LAST September Dharmesh Mistry, a 24-year-old management consultant, gave up the creature comforts of life in Warrington, Cheshire — and a fat salary — to join a voluntary group in Gujarat, western India. Now he helps women and children in the slums around Ahmedabad with sanitation and education.

He lives on £40 a month, his meals cost 20p each, his flat gets water for one hour a day and he works in temperatures of 109F without air-conditioning. In villages he sleeps in the open alongside goats and cows.

Nanak Singh Kohli, 73, from Washington DC, has left his $200m business empire behind to set up crèches in 50 Delhi slums. When he visits the shacks where the children live he has to wade through filth.

Mistry and Kohli are among a growing number of so-called Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) from Britain and America who have come to India temporarily, eager to devote time, skills and money to social work that will help the country to develop.

While Kohli was raised in India and did not leave for America until he was 58, Mistry was born in Britain. Both were drawn back by a powerful force: identity.

Kohli is among the semiretired NRIs who have done well. Now, with time and money on their hands, an emotional attachment to India pulls them back to “reconnect” with the country.

“When people in Britain look at me, they define me as an Indian by my appearance,” said Mistry. “This Indianness also defines how I see myself. So I decided to come and experience the country that gives me my identity.”

Wearing a kurta pyjama, he moves among bejewelled village women who lost their homes in the 2001 Gujarat earthquake. Almost their only source of income is embroidery. Mistry and his colleagues — idealistic American-born graduates — advise them on how they can alter their designs to sell more.

“I came here to connect with the country my parents come from,” said Anjali Adukia, 26, a Harvard graduate from Boston. “I don’t want to be one of those NRIs who come and moan about how dirty India is. I want to be part of the solution.”

The Indian government has only belatedly realised that NRIs — like the Chinese diaspora — constitute a fabulously rich asset. The NRIs’ annual income is estimated to be worth about twice the GDP of Malaysia. In the United States the average income of Americans of Indian origin is twice the national average.

All these successful people — doctors, scientists, engineers, economists, teachers — are able to offer formidable skills and expertise.

“They can offer fresh ideas and solutions to old problems. Because they’ve lived in the West they have a ‘can do’ approach that we can do with,” said Gurcharan Das, a former head of Procter & Gamble in India. “They are also more sensitive to the poor. Many Indians get inured to suffering by seeing it every day.”

The desire to hasten progress in India provoked Balwant Singh Grewal, 68, to embark on a 2,500 mile charity walk from the north to the south of the country. It took five months and raised £250,000.

A property developer now living in Denham, Buckinghamshire, but originally from Punjab, Grewal has dual loyalties. “I am a British citizen and very active in Britain but no matter where I live on this planet, I have an attachment to India,” he said.

Kohli shares this feeling: “My message to Indians is ‘Come back home’. The world out there doesn’t need you but India does.”

The biggest obstacle for NRIs is finding which voluntary groups and projects are worth joining. Indicorps, where Mistry works, provides a way to do valuable social work. The Confederation of Indian Industry in Delhi and the Ministry for Overseas Indian Affairs offer similar schemes.

India has changed over the past 10 years, becoming more open and less bureaucratic. A decade ago, a sense of inferiority to affluent NRIs would have made Indians react in a prickly fashion to their return. But a new confidence among young Indians enables them to meet NRIs as equals.

Asked if his passionate excitement about India signified failing loyalty to Britain, Mistry’s reply was swift: “When a couple have a second child, do they love the first child any the less? Their love expands to enfold both children. I love India but I also love Britain.”

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