(Part 3)
Why Wealthy Indians Don’t Relocate to Dubai?
India charges 30% income tax on Corporations. Dubai has zero income tax regime. Dubai has a vast diaspora from India. But it does not have any tech hub or echo-system for software development. Why software developers do not relocate and prefer to stay in India and pay 30% tax in India? Recently Vikrant Jaitly case exposed Dubai. It exposed the rule of law prevailing in Dubai.
Siyada in UAE
हाकिम मुख्य प्रथम कानून छे। Ruler tells, what the law is. This is the law in UAE
In the UAE, National Security (Siyada) is an umbrella term that allows the state to bypass the standard penal code. Detention Without Charge: Under Federal Law No. 2 of 2003 (amended in 2024), the State Security Apparatus can detain individuals for long periods without formal charges or trial if “national interests” are involved.
In the UAE, “National Security” often means a breach of the unspoken contract with the state or worse the trust of the ruler.
The Gilded Cage
Major Vikrant Jaitly was not a reckless adventurer. He was a decorated Indian Army Special Forces veteran with twenty years of service including UN peacekeeping in Lebanon. He moved to Dubai in 2016 with legitimate credentials and met his future wife Charul. Together they built Mātiti Group, a multi-sector conglomerate spanning defense consultancy, technology, human resources, sustainability and trade finance.
In September 2024 he was detained. Seventeen months later he remains in Al Wathbah Prison in Abu Dhabi on vague national security grounds. No formal charges. No transparent trial. No explanation to his family.
While Vikrant languishes in Al Wathbah Prison, the socialite Charul continues to operate in high-society Dubai, receiving “Change Maker” awards and speaking about “Purposeful Leadership.” This disparity suggests that the state views her as a “safe” entity and her husband as the “threat.” In a system where “the Ruler is the Law,” staying free while your CEO-husband is jailed for “National Security” usually requires a high level of cooperation with the state.
His sister Celina Jaitly has alleged that she was kept in the dark for over a year. Now she has filed a petition to the Delhi High Court just to get her brother independent legal representation. The Ministry of External Affairs was accused of suppressing information. The court had to appoint a nodal officer to bypass the wife who had become the sole gatekeeper of information about a man rotting in prison. During the Delhi High Court hearings, it was noted that Charul had reportedly moved to Bengaluru, India, but did not communicate with Celina’s side.
An Emirati law firm led by a former UAE Armed Forces officer offered to represent him pro bono, suggesting that even within the UAE power structure, informed insiders believe the national security label was misapplied.
This law firm is a prominent Dubai-based practice led by Khaled Khalfan Al-Marri as Managing Partner and Co-Founder. He is a former member of the UAE Armed Forces. This military background is crucial; it gives him a level of “status” and understanding of the security apparatus that standard civilian lawyers lack.
Al Marri Connection
The Al Marri (or Al Murrah) is one of the most powerful and storied tribes in the Arabian Peninsula. The mother of the current Ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, was from the Al Murrar (Marri) tribe. This gives the family a direct maternal bloodline connection to the Maktoum throne. The current Commander-in-Chief of Dubai Police is Lieutenant General Abdullah Khalifa Al Marri. The Director General of Dubai’s Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA) is Lieutenant General Mohammed Ahmed Al Marri. He controls who enters, stays, and is deported. The UAE Minister of Economy is Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri.
In a “Hakim-led” system, a lawyer who has worn the uniform has a level of access and “tribal weight” that an expat or civilian lawyer can never achieve.
The fact that an Al Marri (a name synonymous with UAE’s internal security and law enforcement) has stepped in to defend the husband pro bono is the ultimate signal that the “official” narrative is being challenged from within the Emirati power structure.
By taking the case for free (pro bono), the Al Marri firm is essentially telling the UAE state: “This isn’t a threat to the Ruler (Hakim); this is a civil/personal mess that has been branded as security.”
While the UAE does not have an identical “Writ of Habeas Corpus” to Western or Indian law, the recent court orders are mimicking its effect. A court order saying “insufficient evidence” allows the state to release him without admitting to a mistake or a “banana republic” style abduction.
Rule of Law in Dubai
The case exposes something Dubai’s promotional literature never mentions. The same state apparatus that protects business can destroy an individual without explanation, without process, without recourse. When the Ruler is the first law, national security becomes a personal weapon available to anyone with the right connections.
Charul Jaitly, the co-founder and managing partner, remains free. She collects awards. She speaks at summits about purposeful leadership and mental health. Her husband sits in a high security prison refusing to speak to her. The Delhi High Court proceedings revealed he told embassy officials he does not want his wife involved in his legal defense.
The Al Maktoum versus Princess Haya case established this pattern for the world to see. The UK High Court found that state tools including Pegasus spyware were used to surveil and control a personal family matter. The UAE’s written laws and its operational reality exist on different planets. When personal interest and state power merge at the ruler level, no amount of legal compliance protects the individual caught in between.
This is the reality behind the zero percent income tax headline.
The Tax Trap
The financial case for relocating to Dubai looks compelling on paper. No personal income tax. No capital gains tax. Modern infrastructure. Political stability of a kind. Many wealthy Indians look at their 30% business tax burden and their complex compliance requirements and wonder why they stay.
The Income Tax Act of India answers that question before they finish packing.
Relocating the person does not relocate the tax liability. If the business maintains an office in India or if the staff sits in India or if operations run from India, the business income remains taxable in India regardless of where the owner sleeps. The Act taxes business presence not personal residence. A founder sitting in Dubai while his development team works in Pune pays Indian tax on that income. Nothing has changed except the cost of living has increased dramatically.
The NRI definition creates a second trap that catches people by surprise. The 182 day rule is well known. What is less known is its interaction with prior residency history. An individual who has lived in India for ten of the preceding eleven years faces a longer transition period before Indian tax residency actually ends. This means full Indian tax liability continues for an entire year while the individual simultaneously bears Dubai’s cost of living. The exit itself becomes expensive before any saving begins.
The Human Resource Problem
Dubai has no indigenous professional workforce. The city runs entirely on imported talent. Technology professionals, accountants, lawyers, consultants, administrators, support staff. Everyone of them comes from somewhere else, predominantly from India.
A professional relocating from India does not escape this dependency. The same Indian developers, the same Indian accountants, the same Indian support staff are needed in Dubai as in Delhi. The difference is that in Delhi they already exist within established networks, trained in existing systems, embedded in the company culture built over years.
Relocating to Dubai means either rebuilding that entire human infrastructure from scratch in an expensive imported labor market, or physically moving trusted staff across borders. Moving staff means visas, housing allowances, family disruption, schooling costs, and the psychological cost of uprooting people from their lives. One does not relocate to Dubai. One relocates a shipload of people to Dubai.
The economics collapse quickly under this examination. Zero income tax saves perhaps 30% of personal income. The cost of rebuilding or relocating an entire professional ecosystem frequently exceeds that saving in the first two years alone.
Dubai Is Built for Traders
This distinction matters more than it appears. Dubai’s is a trading hub. Physical goods, financial instruments, commodities, real estate. Transactions that are clean, discrete, and complete. A trader buys in one market and sells in another. The transaction is the relationship. Dubai facilitates this with extraordinary efficiency.
Professional knowledge work operates on entirely different foundations. A software architect, a management consultant, a lawyer, a specialist doctor, a research scientist. These professionals build value through accumulated relationships, institutional memory, peer networks, university connections, conference ecosystems, and the informal knowledge exchange that happens when many specialists concentrate in one place.
Bangalore has this. Mumbai has this. Delhi has this. The density of technical talent, the IIT alumni networks, the startup ecosystems, the specialized vendor communities, the informal peer groups that solve problems over coffee. This intellectual infrastructure took decades to build and cannot be imported into a trading city however wealthy and modern.
Dubai offers luxury and tax efficiency to traders who need neither of these things. Nerdy professionals need intellectual community, peer challenge, and the particular kind of creative friction that only comes from concentration of similar minds. That community exists in India. It does not exist in Dubai.
Institutional Non-Hospitality Versus Royal Autocracy
This brings the comparison to its philosophical core.
India’s business environment is hostile in documented, navigable ways. The previous articles in this series detailed exactly how that navigation works. The bureaucrat has arbitrary powers but operates within a system that has rules, precedents, and pressure points. Accounts get frozen but courts unfreeze them. Harassment occurs but has patterns that experienced operators learn to anticipate. The Income Tax Act has sections that can be used defensively. The GST system has appeal mechanisms. The High Court will hear a petition. The system is frustrating, expensive, and time consuming. But it is a system.
Dubai’s constraint is of an entirely different nature. There are no rules to learn because the ruler is the rule. When national security is invoked, the standard legal protections disappear. There is no checklist that guarantees safety. There is no compliance regime that provides immunity. An individual who offends someone connected to power has no procedural defense available. The Jaitly case is not an exception. It is a demonstration of how the system actually operates when personal interest meets state power.
An Indian entrepreneur who has spent years learning to navigate institutional non-hospitality has developed specific adaptive skills. Those skills transfer to other difficult environments as the diaspora examples demonstrate. They do not transfer to a system where the rules are whatever the ruler decides they are on a given day.
The Conclusion
The wealthy Indian professional looking at Dubai sees zero income tax and imagines freedom. The reality is more complex.
Major Vikrant Jaitly had zero income tax, world class infrastructure, and a thriving business. He also had seventeen months in Al Wathbah Prison with his family fighting through a foreign country’s courts just to get him a lawyer.
India’s institutional non-hospitality has rules. It can be navigated, documented, and survived. That is what this entire series has been about.
Royal autocracy has no rules. It cannot be navigated. It can only be suffered.
That difference is worth more than thirty percent.