His commute tripled to an hour, but he still doesn’t regret moving home

An Indian professional who moved back from the US after an H-1B stamping trip has been candid about the everyday frustrations of life back home, even as he stands by his decision to return. ‘The twenty-minute commute takes sixty. The air requires purifiers in every room,’ he wrote on X, in response to Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu’s open letter urging Indians abroad to return.

He described roads being dug up repeatedly without coordination. ‘The road to office itself is dug up at least nine months of the year! Water, then cables, then broken drainage slabs, then white topping, then water again,’ he wrote. He also pointed to slow business permissions, frequent inspections, high housing costs in good localities and a shortage of affordable quality schooling as ongoing challenges.

Yet he said none of it was enough to make him regret moving back. His decision, he explained, began during an H-1B stamping trip six years ago, when his uncle asked him, ‘If you want to do something of your own eventually, why not do it in India? Create value here.’ He returned about six months later, and has since valued being closer to family and finding professional opportunities easier to access.

‘I came because the equation worked for me,’ he wrote, adding that India still ‘has to become a place worth coming to, not just a place we owe ourselves to.’

Image: Wikimedia Commons/by Kushagra140