Living in India

India's economy gives an outsider its clearest opening through IT and finance, where the work is done in English and international hiring is routine. Beyond those fields the pay is modest by world standards, though tax barely touches it and an inexpensive everyday life softens the gap. Even so, once the essentials are paid for, the bottom line stays thin. For most newcomers the harder part isn't the money but the hiring, which leans heavily on local networks the further you get from the tech and finance world.

India sends more of its people abroad than any country on earth. Its diaspora numbers 18.5M, the world's largest, well ahead of China's 11.7 million, and it grew 21% over the past decade. The largest communities sit in the United Arab Emirates and the United States, each home to 3.2M Indian-born residents, followed by Saudi Arabia with 2 million.