India Tough Country to Live in: Expats

Bangalore: India is the most challenging country for expats to live in, revealed HSBC’s Expat Explorer Survey. Based on 3,385 expats among 31 countries, there were questionnaires on life in overseas; that ranked India as the toughest country to live based on their experience. Economies, experience and raising children abroad, were the three main parameters of the survey which were further subdivided into various categories.

India’s was seen on the 31st position, the lowest in overall ranking. It ranked 16 on the ‘Economy’ parameter while ranked 14 on the ‘Raising Children Abroad’. It ranked the lowest in terms of ‘Experience’ and fared well on the “Social Life” and “Learning the local language” criteria with 10^th rank. This could be because India has plenty of people who speak English, making it easier for expats to learn the local language. Secondly unlike most Middle East countries, India does not pose too many restrictions on social gatherings, parties and night-life. India ranked below average on 11 categories and it ranked lowest at 31 on 2 categories – ‘Setting up utilities’ and ‘Fitting in new culture’.

On the other hand, Singapore topped the charts followed by Hong Kong at the second position. U.A.E. was seen taking the third position. Based on the ‘Expat Experience’ criteria Thailand is grabbed the 1^st postion, followed by Canada and South Africa. It is interesting to note, that most of the countries in top 10 were smaller developing nations while the countries at their worst on friendliness were India, Russia, United Kingdom, China and Qatar ranked 31, 30, 29, 28 and 27 respectively.