https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/why-three-times-more-goans-surrendered-their-passports-than-punjabis/articleshow/101504611.cms
A poignant scene plays out at Azad Maidan in Panjim every weekday morning. This pleasant tree-shaded old square (it was called Largo Afonso de Albuqerque until 1961) in the Latinate heart of the state capital is dominated on one side by the formidable 19th-century Quartel Militar building housing the police headquarters and the Foreigners Regional Registration Office. Here, two queues assemble in a ritual that closely tracks demographic shifts in India’s smallest state: one line of foreigners seeking to stay on and live in this blessed slice of the Konkan coastline, and another line of locals engaging the paperwork to hand in their Indian passports as the final step of giving up citizenship. The latter cohort flashed into national headlines last week, when the Ministry for External Affairs (MEA) released data for 2011-2022 which accounted for nearly 70,000 people who surrendered their passports around the country. An outsized proportion was from Goa: 28,031 or 40.45% of the overall 1,621,921. That is more than double the next two states - Punjab with 9557/13.79% and Gujarat with 8918/12.87% - combined, and the numbers have sparked considerable debate about what could explain them. The first thing to remember here is that 70,000 represents only a small fraction of the Indians who took foreign citizenship. According to the MEA, an astonishing 225,620 did so last year alone. In fact, no country in the world has as large an overseas presence as the Indians abroad: there are 32 million in diaspora, and the both Non-Resident Indians (NRI) and People of Indian Origin (PIO) numbers keep going up with an estimated 2.5 million migrants now leaving each year [source. So, who are these 70,000 we learned about last week? That number only tallies those who gave up their passports while resident in the country, which is obviously far fewer than all who did so at embassies and consulates abroad (for example, 78,284 went through that process just in the USA in 2021). In addition, it excludes everyone who doesn’t surrender their documents, which could well be an even bigger total than those who do. In this regard, it’s important to note there are huge contingents of illegal immigrants from India in many different countries, and almost 150,000 have been apprehended at the borders of the USA in the last three years alone. Of course, there are innumerable reasons why people seek to move from one country to another, with as many rationales as there are migrants. On the other hand, the compulsion to switch passports is more easily explained by what António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, calls “Travel Apartheid.” All passports are not equal, and Indians carry one of the least desirable. The most recent Passport Index “mobility scores” ranks India an abysmal 144th out of 199 countries in terms of ease of travel, and one of the main reasons for that is the extreme reluctance of most western countries to grant entry to the citizens of India. Here, then, is precisely why Goans give up their Indian passports in the small trickle that occurs each year. Unlike every other foreign colonizer in this part of the world, at various junctures in the 451-year history of its Estado da Índia, the Portuguese state rolled out full citizenship for its subjects in Goa, and continues to honour that commitment in law. Thus, anyone born prior to decolonization in 1961 already possesses Portuguese nationality (should he or she wish to exercise that right) and so do their children and grandchildren. This is such a good deal it’s quite shocking how few take it up. Just imagine the exodus if Gujarat or Punjab had similar rights. “In my opinion, no decision is purely rational or purely emotional,” says Rahool Pai Panandiker, the sole person of Indian origin on the Portuguese Diaspora Council (under the aegis of the President of Portugal and that country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs) since 2014, who has been on its board of directors in 2020. This deeply thoughtful 52-year-old grew up in Goa, then earned his doctorate in the USA before moving to the faculty of the University of Lisbon, and now works as the Managing Director and Senior Partner of the Mumbai office of Boston Consulting Group. He explains that “people make rational choices when making critical decisions. No one moves to Portugal merely for the love of the past, or of Portugal as a symbol of the past. It is an onerous decision to make for a better future.” I asked Panandiker why he gave up Indian citizenship for Portugal, and the veteran management consultant encapsulated beautifully: “The short answer was access to opportunities; to travel “effortlessly” and experience different cultures and environments, to further my career, to contribute and support clients and companies and make a difference in many different parts of the world. The long answer is always more complex (and perhaps also more simple at the same time). I had been living in Portugal for over a decade, and developed a strong emotional connect with the people, and I felt that emotional connect very much retributed. I met someone I loved and with whom I was building a life together. I felt very comfortable in multiple worlds.” This is a fine summary of the modern condition, in the wildly interconnected global landscape we inhabit in 2023, but none of it is acknowledged in Indian law. This country remains among the 50% of nations prohibiting dual citizenship (two other prominent examples are China and Japan) and forces you to choose. On this, I very much liked Panandiker’s analysis: “I truly feel that I am a product of the value systems of both India and Portugal and am proud of the heritage and perspectives that both these rich cultures bring to my thinking. As a wine lover, I see a great metaphor in the world of wines. There are some amazing wines born out of single grape heritage and then there are some amazing wines that are a perfect blend of two or more heritages, born out of and proudly displaying the multiple heritages and traditions. In my opinion, identity, as a narrow construct, associated with singular variables, is a thing of the past.”
