The UMIs have landed

The UMIs have landed
SUKHMANI SINGH

It is that time of the year when Punjabi NRIs fly home to celebrate the new year with parents they left behind. And it is a curious phenomenon. Now enjoying success abroad, they gaze at their motherland through x-ray glasses, not rose-tinted spectacles. I met a 41-year-old first generation lawyer settled in Los Angeles. It took him 11 years to reach the top of the ladder as a partner in a corporate law firm. Today he works 14 hours a day to hang on. As he shrugs, ``It's like being on a roller coaster -- there's no way you can get off.''

Ironically, in California his success was fuelled by the ``Indian'' factor. For 70 per cent of his business -- mergers and acquisitions of IT and healthcare companies -- accrues from NRIs. The current boom in Indian entrepreneurship in California sends him laughing all the way to the bank. The gruelling work and persistence have finally paid off. As he says, ``Earlier Indians were creating value for other companies, now they are rapidly growing entrepreneurs themselves.'' Many of these Upwardly Mobile Indians (UMIs) happen to be Punjabis. They are ideally suited to those conditions -- as he puts it, ``Punjabis are naturally gregarious and aggressive, much like the Americans themselves.''

But despite tasting success, Indians abroad say they live with a high sense of insecurity. Therefore, the adulation they attract in Apna Punjab comes as a great ego-booster. Take the case of son-of-the-soil British Columbia premier Ujjal Dosanjh who came here last month. Billed as a private visit in Canada, here it metamorphosed into a governmental parade. Given the amount of functions he attended, in a cavalcade of nine Mercedes, and the expenses on his trip, he was lavished with as much importance as Bill Clinton. Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal dipped into his discretionary fund to shower lakhs of rupees on his native village Dosanjh Kalan. Much to the chagrin of neighbouring villages which are in much worse condition.

For Dosanjh, whose popularity abroad has waned so perceptibly that pollsters predict he may lose the forthcoming elections, the visit to Punjab at this juncture was inspired and well-timed. The poetic appeal of such a journey to his motherland would perhaps strike a chord among British Columbia's large chunk of Punjabi voters. And signing a few vague trade agreements, with no clear specifications, gave both him and the Punjab government great publicity.

Ironically, although in Punjab Dosanjh humbly paid obeisance at gurudwaras, in BC he steers clear of the intricate, somewhat rabid, gurudwara politics. Since coming to power, he has been walking a tightrope, taking great care not to promote or appoint fellow Sikhs or Indians in high positions, for fear of being labelled partisan. Nor has he introduced any sweeping changes to benefit the state's whopping majority of Asians. Which explains why his once staunch supporters there are now his staunchest critics. Their high expectations have been punctured. Clearly then the Indian factor which swept him to power may well prove to be his Waterloo.

But both in the US of A and Canada, while Indians are now respected, perceptions of India have not altered much. India is still perceived to be a bureaucratic monolith, yet an enticing low-cost service provider. As my lawyer friend remarked with an ironic grimace, ``A great breeding ground for software engineers.'' Period. But what about India and the great IT revolution? He laughed loud and long, ``You forget computing sucks up a lot of power, so without power and infrastructure, it's all fruitless. And if state governments keep renegotiating power contracts, it does not send out comforting signals.'' That shut me up rather effectively.