How India Budget 2020 foxed a third of UAE residents

How India Budget 2020 foxed a third of UAE residents

The clause was the cause of much confusion and disquiet for millions of NRIs across the world.. Nirmala Sitharaman, India's first woman Finance Minister (full-time), broke two dubious records during her 2020 budget speech.. At two hours and 41 minutes, this was the longest budget speech in Independent India (she actually broke her own record from last year).. It caught the expats unaware when, somewhere between poems by Kashmiri poet Dinanath Kaul and sonnets by Tamil sage Thiruvalluvar, Sitharaman let it slip in that she was proposing a tweak in the rules of the game, resulting in some non-resident Indians (NRIs) becoming liable to income tax in India.. NRIs remit a world-beating amount of money to India every year - an estimated $80 billion in 2019.. Given the sizeable base of NRIs in the UAE (almost a third of the UAE's residents), Khaleej Times routinely publishes an NRI wish list before the annual budget exercise.. And budget after Indian budget, the NRI wish list along with the hopes, aspirations, and requests of this non-vote-bank (unlike expats of several other countries, NRIs still cannot vote unless they travel to their home constituencies on election day) has been ignored, making us feel