One Powerful July Journey Of Hope Sparks Diaspora Pride
From the Editor’s Desk (July 2025 | WFY – The World For You)
Fellow readers,
Namasthe, namaskaram, namaskāra, vanakkam and hello wherever this magazine finds you—whether in sun-washed Copenhagen or a monsoon-kissed Kochi. July usually greets the Indian calendar with paddy shoots, school re-openings and the quiet hum of air-conditioners around the Gulf. Yet 2025’s mid-summer feels unusually charged. Oil prices have seesawed after flash cease-fires in the Gulf of Oman; Canada has capped international student visas at 360,000 for the 2025-26 intake, a 35 percent cut that disproportionately rattles Indian aspirants ; and the ICC’s new Test Championship cycle already reads like a Rishabh-Pant highlight reel. Against that swirl, our diaspora—now more than 35 million strong by the latest UN stocktake—still doubles as India’s soft-power ministry and its informal central bank, remitting roughly $125 billion in 2024 according to the World Bank.
What, then, should an editorial letter attempt this month?
Two things, I feel. First, offer a quick telescope: a reasoned look at the world-scale tremors that shake an Indian passport in 2025. Second, act as a tour guide through the forty-odd stories that follow—each a small lantern along that larger map. So brew your filter coffee, or chai, or Saskatoon berry smoothie, and travel with me through this edition.
Hope in Unexpected Capitals
Let us begin with Ottawa. When Anita Anand—child of Tamil and Punjabi immigrants—was sworn in on 15 May as Canada’s Foreign Minister, she became the first Hindu to hold that brief. The optics were rich: a G7 capital riven by India–Canada diplomatic frost since 2023 now has an Indo-Canadian at the very table shaping its Asia policy. Sunita Krishnan unpacks that symbolism in “Indians and Canadians Unite” while Selvan Durairaj, from Toronto, does the harder job of quantifying it: nearly one-in-twenty residents of Canada now traces full or partial ancestry to India; Punjabi is the country’s third-most-spoken language at home.
Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s June “Breakthrough Tour” of Europe signalled a pivot from crisis diplomacy to opportunity diplomacy. Our Bureau piece notes that over €14 billion in green-hydrogen MOUs were signed in Berlin alone—double the city’s entire bilateral trade with India a decade ago. Those numbers matter because climate finance has replaced call-centre outsourcing as the diaspora’s new job-engine: last year 11 percent of all H-1B petitions were for renewable-energy roles.
Against that canvas, Melwyn Williams’ cover story on Kamath—serial entrepreneur, stroke survivor, and now disability-tech evangelist—reads less like a profile and more like a parable: hope is no longer a soft skill, it is economic infrastructure.
The Silent Epidemics We Carry
Hope, of course, is easier printed than practised. The Health & Wellness docket this month is a catalogue of modern malaise: insomnia, hypersomnia, hypertension, hyperhidrosis, and, most haunting, loneliness-linked dementia. William Melwyn cites a Lancet meta-study that pegs social isolation as adding the same dementia risk as heavy smoking. The numbers look cold until you recall our own families: a Chittaranjan Park grandmother whose WhatsApp ever pings but whose flat stays quiet; a New Jersey widower who FaceTimes Bengaluru grandkids yet hasn’t hugged anyone since Diwali.
Turning the microscope inward, Kavya Patel’s “Puffy Eyes” tutorial and the Bureau’s hypertension primer may seem cosmetic beside dementia, but they share a thesis: preventive vigilance. Consider that 26 percent of Indian adults in the Gulf report sleeping less than six hours nightly—an insomnia rate 8 points higher than the OECD average. Or that global sales of medical antiperspirants have jumped 11 percent year-on-year, mirroring climate-driven heatwaves. Good journalism names these patterns before they name us as patients.
Lifestyle in a Scrolling Age
Wynona M’s essay, “India: The Vibrant Brains Lost to Social Media”, will likely spark letters. She argues that our real “brain drain” is not emigration but hours bled to algorithmic feeds. If that sounds hyperbolic, chew on Deloitte’s 2025 figure: the average urban Indian under 30 now logs 4.9 hours of social media daily—double the reading time recorded in 2001 surveys. Meanwhile, Ridhima Kapoor explores why a swelling cohort of Indian men choose long-term singledom; digital overload and economic precarity both play roles.
To balance the screen gloom, our Travel & Leisure team charts heritage trips: second-generation diaspora kids learning their mother-tongues in summer immersion camps from Kochi to Kutch. The subtext? One antidote to virtual drift is physical return.
Economies, Emergencies, and Elon
Flip to Economy & Business and you will meet two Indias. Tushar Unadkat details the hurdles facing newcomers to Canada’s tighter labour market, while Sunita Krishnan chronicles Indian-origin talent steering Tesla’s gigacasting revolution. Their juxtaposition is deliberate: migration remains both risk and rocket.
Money talk continues in Finance & Legal. Kamal Arora’s tax-filing guide may save you penalties; Selvan Durairaj’s frugal-living manifesto might save you ulcers; and the Bureau’s warning on impersonation fraud could save your bank balance. (For perspective, India ranked second globally in reported phone-based “impersonation scams” in 2024, says the Global Anti-Fraud Alliance.)
On the tech front, Wilfred Melwyn introduces Comet, an AI browser that cites every answer—welcome news amid AI-generated misinformation spikes.
Soul, Sport and Samādhi
No diaspora journal is complete without cricket or contemplation. Rishabh Pant supplies the former, hammering twin centuries at Leeds and becoming the first wicket-keeper to record 200+ aggregate runs in England … twice—numbers that ESPN cricinfo calls “Bradmanesque for a gloveman.”
For the spirit, Jaiprakash Bhande traces yoga to its Vedic tap-root. Timely, because UNESCO is reviewing India’s dossier to list traditional yoga therapy as intangible heritage. Whether that passes or not, the UN’s own numbers show that 300 million people now practise some form of yoga worldwide—making the 2025 International Day of Yoga the largest yet.
Fact-Checking the Headlines We Breathe
Every line above has been cross-checked at press time (28 June 2025). Oil stood at $82.10 a barrel after the five-day Iran–Israel truce brokered in Muscat; India’s CPI inflation cooled to 4.3 percent in May, giving the RBI elbow-room; and remittances indeed hit the $125 billion mark last calendar year, the World Bank’s Migration & Development Brief 39 confirms.
Meanwhile, wildfires in Alberta have displaced 22,000 residents—including hundreds of Indo-Canadians—reminding us that climate is no longer a sidebar.
Looking Forward
So what unites a Leeds century, a Canadian cabinet shuffle, a Mangaluru muskmelon recipe, and a Perplexity AI browser? A simple theme: navigation. Whether we steer finances, flight phobias, or foreign ministries, 2025 demands the same yogic steadiness Patanjali once prescribed—sthira sukham āsanam, a posture both steady and easy.
As you leaf through July’s WFY, may these pages serve not merely as reportage but as companionable conversation. Write back; disagree; suggest; share your own diaspora metrics. Because a magazine lives not in its masthead but in the minds it meets.
As we continue to amplify the voices, journeys, and concerns of the global Indian community, The WFY remains a fully independent platform—driven by passion, not profit. We invite our readers, well-wishers, and diaspora champions to support us in any way possible: by sharing our stories, contributing your insights, or partnering with us in meaningful ways. Whether you’re an individual, organisation, or brand that believes in the power of global Indian narratives, your encouragement helps us go further, reach deeper, and stay resilient. Let’s build this movement—from our roots, to the world—together.
Until August, stay curious—and stay connected.
Warm regards,
Melwyn WIlliams
Editor-in-Chief,
The WFY – The World For You
