Dubai: Millions of Indian immigrants and expatriates living abroad are contributing enormously to their new host countries such as UAE and Canada, says a Canadian author and journalist who launched his new book The A-List in Dubai.
Ajit Jain, former managing editor of India Abroad newspaper, told a small gathering of Indian business people at a Canadian Consulate luncheon in Dubai that sweeping waves of migration have been good for progressive, tolerant and welcoming countries.
Noting there are many parallels between UAE and Canada’s hard-working people of Indian heritage, Jain said, “Indians started migrating to Canada way back. Their total number was 1,155 in 1955. They are now 1.3 million, which represents three per cent of the population and they are now crowding all sorts of professions, medical, architecture, engineering, academics, and four of them are now federal [government] ministers, 20 of them are Members of Federal Parliament; they are literally billionaires, people who came with empty pockets to Canada.”
Jains new book is a telling narrative of 52 Indo-Canadians who climbed to the highest positions of power in that country and helped guide future political and business policy.
He wanted to pen the book to showcase how many “have now succeeded in all conceivable fields and disciplines in Canada. There are countless such stories of people coming from India with literally empty pockets and how, through hard work, they have succeeded in businesses, their children have gone to post-secondary institutions, in professional institutions and are doing so well in their respective disciplines”.
“Hard work, discipline and parental support to their children that they should study and study hard, and become professionals — doctors, engineers, lawyers and so on — same ingrained traditions as in India. Parents are willing to make a great deal of sacrifices financially to support their children’s education. They don’t expect them to start working after high school or even after their undergraduate degrees,” Jain said.
“Indo-Canadian kids still respect their parental wishes and they themselves are increasingly realising the world is becoming more and more competitive and that they have to be not only the best in their fields but best among the best. Without that they won’t be able to break the glass ceiling,” Jain noted.
Jain pointed out that the UAE’s Indian expat population is close to 2.2 million, almost double that of the 1.3 million Indo-Canadians.
“People in UAE and Canada are the same, same ancestries, same culture, same traits of going to post-secondary institutions and working hard and their drive to succeed. So, there are countless stories of success in Canada, so also in the UAE,” he said. “My message to the community is you can achieve anything in Canada that you put your mind to. They have to work hard and with discipline they can achieve anything. They have now scores and scores of mentors to look up to.”
