As India rides a historic economic boom — with startups flourishing, mega infrastructure projects reshaping skylines, and its global influence growing — a pressing question echoes online: why leave at all?
For many Indians, the dream of moving abroad is losing its shine amid tougher immigration rules, soaring costs, and the reality that years spent chasing foreign residency can lead nowhere. With India’s own transformation underway, some wonder if the real promise lies not overseas, but at home.
A user on Reddit questioned why people are leaving India when it’s booming like never before. In the post, the user wrote, “Hey guys, I’ve talked to so many Indian students and professionals chasing opportunities abroad, and one thing keeps shocking me: most take massive loans dreaming of PR, only to return years later — deep in debt and no closer to settling overseas.”
“Let’s be real guys this PR is a rigged game now, for example Canada’s Express Entry needs 500+ CRS points (near impossible without Canadian experience). The US H-1B lottery rejection rates hit 80%, Australia keeps raising visa bars and the most popular destination for Indians is of course UK, situation there is the same, no jobs, no pr, no skilled work visa, ypu have to return back to India,” the post added.
Adding context, the post said, “Guys just try to understand that you’re paying Western tuition for Third-World salaries, and average Indian student loan is ₹25-40 lakhs at 11% interest, most of you guys end up in survival jobs that don’t cover EMI payments. Here in India meanwhile, tech and startup scene is on fire in my opinion.
“Serious question: Why gamble on broken immigration systems when India’s offering real growth? I’ve seen too many return after wasting 5-10 years chasing mirages. Genuinely curious — what am I missing? Change my mind!” the user asked.
The post sparked a flurry of reactions from others sharing similar concerns.
“The reality is the constant hustle and cut throat competition is also present in the west now. The only people who are not affected by inflation and cut throat competition in the west are people with rich parents which is also the case in India! Young people without rich parents in west are crying that all good jobs are being shipped to India, China, Philippines, Vietnam etc and as a result right wing parties or extreme left leaning parties are winning the elections,” commented a user.
Another wrote, “Also countries are becoming more and more strict UK changed their citizenship law, now you get an ILR after 10 years and more 5 years for citizenship so in total 15 years, Germany too changed their citizenship laws, US is getting harder year after year to get h1b,green card waiting period is increasing so does citizenship. Other countries like Canada and Australia will also change at some point. Because most of the Asian migrants in these countries make their children doctors and engineers as well. After 10 or 15 years it’s even gonna be more harder to immigrate to another country. India has a boom but this one is not beneficial for us maybe for our grandkids it would be. India needs to heavily invest in areas like education, healthcare, infrastructure, building more cities, cleanliness etc.”
Another user said, “It’s really simple. If you stay in India, opportunities are severely limited. You can mostly work in indian companies for bare minimum pay scales, with immense amount of working hours. Later, if you wanna settle somewhere it’ll be really hard and very expensive as well. Now, if you go abroad, you’ll find plenty of opportunities and chances to improve your career and you can literally move and work or settle in any country of your choice. Not to mention the huge amount of competition and corruption we have in our country, it’s really horrible. Unlike India, work-life balance is greatly valued in other countries.”
