Developing the Gateway – Part 1 – Indian Diaspora

It would be impossible for a week to pass by without a coverage by the local media on the Gateway strategy or progress on that front. There is a flurry of activities happening at various levels of the government and other trade agencies in developing the gateway, with particular focus on India. Naturally, here is where my interests lie. 

 

 In Part 1 of this series of blogs, we explore the Indian Diaspora in North America and in particular Atlantic Canada. What are the challenges in bringing together the diaspora and building a stronger sense of community among the Non-resident Indians? Even though Gateway is primarily intended for developing trade, it is not all about trade and trade alone, especially in the case of Atlantic Gateway. In one of the presentations at the recent Gateway symposium, it was noted that the Indian Diaspora should be leveraged to develop the relations and build a community here in Atlantic Canada. Now, for a member of the Indian community here in Halifax, it is clearly known how big a challenge it is to bring together the community and act as a unified face for the country of India. Here are the top reasons why it is such a big challenge. 

 1.      Diversity

India, as it is widely known, is a country of diversity. Almost all States (Provinces) have their own language, food, dress style, movies, literature etc. In short, they have their own culture, for culture is just a combination of the above factors. Given this state of diversity among the States, when the population moves out of India and settles in an alien nation, such as Canada, people from the same provinces tend to get closer together and form a close knit community. As a result, even in such a small place as Halifax, where there are as little as 150 or so families from India, we have a south Indian association (SICAM), Maritime Sikh Society, a Telugu association, the local Indo Canadian Association and many more smaller informal pockets of familiar people getting together and forming ‘cells’ of little India. 

 It is not that all these groups are very diverse and don’t see eye to eye, but there is enough difference in each of these groups to give a valid reason to function separately. Most of these differences are based on cultural issues and not on a professional level. The professional level is perhaps the only common binding factor among these groups and in the follow up blog we will analyze how that can be used to an advantage. 

 2.      Communication Challenge

Naturally, the result of the above mentioned diversity is the challenge in communicating to the members at large. The challenge is not in getting the message across to people; the challenge is in getting the same desired impact in all these groups. Depending upon the originator of the message,  the message will be seen with some level of prejudice by the recipient. This makes it very hard to get the same message across to all the groups involved.  As the organizer of the recently held Festival of India, Yaathra, I felt this prejudice on information first hand. The organizing committee tried very hard to promote the event as a total Indian event as opposed to an event organized by SICAM, the south Indian association. But regardless of the communication content, since the message originated from SICAM, the event was seen entirely as a partial Indian event and did not succeed in getting the deserved support and attention from the local community. 

 3.      Socialistic vs Individualist behaviour

This is a very interesting facet of the Indian culture. For that matter, any asian culture. Overcoming the socialistic tendencies and not being shy of the individual success and achievement is perhaps the greatest challenge for the Indian Diaspora in any Western settings, especially in North America. The socialist views, especially among the elders of the community, looks down on the younger generation who want to achieve higher goals in life and career. The changing times require us to be competitive and ambitious in order to compete with the rest of the world, but many leaders of the local communities fail to realize that.  As a result of this conflict between the young and old generations, the younger generation stays away from community building activities. The lament usually heard from the community leaders is that our younger generation is not interested, but the underlying reason for the conflict is never brought out and discussed. It is probably time we shed our inhibitions and come out and share our thoughts. 

 The above three reasons are the top most reasons why there is not a strong unified face for the Indian Diaspora in most geographic locations. Do we really need one? The answer is absolutely yes. The collective talent of the Indian population abroad is very rich and it should be put to greater use, for the betterment of India as well as the communities that we live on. Younger members of the community should take a more active interest towards creating this stronger community. The elder leaders of the community should support and encourage the younger members to step forward and take control.  

Some of the benefits that will be realized from a stronger unified community will be our subject for Part 2 of the blog.  

Until then, 

 Venkatesh.