Economic Research found that nine out of 10 top scorers in the annual entrance examination for admission to India’s top engineering colleges had emigrated.

A third of the top 1,000 scorers, particularly graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), also took this path, first going overseas for higher studies and often staying there for work. 

Dr Kavita suggested it was futile to worry about a “brain drain” from India.

“As humans, we take the best opportunities possible… Also, India is a very big country, and it has the talent to share with the world.” 

Indeed, it is hard to miss the Indian-origin chief executive officers heading American corporations – such as the Chennai-born Indra Nooyi who headed Pepsi till 2018, Madurai-born IIT Kharagpur graduate Sundar Pichai at Alphabet, IIT Mumbai chemical engineering graduate Raj Subramaniam, who heads FedEx after 30 years at the company, and Micron president Sanjay Mehrotra, who was born in Uttar Pradesh.

For Mr Deepak (not his real name), however, it was the urge “to step off the corporate treadmill” that prompted his move in 2019 to Adelaide, Australia, on a skill-based permanent residency with his wife and middle-schooler son.

“After 20 years in the tech industry, working round the clock with no time for your child or other pursuits, we decided in our 40s to take an unimaginable risk, leave our settled lives and move to Australia. This country prizes work-life balance in a way that the American or Indian corporate space does not,” said the 44-year-old corporate learning and development professional. 

Four years in Australia with a permanent residency and on track for citizenship, Mr Deepak said he lives in a rented home earning less than what he did in India, but enjoys “the relaxed pace of life” with no evening calls, lots of outdoor activities, family dinners every night and their creatively inclined son exploring art and writing in school.

Mr Deepak said well-maintained, reliable facilities mean that “the money goes a long way, and we can live a life more comfortable than we had in India”.