The Role of Class in Structuring India’s Diaspora Engagement

In August 2018, the Lok Sabha (Lower House of the Indian Parliament) passed a bill which would allow proxy voting rights for Non-Resident Indians (NRIs). Most likely the bill will be passed by the Rajya Sabha (Upper House), which would enfranchise about 13 million NRIs (Ministry of External Affairs of India, 2018). Current opinion polls indicate no clear majority for neither of the political alliances and therefore – even small in numbers – the NRI vote could have a crucial impact on the outcome of the elections. In the run-up to the election, both, Narendra Modi, incumbent Prime Minister of India, and his competitor for the office, Rahul Gandhi, have acknowledged the game-changing impact of enfranchisement and addressed crowds of NRIs in countries with major Indian communities. Simultaneously with the debate about the proxy voting for NRIs, a debate of transferability of voting rights of India’s internal migrants came up in media and expert fora. India’s estimated 307 million internal migrants (Census of India 2001) are currently only allowed to cast their vote in the constituency of registration. Whereas the enfranchisement of NRIs could affect the India’s 2019 general election outcome, with the possibility for absentee voting, internal migrants making up more than thirty percent of the population, would even more decide on India’s next government. Why then can we observe a dichotomy of the extension of rights in the cases of internal and international migrants? The paper proposes to answer this question by comparing discussions on international and internal migrants’ right by analyzing newspaper articles and parliament debates. Previous research has suggested that India’s diaspora policies have been investment oriented and diaspora organizations led by wealthy NRIs have played an important role in policy changes towards Indian international migrants. The paper argues that class structures the diaspora-state nexus and more generally, defines political membership in India.