How Indian nurses are healing the world

"I chose nursing because everyone said it was an ideal fit for my personality. My mother is a nurse, too,” says 28-year-old Rusha Shrestha, a nurse who graduated in 2019 from a Gurgaon college. She started work in the middle of the pandemic and is now set on a career abroad, like “almost all the others”, she says.

After Covid, as many countries seek to expand nursing capacity, Indian nurses have gladly filled these spots. “Nursing students now are very clear that their study is an investment for a job abroad. So, half of them will go to the Gulf for work experience, then after a few years, move to the West, which is always the real goal. This is step-migration, in the way one might have a layover in Dubai for a trip to the US,” says migration scholar Irudaya Rajan.