Mass Exodus: Why Are Millions of Indians Leaving India?

[Riaz Haq]

"Leave India! It's High Time!!" screams out a recent Reddit post that has gone viral! The poster who claims to be an Indian entrepreneur warns of impending "terrible economic collapse" with a "massive depreciation of the Indian rupee".  

The now-deleted post, written by a user named ‘u/anonymous_batm_an,’ urges high-earning professionals, especially innovators, to leave India for countries with better opportunities and governance, as reported by the Times of India.  It recommends the UAE or Thailand as alternative destinations . The sentiments expressed in the post are already resonating with a large number of Indians.  The non-resident Indians now constitute the world's largest overseas diaspora. Every year, 2.5 million Indians leave their country of birth, making India the nation with the highest annual number of emigrants in the world. 

New Company Registrations in Dubai. Source: Khaleej Times

Indian investors continued to top the list of new non-Emirati companies joining the Dubai Chamber of Commerce during the first nine months of 2024. A total of 12,142 new Indian companies joined the chamber during the period, data showed on Monday, according to the Khaleej Times. Pakistan ranked second on the list with 6,061 new companies joining between Q1-Q3 2024, while Egypt followed with 3,611 new companies registering as members of the chamber. The number of new Syrian companies joining the chamber during the first nine months of the year reached 2,062, placing the country fourth among the top nationalities of new member companies.

India is losing its best and brightest to the West, particularly to the United States, at an increasingly rapid pace. A 2023 study of the 1,000 top scorers in the 2010 entrance exams to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) — a network of prestigious institutions of higher learning based in 23 Indian cities — revealed the scale of the problem. Around 36% migrated abroad, and of the top 100 scorers, 62% left the country, according to a report in the science journal Nature.  Nearly two-thirds of those leaving India are highly educated, having received academic or vocational training. This is the highest for any country, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Example of The Great Indian Brain Drain. Source: Boston Political R...

Brain drain is defined as the loss of precious human capital of a nation. It is a “consequence of an education system designed for ‘selecting’ the best and brightest in an economy that is still too controlled and cannot create opportunities for its best and brightest”, according to Indian economist Shruti Rajagopalan. High-profile examples of India's human capital loss include Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sundar Pichai (Google), Shantanu Narayen (Adobe), Arvind Krishna (IBM) and Ajay Banga (World Bank). 

Foreign-Born STEM Workers in America. Source: American Immigration ...

Growing number of Indian students are going abroad for higher education each year and 90% of them never return home after completing their studies.  In 2022, the number of Indian students leaving the country for higher education reached a six-year high of 770,000. And a 2021 report estimated that around two million Indian students would be studying abroad by 2024. 

Many developing countries are experiencing brain drain. But India is losing its best brightest at a much faster rate than others. Some call it "The Great Indian Brain Drain". This is the reason why Indians in the United States are the best educated and the highest earning group.  In a recently published book titled "The Other One Percent", authors Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur and Nirvikar Singh explain this phenomenon. 

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[Riaz Haq]

POLITICO: Republican brawl on immigration erupts as MAGA and tech world clash

A debate over legal immigration exploded during the Christmas holiday shows that the party isn't unified, even on its strongest issue with voters.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/27/musk-mtg-loomer-infighting...

An online debate over high-skilled immigration between Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and MAGA evangelists reveals Donald Trump’s Republican Party is grappling with growing pains as it prepares to retake the White House.

Days after the powerful allies of Trump in Silicon Valley took to social media to argue for a greater number of high-skilled immigrants, with a side-swipe at American culture for emphasizing “mediocrity over excellence,” some members of the far-right said such policies would make America “look like India.”

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“The United States graduates over half a million STEM students per year. If there is an issue in the tech workforce, then we need to address it at the educational level, not import a problem away,” said Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) in an X post on Thursday.

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It’s the latest chapter in a controversy that spread after far-right activist Laura Loomer criticized Trump for naming Sriram Krishnan, an Indian-American technology entrepreneur and investor who has advocated for lifting country caps on green cards, as his senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence, calling him a “career leftist.”

Loomer wrote, “We are substituting a third world migrant invasion for a third world tech invasion,” and later followed up with, “‘High skilled immigrant’ doesn’t have running water or toilet paper.”

Musk hit back, writing on Christmas Day that a “permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent,” is the “fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley” that could be addressed through an increase of skilled-labor visas. Ramaswamy followed on Thursday with a post that blamed a culture that “venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters’” — a favoring of popularity over smarts that “will not produce the best engineers.”

That earned a swift rejoinder from Nick Fuentes, a conservative firebrand who wrote, “I don’t know who needs to hear this but the latest push for H-1B visas actually has nothing to do with jocks and nerds or high school prom — it’s about whether we want 500 million indians to move here.”

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Meanwhile, Democrats are praising immigration as one of America’s powerful drivers of prosperity.

In a Washington Post interview, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who represents Silicon Valley, supported Krishnan and entrepreneurs in tech who have chosen to become American citizens.

He posted, “It is GREAT that talent around the world wants to come here, not to China, & that Sriram can rise to the highest levels. It’s called American exceptionalism.”

And it’s causing some other Democrats to cast the division between Republicans and the Trump movement at large as racist.

“The far-right backlash against Indian immigrants confirms what we in the Democratic Party have long known,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) said in a post on X. “That the far right is implacably hostile to all forms of non-European immigration regardless of legal status. It’s not about status. It’s about race. The far right prefers ‘purity’ over prosperity.”

[Riaz Haq]

Ashok Swain
@ashoswai
The Times of India calls Indian-Americans the 'New Jews'! They call Tulsi Gabbard, a West Samoan Indian because she belongs to a Hindu cult. Even compares Pichai & Nadella with Einstein. Jews had fled to the US because of Hitler. Why Indian-Americans are fleeing from India? Modi?

https://x.com/ashoswai/status/1872775624131264657

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How NRIs in the US became the ‘new Jews’ in the immigration debate - Times of India

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-plus/international/how-nris...

Jagdish Bhagwati, the influential economist who has taught at MIT and Columbia in the US for over half a century, once described Indians as the new Jews in America, successful in all fields except the mafia. He may have meant it in a lighter vein, but there’s lots of data to back up what he said.

The Indian-American community is easily the most successful ethnic minority in the US, with members occupying prominent positions in government, business and academia, among other fields. Its annual median household income of about $145,000 in 2022 was almost double the US household median income of $77,540 (the median income for white households was pegged at $80,320).

[Riaz Haq]

Ashok Swain
@ashoswai
Vivek Ramaswamy exposes his Sanghi mindset behind the put-on American accent. Hindutva Brahmins think and believe they are culturally superior to anyone else, even White Americans!

https://x.com/ashoswai/status/1872758996895187405

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Vivek Ramaswamy
@VivekGRamaswamy
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.

A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.

A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.

(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).

More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”

Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.

Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.

“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.

This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.

That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸

[Riaz Haq]

Trump sides with tech bosses in Maga fight over immigrant visas

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyv7gxp02yo


"Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence," Ramaswamy wrote in a long X post that argued that foreign workers improve the US economy.

"A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian [the top student in a class], will not produce the best engineers," he wrote.

The post attracted backlash from anti-immigrant Trump supporters, and Ramaswamy later clarified that he believed "the H-1B system is badly broken & should be replaced".

After the argument raged online for days, Trump told the Post: "I've always liked the visas, I have always been in favour of the visas. That's why we have them."

"I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I've been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It's a great program," he said.

Trump moved to restrict access to the H-1B programme during his first term.

Both the president-elect and his running mate JD Vance have been critical of the visas in the past, although Vance has close ties to the tech world and in his previous career as a venture capitalist funded start-ups that hired workers with H-1B visas.

Ramaswamy's assertions led to a full-blown row online over the holidays, as mainstream Republicans and far-right influencers joined in criticising him and other wealthy figures in Trump's inner circle.

"If we are going to have a throwdown, let's have it now," prominent Trump supporter Steve Bannon said on his War Room podcast on Friday. He went on to call the Republican claims of support of the H-1B programme a "total scam".

Ramaswamy's perceived view of skilled worker visas was backed by Elon Musk, the X, Tesla and SpaceX boss selected to co-direct Trump's proposed "Department of Government Efficiency".

Musk defended the H-1B visa programme as attracting the "top ~0.1%" of engineering talent".

"Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct," he wrote.

Critics online posted screenshots of job postings at Musk's companies filled by people with H1-B visas, showing salaries of $200,000 and much less, and argued these hires did not constitute an elite talent pool but rather a way to hold down the wages of US-born workers.

Musk then shot back at "contemptible fools", saying he was referring to "those in the Republican Party who are hateful, unrepentant racists".

"They will absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed," he wrote.

He later swore at one of his critics and said he would "go to war" to defend the visa programme.

Nikki Haley, Trump's former ambassador to the United Nations and a former Republican presidential candidate, became a prominent voice arguing against Ramaswamy and Musk.

"There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture," she wrote in response on X. "All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers."

Haley, who like Ramaswamy was born to Indian immigrants, was joined in opposing the visa programme by far-right accounts online.

Laura Loomer, an anti-Islam activist who regularly spreads conspiracy theories but is also known for her unwavering support of Trump, led the online charge with posts viewed millions of times.

Earlier in the week, Loomer criticised Trump's choice of Sriram Krishnan, an India-born entrepreneur, as the White House senior advisor on artificial intelligence. Loomer wrote that Krishnan was a "career leftist" who is "in direct opposition to Trump's America First agenda".

Cheered on by far-right X accounts, she also called Indian immigrants "invaders" and directed racist tropes at Krishnan.

Loomer then accused Musk, who owns X, of "censorship" for allegedly restricting replies to her posts on the network and removing her from a paid premium programme.

[Riaz Haq]

Uncommon Sense
@Uncommonsince76
What’s so insane about Vivek Ramaswamy talking down to Americans, is that he really hasn’t contributed anything to this country.

He got rich literally effing over his shareholders with empty promises on medical drugs that didn’t pan out.

Did he work harder than regular white Americans? Yeah at screwing us out of a dollar.

https://x.com/Uncommonsince76/status/1873246594172141700

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Vivek Ramaswamy Is a Fraud—and Always Has Been | Opinion

by Sam Nunberg

https://www.newsweek.com/vivek-ramaswamy-fraud-always-has-been-opin...

Op Ed Writer Sam Nunberg is a lawyer and political consultant based in West Palm Beach, Fla. He previously served as an advisor to former President Donald Trump.

[Riaz Haq]

Vivek Ramaswamy Is a Fraud—and Always Has Been | Opinion

by Sam Nunberg

https://www.newsweek.com/vivek-ramaswamy-fraud-always-has-been-opin...

Op Ed Writer Sam Nunberg is a lawyer and political consultant based in West Palm Beach, Fla. He previously served as an advisor to former President Donald Trump.

Let's start with the basics. Ramaswamy has funded his campaign through the sale of over $32 million in Roivant stock options in February of this year. This could lead one to believe that Roivant, based in Bermuda, is thriving and that Ramaswamy is a great entrepreneur. Except the company reported staggering losses of $1.2 billion in its financial report of March 2023. This isn't a one-time slump: In March 2022, when Ramaswamy was still Roivant's chairman and a major shareholder, the company reported an annual loss of $924.1 million.

Ramaswamy's defenders may argue that Roivant performed better during his tenure as CEO in 2021, but alas, the numbers tell a different story. The reality is that Roivant's finances were abysmal under Ramaswamy's watch. During his tenure in 2019, the company's net operating loss exceeded $530 million. By 2020, the losses had doubled to over $1 billion, accompanied by a 65 percent decline in revenue.

These numbers raise a puzzling question: How can a company consistently bleeding billions trade at over $10 a share?

The answer might lie in Ramaswamy's implementation of Roivant's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiative, called Roivant Social Ventures, during his CEO tenure. Launched in 2020 while Ramaswamy was still CEO, this initiative aimed to foster "DEI opportunities for future leaders in biopharma and biotech."

While Ramaswamy vocally opposes ESG principles, Roivant's major institutional investors—including Morgan Stanley, Viking Global, and BlackRock, the very firms he criticizes by name—are among its largest stakeholders, owning over 500 million shares. Ramaswamy himself holds more than 80 million shares, making him an essential partner of these major ESG funds.

In a deeply ironic twist, Ramaswamy's anti-"woke" campaign is being bankrolled by the profits reaped from the very policies he denounces.

Yet this irony is not the worst of it. In 2015, there was another sordid affair involving Ramaswamy, over Axovant Sciences Alzheimer's drug. In June 2015, Ramaswamy appeared on CNBC to praise the Axovant IPO, which soared to over $30 a share based on expectations surrounding its Alzheimer's drug, Intepirdine. The drug was touted as a "breakthrough," yet upon closer examination, this development fell apart.

Axovant had acquired the drug for $5 million in December 2014, six months before the IPO, after the majority of Phase 2 trials had "failed to meet their primary endpoints" in 2010. Ramaswamy devised a solution: His mother, Dr. Geetha Ramaswamy, conducted a new Phase 2 trial in 2015 involving "684 subjects." This trial conveniently claimed to demonstrate sufficient improvement to "support Phase 3" trials.

The aftermath was a triumphant $350 million IPO in 2015, followed by a drastic fall. By September 2017, the stock had plummeted 75 percent after Ramaswamy and his mother announced the Phase 3 trial's failure. Subsequent trials continued to disappoint, culminating in a 99 percent loss in value and a name change for the company.

While investors suffered significant losses, Ramaswamy profited from a higher media profile, IPO payouts, and the sale of remaining Axovant assets in 2020.

Ramaswamy's latest scam appears to be his run for president. The 38-year-old presidential candidate appears to have no serious interest in leading the nation. In fact, according to people who know Ramaswamy, the goal of his campaign seems to be to block Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' path to the nomination by running as a MAGA-adjacent candidate. Ramaswamy's deception has gone as far as hiring a writer to delete from his Wikipedia page his past ties to the Soros family and the creator of the mRNA vaccine.

[Riaz Haq]

Mehdi Hasan
@mehdirhasan
So many South Asian Republicans are totally fine with their party’s racism against Black people and Mexicans but suddenly discover they don’t like it when that racism is (inevitably) aimed at them, too. 🤷🏽‍♂️👇🏽

https://x.com/mehdirhasan/status/1872965021569040435

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Sidharth
@Cloudwatch199
I’m deeply questioning my decision to support the Republican Party after witnessing the persistent and dehumanizing attacks directed at me and my community by individuals who, despite hiding behind a veneer of respectability, openly harbor and amplify racist ideologies. I’ve tried to hold onto the belief that these voices represent a vocal minority, not the broader values of the party. But time and again, I am disheartened as accounts with massive followings—many of them wielding significant influence—parrot unhinged conspiracy theories and perpetuate overtly racist tropes without consequence.

This isn’t just about isolated comments or fringe behavior; it’s about a pattern that reveals an uncomfortable truth about the party’s failure to unequivocally reject bigotry. These attacks aren’t simply offensive—they are alienating to communities whose values, work ethic, and aspirations align with many conservative principles, yet find themselves consistently vilified.

The most troubling part is the normalization of this rhetoric by individuals who should be using their platforms to unite, not divide. It forces one to ask: Is this truly the exception, or is it a reflection of an undercurrent that the party is unwilling—or worse, uninterested—to confront? For a movement that claims to champion merit, individual dignity, and opportunity, it’s disheartening to see those ideals betrayed by voices that choose hate over inclusion.

If the Republican Party wants to grow, evolve, and truly represent a diverse and forward-thinking electorate, it must take a hard look at its blind spots and the voices it elevates. Without that reckoning, it risks alienating not just me, but countless others who once believed in its promise.

https://x.com/Cloudwatch199/status/1872433029270176105

[Riaz Haq]

Ashok Swain:

Modi did everything to defeat Muizzu in the 2023 election in the Maldives by providing men & money but failed. Even RAW had a plan to remove President Muizzu after the election. The Washington Post reports Modi manipulating elections in foreign countries.


https://x.com/ashoswai/status/1873810065469432187?s=61&t=mgTxrm...

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A plot in paradise and India’s struggle for influence in Asia
Secret contacts between Indian agents and politicians in the Maldives over ousting its pro-China leader reflect the growing contest between Asia’s great powers.
By Gerry Shih and Siddharthya Roy

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/30/maldives-president-...


In January, after Muizzu had won and taken office, an adviser to the Muizzu family said, a senior RAW intelligence officer at New Delhi’s embassy in Washington explored a plan to overthrow the president with two Indian intermediaries who had political and business contacts in the Maldives. One intermediary was Shirish Thorat, a former Indian police officer who has worked as a private military contractor and who advised Mohamed Nasheed when he was the Maldivian president on how to curb Islamist radicalization. The other was Savio Rodrigues, a publisher based in the Indian state of Goa who previously served as a spokesman for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Muizzu family adviser provided The Post with surveillance records of phone calls and meetings held by the RAW official and Thorat, who now lives near Washington, but did not explain how the records were obtained.
When contacted by The Post, Thorat and Rodrigues separately confirmed the existence of plans to remove Muizzu but declined to say whether they were working on the Indian government’s behalf. When asked about his meetings with an Indian intelligence officer, Thorat explained that he sometimes paid social visits to friends working at the embassy and said he was not surprised that he had been surveilled, “given my work.”

[Riaz Haq]

Elon Musk is on a collision course with Stephen Miller
The Trumpworld feud over H-1B visas, explained.
by Andrew Prokop


https://www.vox.com/politics/392864/elon-musk-vivek-h1b-visas-trump...


The current brouhaha was kicked off by far-right activist and provocateur Laura Loomer last week, after Trump announced that another venture capitalist, Sriram Krishnan, would join the White House to work on AI policy. Loomer called the appointment “deeply disturbing.” She pointed to a November X post in which Krishnan wrote that “anything to remove country caps for green cards / unlock skilled immigration would be huge,” saying this “is not America First policy.”

From there, the conflict spiraled:

Sacks defended Krishnan, but the attacks from Loomer and her supporters continued, with many taking on an ugly racial or ethnic dynamic (since about 70 percent of recent H-1B recipients have been from India).
Loomer denounced “third-world invaders from India,” said “our country was built by white Europeans,” and asked “why are people in India still shitting in the water they bathe and drink from?”
Musk got involved, insisting “there is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent,” calling this “the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.” He also issued the aforementioned “FUCK YOURSELF in the face” post and promised to “go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”
Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon called Musk a “toddler” who needs a “wellness check” from Child Protective Services and said there should be “zero H-1B visas.”
Eventually, Ramaswamy joined the fray in a lengthy X post, arguing that the reason “top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans” is that “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.” He condemned the idea of valuing “the jock over the valedictorian” and criticized American cultural products like the TV shows Boy Meets World and Friends — praising instead the 2014 film Whiplash, which portrayed an instructor’s psychological abuse of a jazz drummer aspiring to artistic greatness (directed by Ramaswamy’s Harvard University classmate).

As for Miller, he has not weighed in explicitly. But later on the day of Ramaswamy’s post, Miller posted on X, without explanation, excerpts from a 2020 speech when Trump praised the culture and achievements of the American people, calling them “the most adventurous and confident people ever to walk the face of the Earth.”

Some on the nativist right, like Bannon, interpreted Miller’s post as a rebuttal to Ramaswamy — and a reminder of who will really hold power in the White House. Miller, who oversaw the White House speechwriting office, may have had a hand in crafting Trump’s words there — just as he will have a major role in crafting immigration policy in 2025 and likely beyond.

[Riaz Haq]

Indian workers slowly replacing Palestinians in Israeli construction industry | The Times of Israel

16,000 laborers have come to Israel from India in the last year, but analysts say it still does not make up the shortfall caused when most Palestinians were barred after Oct. 7


https://www.timesofisrael.com/indian-workers-slowly-replacing-pales...

AFP – Wearing a safety belt, helmet and work boots, Raju Nishad navigates the scaffolding, hammering blocks that will form part of a building in a new neighborhood in central Israel’s town of Beer Yaakov.

While he and other Indians working alongside him do not look out of place on the expansive construction site, they are relative newcomers to Israel’s building industry.

They are part of an Israeli government effort to fill a void left by tens of thousands of Palestinian construction workers barred from entering Israel since Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack.

If that attack had not happened, this site, with its slowly emerging high-rise towers, homes, roads and pavements, would have teemed with laborer’s speaking Arabic — unlike the Hindi, Hebrew and even Mandarin of today.

The Hamas attack, which saw terrorists kill some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in southern Israel and take 251 hostages, triggered the deadliest war yet between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip.

It later spread to include other Iran-backed groups including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi rebels in Yemen, and even direct confrontation with the Islamic Republic itself.

None of this deterred Nishad, 35, from coming to Israel.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of here,” he said, despite several air raid warnings that have sent him running for the shelters.

“Once it (the siren) stops, we just resume our work,” he told AFP.

High earnings in Israel, where some workers can make three times what they would back home, are the key to why people like Nishad flock here, thousands of kilometers (miles) away.

“I’m saving for the future, planning to make wise investments and do something meaningful for my family,” Nishad said.

He is just one of around 16,000 workers who have come from India over the past year – and Israel has plans to bring thousands more.

New recruitment drive

India is the world’s fifth-largest economy and one of the fastest growing, but it has also struggled to generate enough full-time jobs for millions of people.

Indians have been employed in Israel for decades, thousands as caregivers looking after elderly Israelis, while others work as diamond traders and IT professionals.

But since the war in Gaza escalated, recruiters have launched a drive to bring Indians in for Israel’s construction sector also.

Samir Khosla, chairman of Delhi-based Dynamic Staffing Services, which has sent about 500,000 Indians to work in more than 30 countries, has so far brought more than 3,500 workers to Israel, a new market for him.

Khosla himself arrived for the first time a month after the October 7 attack, after the authorities appealed for foreign workers in the construction industry, which ground to a halt when the Gaza war broke out.

“We didn’t know much about the market, and there wasn’t an incumbent workforce from India here,” Khosla said.

“We really had to move around and understand the needs,” he said, adding that he believed India was a natural choice for Israel given their “excellent relations.”

He now hopes to bring in up to 10,000 Indian laborer’s, as he has a large pool of skilled Indian workers across all trades.