Subordinate to Sovereign: Fixing Foreign Policy Contradictions
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WE NEED SUPPORT TO FIGHT IGNORANCE
Until then, the world will continue to need Indians, without necessarily respecting India.
Policy contradictions: While celebrating its diaspora and welcoming multinationals, New Delhi hesitates to protect its citizens abroad or demand reciprocity in trade.
Weak leverage despite strength: A $125-billion remittance flow, skilled migrants powering global economies, and a vast domestic market remain underused as bargaining tools.
The road ahead: True strategic autonomy requires protecting the diaspora, insisting on fair trade, investing in infrastructure, and using India’s human capital as geopolitical leverage.
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SEPTEMBER 2025
Foreign policy is often judged by how it balances the necessities of the state with the aspirations of its people.
For India, a rising power with a global diaspora, a booming economy, and an ambitious population, this question becomes sharper and more urgent: for whom is Indian foreign policy really crafted?
Is it for the 32 million-strong diaspora, who remit $125 billion annually (World Bank, 2023) the highest in the world and a lifeline for India’s current account and foreign exchange reserves?
Is it for Indian exporters, who continue to face steep tariffs abroad even as foreign corporations enjoy easy entry into India’s domestic markets?
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On paper, India proclaims “strategic autonomy.”
Or is it, increasingly, for multinational corporations themselves, who are welcomed into India’s consumer, retail, and technology spaces with little reciprocity from their home countries?
On paper, India proclaims “strategic autonomy.”
In practice, however, its posture often resembles a form of managed dependency.
The Diaspora Dilemma
The Indian diaspora is justifiably celebrated as one of the country’s greatest soft power assets.
From Silicon Valley CEOs to frontline doctors in Britain’s NHS, their success stories have elevated India’s global profile.
Yet, when it comes to protecting these citizens abroad, New Delhi’s record remains patchy.
Over 8,000 Indians are currently in foreign prisons (MEA, 2023), many incarcerated for minor visa or work-related violations. Deportations in shackles from the United States occur with alarming regularity, but they rarely provoke sustained diplomatic protest.
Similarly, hate crimes, such as the killing of engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla in Kansas in 2017, spark temporary outrage but fade without long-term policy consequences.
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Yet India hesitates to act firmly, fearing disruption to remittance flows.
The hate crime against the Sikh gurudwara in Milwaukee, US or others, have attracted little official attention.
The situation is no better in the Gulf, where Indians make up between 30 and 90 per cent of national workforces. Here, cases of unpaid wages, passport confiscations, and unsafe living conditions recur with depressing frequency.
Yet India hesitates to act firmly, fearing disruption to remittance flows.
A sharp contrast can be found in China’s approach. In 2011, when a Chinese worker was killed in Pakistan, Beijing extracted strong guarantees on the safety of its nationals from Islamabad.
India, despite commanding a far larger overseas population, has not shown comparable resolve.
This contrast highlights a fundamental weakness: while India celebrates the diaspora symbolically, it struggles to convert their presence into diplomatic leverage.
Trade Contradictions
The contradictions extend further into India’s trade policy.
India ran a staggering $84 billion trade deficit with China in 2023, even as border clashes like Dhoklam and Galwan Valley, calls for economic “decoupling” dominated public rhetoric.
After a short-lived ban on Chinese apps and restrictions on partnerships, India quietly reversed course, permitting platforms like Shein and other ventures back into the market. Trade have started to grow.
Since February 2025, the Shein India website and app is in partnership with Reliance Retail Ventures, led by no one other than Ms Isha Ambani and Mukesh Ambani, according to Times of India report.
How can Indian government overlook the Chinese military support to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor?
Protest gave way to pragmatism, but the asymmetry persisted.
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After a short-lived ban on Chinese apps and restrictions on partnerships, India quietly reversed course...
Meanwhile, Indian exporters continue to face high tariffs and stringent regulatory barriers in the European Union and the United States. US imposed, unilaterally 50% tariff on many Indian good and will probably impose 100% tariff on Indian pharma and movies exported to US.
By contrast, foreign giants such as Amazon, Walmart, Facebook, and Google dominate Indian markets with relative ease.
Fast-food chains and retail conglomerates flourish, often with fewer restrictions than Indian firms face abroad.
At the World Trade Organization (WTO), India too often finds itself on the defensive.
In 2022, WTO rulings against Indian sugar and wheat subsidies underscored how vulnerable Indian farmers are to global trade politics.
Yet unlike China which uses its vast market size as an explicit tool of leverage India hesitates, worrying about capital flight or diplomatic fallout.
The outcome is an asymmetric bargain: while foreign companies reap profits from India’s consumer base, Indian producers struggle for equivalent access abroad.
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The “Brain Drain” Illusion
Alongside trade, the narrative of migration exposes another contradiction.
Successive governments in Delhi have championed the idea of a “reverse brain drain.” The rhetoric suggests that Indian professionals trained abroad are returning home in large numbers, enriching the domestic economy. The reality, however, tells a different story.
Between 2017 and 2022, Canada issued an average of 226,000 study permits annually to Indian students, making them the single largest foreign student group.
Germany’s Blue Card programme has seen Indian IT professionals emerge as the second-largest beneficiary group, after the Chinese.
In Australia, the Indian-born population crossed 976,000 in 2023, making Indians the second-largest immigrant community after the British.
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The much-overhyped “reverse brain drain” is less a policy achievement than a political slogan.
These figures reveal a continuing outward flow of talent.
According to Henley and Partner report, 5100 millionaires in 2023, 4300 in 2024 and 3500 in 2025 have left India. There is a wealth migration too.
Far from returning, skilled Indians are resettling in ecosystems that offer more reliable infrastructure, better public services, and greater professional opportunities, like UAE, Australia, Singapore or New Zealand.
India’s overcrowded and underfunded cities, where basic services struggle to keep up with demand, simply cannot compete with Toronto, Berlin, Dubai or Melbourne.
The much-overhyped “reverse brain drain” is less a policy achievement than a political slogan.
Optics vs. Power
If migration patterns highlight long-term vulnerabilities, India’s emphasis on spectacle underscores short-term weaknesses.
Successive governments have invested heavily in diaspora optics mass rallies, high-profile cultural events, and headline-grabbing summits.
These, however, have done little to translate visibility into tangible influence.
The “Howdy Modi” event in Houston in 2019, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared alongside Donald Trump, was widely hailed as a diplomatic coup.
Yet the symbolism did not prevent Trump from tightening today’s H-1B visa restrictions that disproportionately affected Indian tech workers.
Similarly, the “Namaste Trump” spectacle in Ahmedabad in 2020, attended by more than 100,000 people, did not deter the Trump administration from threatening retaliatory action over hydroxychloroquine exports during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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China also treats its diaspora as an extension of its strategic power, for India it is proud numbers.
Despite frequent celebrations abroad, Indian students, workers, and professionals continue to face tightening visa regimes, racial profiling, and economic barriers.
The contradiction is stark: while India invests in cheerleading, it remains silent in the face of genuine insult.
Lessons from China and India’s Missed Leverage
Once again, China provides an instructive counterpoint.
Beijing has protected its domestic market with determination, blocking global tech giants such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter while nurturing its own champions Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba.
It has not hesitated to retaliate diplomatically when offended. Example, after dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, China froze ties with Norway and restricted salmon imports until Oslo recalibrated its stance.
China also treats its diaspora as an extension of its strategic power, for India it is proud numbers.
Consular support, financial outreach, and community networks are deployed to strengthen Beijing’s influence abroad.
By contrast, India continues to approach foreign engagement from a posture of gratitude rather than assertion.
Welcoming investment without demanding reciprocity and avoiding confrontation even when its citizens or interests are at stake, reflects a postcolonial insecurity rather than the confidence of a rising power.
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The Road Ahead
If India seeks to move from subordinate to sovereign, the road ahead is clear.
The West cannot function without Indian talent whether in Silicon Valley, Britain’s NHS, or the Gulf’s construction sites.
Yet India behaves as though it has no bargaining chips. To correct this imbalance, several steps are essential.
First, protecting the diaspora must go beyond symbolic gestures. India requires firm, institutionalised protocols to prevent exploitation, discrimination, and wrongful deportation.
Second, trade policy must be rebalanced. If Indian markets are open to global corporations, foreign markets must open more fully to Indian goods, services, and technology. Reciprocity cannot remain optional.
Third, human capital must be seen as a strategic asset. Just as OPEC wielded oil as leverage, India must recognise its skilled workforce abroad as a bargaining tool in diplomatic negotiations. Migrants are not merely remitters; they are potential instruments of geopolitical influence.
Fourth, domestic investment in infrastructure is indispensable.
Unless Indian cities can provide world-class living standards and reliable services, its talent pool will continue to drain outward.
Finally, diplomacy requires courage.
True autonomy will not come from ceremonial embraces of Trump, Biden, or Macron, but from the willingness to say “no” when national dignity is compromised and to back that “no” with economic and strategic power.
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...diplomacy requires courage
India today stands at a crossroads.
It is admired abroad for its talent but often ignored at the table of power.
Until New Delhi learns to translate its demographic and economic strengths into genuine leverage, Indians abroad will remain valued as workers but overlooked as people.
The 20th century saw millions of Indians shipped overseas as indentured labourers.
The 21st century risks reducing them to high-tech coolies respected for their skills, yet disregarded in their rights.
The true challenge for Indian foreign policy, therefore, is not about orchestrating rallies or trading optics. It is about redefining India’s place in the world from a dependent actor to a dignified power.
That transformation will demand more than speeches or symbolic gestures.
It will require courage, reciprocity, and an unshakable commitment to protecting both national interests and the dignity of Indian citizens worldwide.
Until then, the world will continue to need Indians, without necessarily respecting India.
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