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According to the Pew Research Center, the median income for Indian-American families in 2010 was $88,000, nearly twice the national average.
On Sunday, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address 18,000 people at San Jose's SAP Center, a venue usually associated with Miley Cyrus concerts and hockey games, not with visiting foreign dignitaries. As with Mr. Modi's appearance at Madison Square Garden last year, Indian news channels will bombard viewers back home with blow-by-blow coverage of their prime minister surrounded by cheering supporters.
Many people in India are proud of the successes of their 3.1 million kin who have immigrated to the U.S. But the hoopla about high-profile CEOs, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists and precocious spelling bee champions often overlooks a simple truth.
The achievements of Indian-Americans don't merely reflect individual effort and cultural values, such as respect for education. They are a living repudiation of the heavy-handed statism that kept India poor for decades and hampers its progress today.
Indian-born CEOs such as Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Adobe Systems' Shantanu Narayen, PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi and Google's Sundar Pichai are household names back home. It's no surprise then that Mr. Modi's two-day sojourn to California--the first by an Indian prime minister in more than three decades--will include meetings with Messrs. Nadella and Narayen. (Mr. Modi will also address a Facebook townhall with Mark Zuckerberg and meet with Apple's Tim Cook and Tesla Motors' Elon Musk.)
India's interest in its diaspora goes beyond corporate America. NRI--which stands for "non-resident Indian"--is a popular term for an overseas Indian. Newspapers often run special sections dedicated to their latest activities. Indian-American characters will pop up in Bollywood movies, miraculously speaking unaccented Hindi and displaying impeccable respect toward elders.
Indian-American spelling bee winners from obscure towns in the American Midwest find their pictures splashed across the front pages of Indian newspapers. When President Barack Obama awards author Jhumpa Lahiri a National Humanities Medal, or Mindy Kaling is nominated for an Emmy award, you can be certain that India hears about it.
Statistics suggest that Indians have thrived in America. They make up less than 1% of the country's population but are estimated to have founded more than one in eight Silicon Valley startups. The community boasts two governors: Louisiana's Bobby Jindal and South Carolina's Nikki Haley.
According to the Pew Research Center, the median income for Indian-American families in 2010 was $88,000, nearly twice the national average. Seventy percent of Indian-Americans hold a bachelor's degree or higher, compared to the national average of less than 30%.
While many Indians are familiar with the picture these figures paint--that Indian-Americans tend to be educated and wealthy--they don't dwell upon the underlying circumstances. The Indian-American community owes its good fortune as much to America as to talent and hard work. Only in a country built on respect for merit, rule of law, individual rights and free enterprise could a young immigrant group--large-scale Indian immigration to the U.S. only began in the mid-1960s--prosper so quickly.
For Indians, it's easier to see their kin across the ocean as evidence of some innate brilliance or cultural resilience. For Indian-Americans, many of whom view India with nostalgia, historical amnesia papers over a reality that some would rather not dwell upon. Almost all Indian-Americans are economic refugees from the blunders of Nehruvian socialism and Indira Gandhi's destructive "License Raj."
Why did Ms. Nooyi, Messrs. Nadella and Pichai and other Indian-Americans seek their fortunes in America? Because socialist India, with its sky-high tax rates and meddling bureaucrats, offered little opportunity.
Even the preliberalization private sector, dominated by family-owned businesses, provided few areas of advancement for ambitious graduates. For 50 years, America has acted as a magnet for Indian aspiration.
Does Mr. Modi grasp this historical backdrop? It's hard to say. He shows an affinity for Indian-Americans and appears eager to be associated with innovative firms like Apple, Facebook and Tesla.
But Mr. Modi's government has shown little appetite for bold economic reforms. So far, the prime minister appears to trust the heavy hand of bureaucracy more than the invisible hand of the market.
Mr. Modi's most widely touted economic successes--paring the national cooking-gas subsidy bill by using cash transfers and opening bank accounts for tens of millions of poor people--have relied on whipping India's creaky administrative machinery into action.
If Indians are lucky, the prime minister's visit to Silicon Valley will spark a broader conversation in India about the path to prosperity. If they're not, they'll have to settle for another thundering speech and a clutch of Modi photo-ops.
Mr. Dhume is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a columnist for WSJ.com.
Credit: By Sadanand Dhume
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