Indian Diaspora Conference 2017
Organised jointly by Foundation for Critical Choices of India (FCCI) & Foundation for Indian Diaspora in Europe (FIDE)
On 14TH October 2017 from 14.00 hrs – 18.00 hrs
Venue: Bharat Bhawan, Tesselsestraat 67, 2583 JH Den Haag
Themes:
- A. European needs for skilled migrants & planned migration from India:
The European Commission has stated that the EU needs millions of skilled migrants by 2050 to remain competitive. There are skills shortages in many sectors of the European job market, including science, health, agriculture, engineering, and tourism. These deficits will certainly increase and spread rapidly to other sectors because of the EU's severe demographic challenges. The working-age population will start to decline in the EU, with Eurostat projections suggesting that the EU workforce will shrink by as much as 50 million over the next 50 years. The position of Europe in today's world economy is under pressure. Some of the urgent measures taken by the EU are too little and too slow to satisfy the need of young skilled labor force. The answer to this big question can be delivered by India. India is currently in that phase of its demographic evolution where a very substantial portion of its total population is in the working age group. India in coming years will have surplus young population.
The purpose of the seminar which the FCCI is organizing on this subject is to create greater awareness about this phenomenon and suggest co-creation policy framework options for satisfying the European needs for the skilled migrants with effective utilisation of maximizing India’s demographic dividend, thus creating win-win situation for both the partners.
B. Theme: Indian Diaspora & political participation in host countries
Approximately 1.2 million PIO’s (People of Indian Origin) and NRI’s (Non-resident Indian) are permanently reside in European Union. Two countries with largest presence of Indian diaspora are UK (2.1% of the population) and the Netherlands (estimated at 215,000 or 1.35% out of total population of 15.9 million). This huge Indian diaspora in Europe, along with keeping profound linkages with India, they are shaping their own and their host country’s fortunes in more than one ways. The Indian-origin people are more enthusiastic towards sustaining democratic ethos in any of the countries that they live in. Indian diaspora is often considered as peace loving, skilled, hard-working community that respect the law of the land. They are more participative and deliberative in propagating the multicultural values of immigrating countries.
It is important to realise that integrating immigrants, i.e. allowing them to participate in the host society at the same level as natives, is an active, not a passive, process that involves two parties, the host society and the immigrants, working together to build a cohesive society. Despite above mentioned unique qualities and the substantial numbers, the participation of Indian diaspora in the politics or policy making is negligible. This part of the conference lead by FIDE will focus on identifying the reasons for the apathy towards political participation and the way forward to change the current situation.
More information about the program and the registration is available at http://indiandiaspora.eu or www.fcci.nl.
