The 2024 Hurun India Rich List, a compendium of the world’s wealthy and super rich, estimated a total of 334 ‘dollar billionaires’ in India in 2023.37 ‘India’s billionaire count has reached a new milestone,’ reported the Times of India, ‘with the country adding a billionaire every five days in the past year.’ One does not have to be a billionaire to be an HNI. HNIs are a growing subset of India’s upper class, upper caste elite. Data on household incomes show that no more than 3 to 4 per cent of Indian households have an annual income of over Rs 2 million. While the ICE 360 survey of household income estimates that about 4 per cent of households have an annual income of over Rs 2 million, a Boston Consulting Group report estimates the share of such households to be no more than 3 per cent of all households. Within this upper crust of 3 to 4 per cent of the households, a mere 1 per cent of the population is estimated to account for 22 per cent of the national income and 40.1 per cent of the wealth.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh often referred to this class as the ‘children of reform and economic liberalization’. They have had disproportionate access to public services and funds. They have lived a First World lifestyle even in a Third World country. Yet, they feel the need to keep one foot outside their home country. Very few have migrated fully or even given up their Indian citizenship. Most, however, keep their options open, with a non resident status. Thus, HNI migration is a subset of the larger phenomenon of elite migration.

Outbound HNIs are driven by four motives. First come the fugitives from law—the Mehul Choksis, Mallyas and Modis. Billionaires who have had to flee India for having violated one law or another. Their lifestyles remain protected by their access to wealth that has been stashed away in safe havens. Some of them have been named in the media and on such lists as the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers. These documents, results of global investigations carried out by hundreds of journalists and analysts, claim to ‘reveal the inner workings of a shadow economy that benefits the wealthy and well-connected at the expense of everyone else’. Journalists at the Indian Express have participated in these investigations and revealed the names of several Indian business persons and celebrities who allegedly have unreported wealth overseas. Such HNIs would be few in number even if they are more high profile and have stashed away more wealth than most.

Second, the emergence of first-generation wealthy who are wary of the political and bureaucratic regime at home, may have weaker links with the power structure and feel safer with their wealth outside India. Many such HNIs would typically belong to the more prosperous western and southern states, where more of the wealthy reside and who have increasingly less influence in the corridors of power in New Delhi. Having amassed wealth in businesses such as IT, real estate, gems and jewellery, pharmaceuticals and so on, they fly frequently between their homes in India and those in Singapore or Dubai.

Singapore has attracted more of the professional upper middle class and children of the power elite, while Dubai has attracted more of the business elite. All of them are running away from the Delhi Darbar, which is now increasingly arbitrary, intrusive and opaque and manned by a bureaucracy that has its roots in less-developed small towns and conservative Hindu India. The metropolitan wealthy of peninsular India, from Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai, are quite happy taking their direct flights to Singapore or Dubai. Delhi for them, as it has been said since the days of the Tughlaqs, ‘duur hai’.

A third driver is the need to de-risk from an uncertain economic, regulatory and governance environment in India. An increasingly intrusive, arbitrary and restrictive regulatory and enforcement bureaucracy is driving HNIs away. Every business person who can acquire a business overseas and can rest one foot abroad is doing so. They have all been helped by what has come to be known as the Golden Visa and the ‘citizenship for investment’ scheme that several OECD economies, including Portugal, Greece and Spain offer. Globally, Indians now account for close to 10 per cent of all such Golden Visas issued by over a score countries.

Finally, and increasingly important, wealthy Indians seek Golden Visas, non-resident or citizenship status in OECD countries and others as a lifestyle choice. Tired of living within First World ghettos in Third World India, best exemplified by the farmhouses and the DLF enclaves of Gurgaon, wealthy Indians are acquiring property and assured access to the First World. Especially the First World cities that offer Third World comforts like Singapore and Dubai, where South Asian and East Asian household helps are available and affordable. With a cook from India, a driver from Pakistan and a maid from the Philippines, the Indian HNI is well-settled in Dubai.

It is a comment on our times and on the values that have come to define the power elite of the so-called ‘New India’ that many among them view this flight of the wealthy as a sign of progress. Indian industry fights shy of globalization and external liberalization, seeking high tariff walls to protect their business interests at home, but Indian business leaders want a liberal regime for taking their wealth out of India. Over the past decade, 2014–24, India’s average tariff rate on manufactured goods has gone up from an average of around 9 per cent to almost 12 per cent, raising protectionist walls behind which the Indian private corporate sector has become cash rich. It is these super profits extracted from domestic consumers that the wealthy transfer overseas, seeking property and citizenship.

In their assessment of what they refer to as the ‘New Regime’ for overseas direct and portfolio investment, the law firm Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas confidently declares: ‘The New Regime is indicative of a confident, outward-looking India that is migrating towards a “trust based framework”. It is a giant leap forward in creating a level playing field for resident Indians and their family offices to become a vital part of the global value chain.’ This so-called ‘confident, outward-looking India’ seeks protection from global competition at home not so much to become part of a global ‘value chain’ but to become global citizens. The rise and spread of crony capitalism, the intricate nexus between wealth and power, business and government, also help the Indian rich to keep exit routes out of the home country open at all times, and to secure destinations overseas. There is no better symbol of the so-called ‘New India’ than the increasing flight of the wealthy to greener pastures.

Excerpted with permission from Secession of the Successful: The Flight Out of New India by Sanjaya Baru, Penguin Random House India, published June 2025,