The global desi is here, and he's got a big, fat wallet. In the April-June three-month period this year, over 80 lakh Indians travelled abroad, a new high.
Last year, this was just 68.9 lakh, even if you take pre-Covid 2019, the number of people on foreign visits was just 54.1 lakh, according to figures released by ICRA on Friday afternoon.
And the traditional notions of ‘ugly Indian’ and ‘stingy Indian’ couldn't be farther from reality. According to the Reserve Bank of India, Indians spent Rs1.4 lakh crore on foreign trips last year, an increase of nearly four times compared to the pre-Covid era.
International travel has now become the primary factor for the outflow of remittances from India, accounting for more than half, compared to just 1.5 per cent ten years ago.
The reasons aren’t too far to seek. The travel bug that bit humanity after cooped up indoors for months during the Covid lockdown has not spared India, as well, with many taking up outbound trips with gusto once limitations were relaxed. Giving a fillip to this within the country has been the aspirational middle and upper middle classes, and the increasing disposable income amidst a period of economic boom, even as recession and other uncertainties plagued many parts of the developed world.
India's government's active pursuit for visa concessions from friendly countries has also helped. A good chunk of Indian tourists are making a beeline to spots like Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka etc, which are welcoming desis with visa on arrival. On last count, Indians get visa-free access to a total of 62 countries around the world, making the Indian passport the 80th most powerful in the world.
Of course, it isn’t much compared to the toppers in the powerful passport list — Japan and Singapore, along with Europe’s France, Germany, Italy and Spain get access to nearly 200 countries (out of a total of 227 countries in the world)!
However, the projections are extremely optimistic, with many free trade talks that India is involved in also include options for a liberalised visa regime, though in cases like the one with the UK, it will be applicable only to those with professional requirements and bilateral demand.
The scaling up of international operations like that being done by India’s biggest airline Indigo — it has a partnership with Turkish Airlines whereby Turkey’s Istanbul airport acts as a hub for Indigo to ferry Indians to, for onward connections elsewhere. Aircraft orders from India with global plane makers like Airbus and Boeing are tipping 1,000, with India’s two biggies, Air India group as well as Indigo, each ordering in excess of 400 aircraft, last year, which have just started coming in through 2028.