Newly sworn-in President Donald Trump’s inauguration speech promising to crack down and repatriate illegal immigrants in the US to their countries of origin has instilled the fear of God in the Indian establishment which has long turned a blind eye and fudged the issue of why millions of Indians climb every mountain and ford every stream to illegally and legally flee this country, which according to our political leaders is the world’s fastest growing economy.

According to the UK-based Henley & Partners, 4,300 dollar millionaires quit India in 2024 and 5,100 in 2023. And at the other end, millions of poor Indians at the bottom of the wealth and incomes pyramid are selling all and risking life and limb to illegally migrate to the US, UK and other Western countries. The number of Indian illegal immigrants in the US is reliably estimated at 725,000 and over 1 million in the UK. In between the rich and poor is the harassed middle class, equally anxious to migrate to anywhere in the West that will have them. India’s top private clubs are replete with successful upper middle class members with children parked abroad, a status symbol.

The solution is self-evident. In 1978, India and the national incomes of India and neighbouring China were on a par. In that year this writer as editor of Business India and Deng Xiaoping recommended our countries throw off the yoke of bankrupt socialism and take the Capitalist Road to development and prosperity. Your editor’s was a voice in the wilderness. China heeded Deng Xiaoping.

Currently, China’s GDP is $18 trillion, India’s $3.5 trillion, and we still haven’t fully abandoned the socialist road. Even today MSMEs (micro small and medium enterprises) are governed by 1,536 Acts and Rules, 69,233 compliances and 6,818 annual filings, enabling unchecked retail corruption. No wonder everyone wants out