May 28, 2025 06:12 EDT
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| Dear FO° Reader, I have returned to the US after spending some time with my parents in India. As it turns out, we are getting older. A new fear strikes every time I walk out their door: Will they be alright while I am gone, and will they be around when I come back? Such is the peril of emigration. After you leave family and friends behind, you grow to miss them. Sure, with modern advances, they no longer feel quite so far away. Historically, immigrants traveling away from home could communicate only through letters, which often took months to arrive. Yet, even today, emigrants miss holidays, weddings, babies being born, elders passing away. Bit by bit, they lose touch with their mother countries, even if they retain some form of cultural identity. A year or two ago, I attended a rooftop screening of The Emigrants (1971) at the Swedish Embassy in Washington, DC. Below us, the Potomac meandered quietly. The film drew me in. It reminded me that emigration is hard work. You uproot yourself from a place; you move lock, stock and two smoking barrels; and then you start anew. Those left behind miss you. Your parents and elders suffer the most. They do not have ceaseless activity to keep them busy, and often pine for you.  I am well-traveled, moving first from India to the UK, and then from the UK to the US. Becoming an entrepreneur in the US, I fell in love with America's grand and glorious landscapes. Yet I miss Oxford, London, Scotland, the Himalayas and, most of all, my parents. My experience is not a new one. People have sought other shores for centuries. The Arab traders who settled in Kerala and the Chinese who ended up in San Francisco must have missed their ancestral homes, too. Emigration is toughest for the elders My colleague, Roberta Campani, asked me to write this piece. Her parents live in the idyllic Swiss village of Nante, not too far away from Lucerne. This little hamlet still has a strong sense of community. My parents live in Noida, where politicians and officers of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) stole half a trillion rupees ($7 billion) in taxpayer money. Today, the city is a dump. In this new urban settlement, apartments are like matchboxes, common areas are few and the sense of community has collapsed. Since Noida is next to Delhi, pollution is among the highest in the world. Even IAS officers in their posh gated neighborhoods cannot escape the pollution, but they still carry on stealing because their children generally live in the US. Walking anywhere in Noida is hazardous, but my aging parents still share the tarmac with motorists — there are no sidewalks/pavements — and squeeze into the metro. They are a resilient, determined and hardy duo. Yet there is no running from the fact that they are getting older. Especially lately, they miss me and my brother. In India, many parents now live alone. The world as they once knew it has collapsed. India went from being a community-centered country of villages and small towns to an increasingly urban land. Roberta has been poring over research papers that detail the negative effects of emigration on elders. Isolation, unhappiness and loneliness are rife. Not too long ago, Indians lived in multigenerational homes and the elderly lived with their children. With massive internal migration to cities after explosive urbanization, this is no longer the case. Even close friends of mine from cities like Jaipur, Varanasi or Nagpur have had to leave their parents behind. During our parents’ lifetime, new cities have sprouted, and existing cities have exploded. Much of this growth has been chaotic and unmanaged. Like Kenya and Nigeria, India lacks urban planning. The IAS officers who are in charge of everything in the country — from the Reserve Bank of India to the Archeological Survey of India — have no expertise in urban planning or governance, but they control India’s cities like feudal barons.  India’s Urban Middle Class Craves Better Quality of Life
About 20 years ago, top politicians and bureaucrats told me that the Chairman of the Noida Development Authority was sending the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh over ₹30 million ($350,000) every month. This means that my parents get to live in a shitty town where crime and grime dominate. Neither my brother nor I can help them much. In developing countries like Kenya or India, support structures for older people do not exist. The poor often die from preventable causes because they lack access to healthcare. Even when people are middle class or upper-middle class and have good healthcare, getting to the hospital during an emergency is tricky. Ambulance services are scarce and still poorly developed. Dying by the side of the road after getting hit by a vehicle is a very real prospect. A parent of one of my friends died this way. About 150 million Indians are over 60. By 2050, this number will rise to 350 million. India will grow old before it gets rich. In many ways, the pain will be greatest in urban areas. In villages and small towns, the sense of community is higher. Life may not be as idyllic as in the novel Malgudi Days, but it is certainly not as nasty and brutish as in the big bad cities. Immigration is tough for the young too This time, as I bid adieu to my parents, I felt a strong sense of guilt. My parents sacrificed everything for my brother and me. Like everyone, they were imperfect, but they gave their very best, and that is all one can ever hope for. So, I feel a sense of duty towards them, although I have to admit that I do very little for them. I take consolation in the fact that my parents have extraordinary healthcare because my father served in the Indian Army. The Army Hospital (Research and Referral) is spectacular, and the Base Hospital is solid too. I am personally grateful to the military doctors who have cared for my parents over the years. Unlike corporate medical providers in Delhi, they do not prescribe unnecessary tests or conduct needless procedures to make money. Truth be told, I do not and will never have in the US the healthcare my parents enjoy in India. Still, my heart rate jumps up each time I hear about yet another hospital adventure from my mother. She and my dad walk the crappy roads in Noida. They dodge scooters, motorcycles, rickshaws, cars and trucks to get to the metro station. Then, they take a bus or a three-wheel taxi to get to the hospital. It takes them at least an hour and half to get to the hospital, and every visit is a day-long affair. I am not around to help.  I left India because I could not stand the corruption, inertia and inefficiency in the government. As a young officer, I could not put up with the fact that so many of my bosses were arrogant, ignorant and incompetent. I encountered IAS officers stealing money from malaria eradication programs and petty bureaucrats running their innumerable rent-seeking operations. I could not turn Nelson's eye to the Kafkaesque colonial system and was lucky to leave for Oxford. Yet I left my parents behind. Both are pathologically honest and have struggled in an increasingly corrupt country. Neither of them live in the city they were born or grew up in, so they do not have family around them. There is no hiding from the fact that my parents have paid the price for my adventures around the world. Recently, I was in Philadelphia for a reunion and met a lovely pharmacist. She moved back to the city to be near family and asked me why I could not up sticks and work from home in Noida. The answer is simple and complex. Running Fair Observer from Noida is almost impossible. I do not have access to the libraries, institutions and people that I need for my work. Not only that, but Fair Observer is a US nonprofit organization, and my team is largely here and in Europe. To tell the truth, I detest Noida. This exurb of Delhi lacks soul, history or culture. I cannot walk there for lack of sidewalks/pavements; I cannot run for lack of space and fresh air, and I cannot swim for lack of clean rivers or accessible swimming pools. Furthermore, the pIosh neighborhoods of IAS officers and their entitled feudal attitudes offend my soul. Like the Swedish characters in The Emigrants, I came to the US in search of a better life. Also like them, I left my parents behind. My life in the US is mixed with entrepreneurial hope and familial guilt. Perhaps that is the immigrant condition. Perhaps that is how it always has been and always will be. Wistfully yours from Washington, DC, Atul Singh Founder, CEO & Editor-in-Chief |
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