A new report by Policy Exchange has described British Indians as “one of the most successful ethno-religious groups in modern Britain”. The community is the largest Asian ethnic group in the UK and is performing better than all other ethnic groups, including Caucasians, when several factors like percentage that work in professions, hourly pay rate, the percentage that owns homes, and the percentage in employment or self-employment is taken in consideration.
The report, titled ‘A Portrait of Modern Britain’, said that British Indians are the least likely to live in social rented housing. It found that 71 percent of the people have ownership of their homes, and the community is the most socially integrated. British Indian people also have more friends from outside their community than other minority group.
While the Chinese in Britain have topped educational attainment, British Indians have been placed second.
On the other hand, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities have the lowest percentage in all the aforementioned factors, as per the report. It also found that the Arab and Bangladeshi communities are most likely to be economically inactive.
The report also highlighted a new group of ethnic minorities — MINTs (minorities in towns) — to describe those people moving out British cities to towns and villages, where they are fully integrating with their white counterparts.
“The rise of MINTs is being driven by aspirational, asset-owning and business-minded British Indian families,” the report says, as quoted by The Times of India. It also stated that British Indians are likely to become an “increasingly critical voter constituency” as provincial towns are Britain’s “electoral battlegrounds”.
Other findings revealed that while Caucasian British graduates are leaning leftwards, the Indian Hindus — considered of the highly educated — are moving to the right.
The report also found that all ethnic minorities were proud of being British and most chose to live in Britain over the US, Germany and France.