SINGAPORE // Shalini Gupta became so disgusted with news of gang rapes and corruption scandals in India that she left her job as a management trainer in Chicago and returned to her homeland after three decades abroad.
“The sad state of affairs is what convinced me to come back,” said Ms Gupta, 55, a non-resident Indian, or NRI, who is volunteering for the anti-corruption Aam Aadmi Party. “There’s been a complete breakdown of law and order here, with scams every other day, crimes against women, criminals in parliament. It’s really shocked NRIs and made us want to get involved.”
For the first time, the roughly 10 million NRIs have been allowed to vote in national elections, and their power will grow if they win the right to vote from abroad.
At present, the number of NRI voters is limited by the requirement that they must return to India to cast ballots. About 12,000 have registered to vote in the ongoing elections ending on May 16, with more than half from Kerala, which accounts for 20 of the 543 seats up for grabs, said election commissioner H S Brahma said.
“They are also Indian,” Mr Brahma said of NRIs. “It’s just that they have decided to pursue livelihood elsewhere. They should not be prevented from participating.”
Most polls show Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) winning the most seats in the election but falling short of a majority, an outcome that will probably end the 10-year rule of prime minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress party. The 18-month-old Aam Aadmi and smaller regional parties are projected to hold the balance of power.
Turnout has averaged 66 per cent the first six of nine rounds of voting, up from 58 per cent in 2009, according to the Election Commission of India. That surpasses the previous record of 64 per cent in the 1984 elections following the assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi, which led to a surge in support for her Congress party.
The push for change among overseas Indians is boosting support for parties other than Congress, according to Satish Misra, senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.
“The BJP has been working on wooing NRIs for a very long time and has had active members for several years,” Mr Misra said by phone from New Delhi. “The AAP has made some dents into the BJP’s NRI constituency with its anti-corruption narrative.”
The government says India’s diaspora – the biggest after China – includes about 10 million passport-holding NRIs such as the Britain-based billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, and another 12 million who qualify as a Person of Indian Origin, or PIO, who cannot vote but get certain privileges for travel and buying land.
“It’s very easy to say: it’s not my problem, I don’t live there,” said Smita Barooah, a Singapore-based addictions counsellor who moved to New Delhi in February to volunteer full- time for the BJP campaign. “I decided I had to come here and do what I can, because I felt so angry about what this country has been reduced to. It’s embarrassing and it’s heartbreaking.”
Mr Modi has invited NRIs to events in Gujarat, the state he has run since 2001, such as a kite festival and a biennial investor summit. The groups Overseas Friends of BJP and Overseas Friends of Narendra Modi have held contribution drives from Canada to Australia and organised discussions over tea to get familiar with the policies of Mr Modi, who once ran a tea kiosk.
Mr Modi’s international image suffered in the wake of 2002 riots in Gujarat that killed about 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, which prompted the United States and European countries to deny him a visa. He has denied wrongdoing.
Aam Aadmi says about 31 per cent of the 304 million rupees (Dh18.4m) it has raised since December 12 has come from overseas, mostly from the US. The party is the only one to publish its donations online.
Congress has recruited NRIs such as Shashi Tharoor, a former under secretary general at the United Nations, to help make policy. Raghuram Rajan, who taught at the University of Chicago, became a finance ministry adviser in 2012 and last September became governor of India’s central bank.
“Involving NRIs is very important,” said Vikash Dhanuka, 40, founder and chief executive of a trading company in Singapore, who will head back to India to vote. “We’re an influential community, and we’re very keen to do what we can.”
India’s supreme court, ruling on a complaint that the requirement to be present in India to vote was discriminatory and violated fundamental rights, this month said that NRIs would not be permitted to use postal ballots or online voting in this election, but postal voting would be considered in the future, the Times of India reported.
“There has been greater awareness and activism among NRIs in recent years,” said Sanjay Kumar, the New Delhi-based director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, which conducts opinion polls. “Giving NRIs the right to vote from abroad is only a matter of time.”
Ms Gupta, who spent five months in India last year before leaving her job, plans to stay involved in the country after the election even though she will move back to Chicago.
“This is a more pressing need, a more important job,” she said. “I see myself staying the course and helping this organisation and the country.”
* Bloomberg News
