Come Sunday and thousands of cars and SUVs line up the side strip of the road along Dar-es-Salaam’s famous Cocobeach. Most of them, Indian families, relax and soak in the sea between bites of aloo kachori from the dhabas across the road.Inching our way on what is quite like Mumbai’s Marine Drive, we are headed to Tumbawa Road, the official residence of the Indian High Commissioner to Tanzania, Dinesh K. Jain. There, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has voiced his views on the Indian diaspora. ‘‘First, wherever you are do the best for that country and its image. Make the place prosperous.’’That’s exactly what the Vallis, Kanabars, Oshans have been doing. A chartered accountant from Kolkata, S.S. Oshan used to live in the Steel City of Jamshedpur. ‘‘We came here 30 years ago,’’ the couple chorus.Sunil Uke, First Secretary at the High Commission, plays our navigator. There’s Vijay Valli, principal of the Indian School that is gurukul to about 380 students from KG to Class X. ‘‘We are under CBSE and are working towards adding classes XI and XII,’’ she says.The story of Vallis is similar to most displaced Kashmiri Pandits. ‘‘We came here in 1985 for all the obvious reasons,’’ says Vijay’s husband, P.K. Valli, who left his Telco job for a quiet stint at a telecom firm here.In the early 60s, the Indian population peaked at about 100,000 in Zanzibar and Tanganyika (before it became the republic of Tanzania). Today, their numbers have fallen to about 40,000. The vast majority of Indians are from Gujarat. The Indian connection is due to Julius Nyerere’s — Tanzania’s founding father — liking for India and Indians who he thought were highly competent.Zanzibar’s Minister for Education, Haron Ali Sulaiman, who made it to the head table along with President Kalam on Sunday, is a case in point. As is Salum M. Salum, Deputy Chief Secretary in the President’s office in Zanzibar, who studied in Hyderabad, has lived in Madras and keeps going to India. Then there is Navin Kanabar, a Tanzanian by birth whose wife is from Mumbai. ‘‘She keeps travelling there whenever she misses her parents,’’ says the owner of Alcoves of chicken makhanwala fame. ‘‘It’s (business) very good and easy. For an initial investment of $250,000 you get a tax holiday for five years.’’No wonder UN estimates paint a similar big picture: For Africa as a whole, the return on FDI is four times more than G-7 countries and twice that in Asia.
