by Moiz Mannan
The overseas Indian may not be of much practical use to political outfits here as a voter, but has suddenly found significance as a campaigner and a fund-raiser. And, when hundreds of such non-resident Indians (NRIs) and persons of Indian origin (PIOs) descended on the motherland last week, politicians couldn’t help but sink their fangs into this juicy electoral morsel.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), having seen the role of overseas diaspora in Aam Admi Party’s unexpected success, was at the forefront of this effort. Not only did the party organise its own NRI conclave, but its prime ministerial candidate for the impending parliamentary elections, Narendra Modi, used the platform of the official Pravasi Bharatiya Divas to send out a political message.
Traditionally, the BJP is supposed to have the strongest overseas support base among all major political outfits in India. A large number of resourceful NRIs and PIOs, particularly in the US and UK owe allegiance to the party that was at the helm of affairs in India when the first Pravasi Bharatiya Divas was held in New Delhi in 2003.
As Prime Minister, BJP stalwart Atal Behari Vajpayee has laid out promises such as dual citizenship and other benefits, especially for PIOs. The BJP-led combination lost power soon after that and since then, the Congress-led UPA governments have given the PBD the shape of a meet to showcase India’s investment potential and attract diaspora capital. Various state governments too have used the event to woo their respective diaspora with appeals ranging from logical to emotional.
The Congress too did its bit in appeasing the NRI/PIO segment. NRIs who visit Indian frequently wanted long-term stay permits and the Indian government introduced a PIO scheme with a 20-year visa. Then, the government extended it to granting dual citizenship with some conditions, calling it the Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card that allows them to live in India as long as they want plus get other benefits like owning property and working. Overseas Indians with Indian passports can also vote in elections but only in person. This was also announced at a PBD.
Over the past several years, though, it appeared that the BJP, ridden with challenges at home, had sidetracked the effort to maintain relations with its overseas supporters. It took Narendra Modi to breathe new life into the domestic cadre and AAP’s stunning performance in Delhi state elections to turn attention back to the diaspora.
NRIs were at the forefront of AAP’s delhi election campaign in terms of IT management. Facebook, Twitter and Google Hangout were used for fund-raising and get-out-the-vote efforts. According to AAP sources, a staggering 480,000 calls were made to Delhi voters by some 35,000 volunteers around the world. Within a comparatively short span, the fledgling party established 18 AAP chapters across the globe, each enrolling hundreds of NRI/PIO volunteers. Some 400 volunteers were reported to have flown in to Delhi to be a part of the process. IT can’t be used as a main campaign tool when it comes to the whole of India in a general election, but the ripples created by the Delhi win are being turned by local volunteers into waves of word-of-mouth publicity.
In terms of funding, AAP has acknowledged that in the eight months leading up to December’s Delhi state election, the party raised around `200m ($3.2m) globally via online donations, with over `65m coming from outside India. For the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the party says it has already collected some `50 m, more than a fifth of which amount has come from overseas Indians. All this was apparently not lost on the BJP which promptly regrouped it overseasa supporters and called a global meet in the name of Overseas Friends of BJP. There seemed to a one-point agenda of this conclave: galvanise NRI/PIO potential for the final push to power.
The BJP is not exactly in dearth of funds as was AAP and would not push too hard for NRI money, but it certainly needs overseas Indians’ support to polish its image. Endorsements of possible investments and therefore jobs for locals by high flying non-residents might do that. At the Overseas Friends of BJP meet, therefore, the party’s national president, Rajnath Singh, promised to “create conditions”, if voted to power, to raise the FDI (foreign direct investment) limit for overseas Indians to 40 per cent.
After coming to power his party would boost the manufacturing sector and could float bonds which would allow NRIs to invest in this sector, Singh said. A Global Website for NRIs was launched by senior leader Arun Jaitley at the event. The meeting called upon overseas Indians to make extensive use of modern days communication. Vijay Jolly convenor of OFBJP urged overseas Indians to make telephone calls and send out at least 10 e-mails each to their relatives and friends in India every day soliciting support for the BJP.
Rajnath Singh also promised a system whereby NRIs would find it easy to get their children admitted to IIT and other top educational institutions in India. Covering all the bases, the global meet also adopted a resolution that “NRIs be permitted to vote by postal ballot in 2014 polls.”
On his part, the BJP current poster boy, Narendra Modi, used the forum of the Indian government-organised Pravasi Bharatiya Divas to hit out at the Congress misrule and sent out implied messages aplenty regarding his party’s imminent success in the 2014 elections.
The Peninsula
