When my husband and I looked into moving to India, our primary concern was that of my license to practice medicine in India. In 2015, there was no direct ability of anyone of my background, even if married to an Indian, to practice in India. Basically, unless you had Indian “heritage” you really could not get the right “green card”. The best permanent measure was to obtain a Person of Indian Origin or PIO card. We applied for this, thinking, it is better than having nothing in hand.
All this changed when the Modi government came into power and had asked anyone that has suggestions to voice them on the official government website. On a whim, my husband and I decided to write and see if it would make any impact.
Well, we do not know if our rant was ever made it to the right people, let alone the PM (we’d like to think that it did) — the next thing we heard was that the Indian government changed their definition of who has Indian heritage to include spouses! Off we went to the Indian Embassy to apply for the new “green card” called the Overseas Citizen of India or OCI card.
After the typical bureaucratic paperwork (although I have to say, it was not as bad as we were expecting it to be), we both had our status changed over to “OCI card holders”.
This is when I knew that moving to India is not an “if” anymore, but a “when”. India! Here we come!!! 🙂
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