5 min readApr 26, 2026 06:23 AM IST First published on: Apr 26, 2026 at 06:23 AM ISTWhen the leader of the free world calls your country a ‘hellhole’, it gets you thinking. I admit that I spent a longish while brooding over the insult before sitting down to write this piece. There were so many Indians venting their rage on social media that I thought at first that it was Donald Trump himself who used the ‘hellhole’ word for our ancient land. It came as a relief to see that the ugly diatribe against India and Indians had been authored by someone else.Having said this, it also needs saying that if Trump had not posted it on social media, nobody would have paid attention to the harangues of a racist, two-bit radio host. Why Trump posted it remains a mystery. What is clear is that his ill-starred war against Iran and his failure to find an exit strategy is taking its toll. He has done as much damage to his own country as he is doing to the world but there are enough columnists, movie stars and world leaders saying this already.AdvertisementSo, let’s get back to the ‘hellhole’ jibe. It cheered me up a little that India and China were put in the same basket because having travelled to China more than once, I can report that it is no hellhole. It cheered me up also that the author of the diatribe seemed motivated by real anger that the doors of Silicon Valley were closed to white people like him. And open wide for people from India and China. So, the rantings of this white supremacist happened because he could not believe that brown and yellow people from ‘hellhole’ lands should be doing better in the United States than white people.Now let us discuss if there is any justification for India to be called a hellhole. We Indians do not like foreigners to say bad things about us but in our private moments we admit, albeit in whispers, that there must be something wrong if millions of our countrymen are ready to flee our shores to get to countries that offer better jobs and a better life. When Narendra Modi first became prime minister, he made a speech to a gathering of overseas Indians in Paris in which he said he wanted to build a country that nobody would wish to leave. Has he succeeded in this? Clearly not. So why not?Some things have improved. There are better highways, better airports, better rail services, better rural amenities by way of welfare schemes that supply subsidised gas, food, electricity and water. And certainly, rural sanitation has improved dramatically but it is not these things that our countrymen go in search of in foreign lands. Some squander their savings on people smugglers to enter the United States as ‘ghuspetiyas’. Illegal immigrants. Among those who choose the ‘dunki’ route there are not just poor people but middle-class Indians willing to pay huge sums to get to the United States.AdvertisementUnder Trump, it has stopped being that ‘shining city on a hill’ but I know from Punjabi farmers who work on construction sites in New York that they make more money than they did from farming. It should worry us that it is from two of our more prosperous states — Punjab and Gujarat — that there are the most immigrants, both legal and illegal. What is it that the United States offers them that India does not?you may likeMany things. Clean air, clean drinking water, regular electricity and all this in cities and villages that are not covered in rotting garbage. Then there are the big things. Excellent schools and colleges where the children of Indian peasants and manual labourers can aspire to become doctors, lawyers, computer scientists and anything else they might want to be. If India does not make these things available to ordinary Indians, it is entirely because of bad economic policies and bad political leaders. The men and women who run India have proved repeatedly that they are more interested in building better lives for their families than for the destitute and desperate people who send them to Parliament. When is this going to change? When politics stops being the quickest way to make big money in India.It is a sad thing to say but it must be said that even privileged Indians flee our shores to make new lives not just in the west but in places like Dubai, Oman and Singapore. India counts among the top ten countries that lose millionaires to migration every year. When I have talked to some of these people, they tell me that life is better outside India and it is easier to do business. Another category of Indians who routinely leave India are writers, artists and other people working in the arts. Ask them why they go and they will tell you that for creative people, countries with liberal democracies are preferable to our own slightly illiberal one.India may not be a hellhole but for the longest time we have not paid attention to why so many of our countrymen flee to foreign shores. Our problems have accumulated over many decades and cannot be blamed on a single political leader or party. What is true is that they must collectively share the shame of failing to make India a country that we can all be proud enough of to not want to leave.