18th Pravasi Bharat Divas: Find out which country NRIs bagged Pravasi Sammans (Awards) in Odisha! EXCLUSIVE!

Bhubaneswar: Odisha takes centre stage on the world map with the kick starting of the 18^th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas at the State Capital in Bhubaneswar from Wednesday. It's high time to revisit the significance of the all -important NRI meet in the State of Odisha. 

Join the Whatsapp Channel to Get News updates in english

The 3-day Pravasi Bharatiya Divas convention will witness the official inauguration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, and President of India Droupadi Murmu will bestow Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Friday on 25 individuals and 2 trusts recognising their meritorious contribution towards promoting India’s interests abroad and in building closer ties between Indian and the country of their residence.

With ‘Diaspora’s Contribution to a Vikshit Bharat’ being the theme of this year, the conferral of awards on the meritorious individuals/trusts of the diaspora assumes significance.

As the President Droupadi Murmu will confer the awards Thursday, here is an analysis on the contours of the 2025 Pravasi Samman Divas. The list of awardees, their respective countries and services are given below:

A glance at the above awardees shows the following.

• Maximum Pravasi Samman conferred on NRIs from USA (3).
• Russian NRI comes 2^nd with 2 Sammans.
• A look at the distribution region shows that Asia bagged the most awards totalling 7.
• Europe – 6 (including Russia)
• Oceania – 5
• Africa – 4
• It was followed by North America (from USA only) bagged 3 awards.
• South America - 2
• Central Asia – 1

The above shows India government’s thrust on the regions in the world. With the country positioning to emerge as a key Asian player, bestowed most awards on Asian NRIs, and to strengthen ties with European countries post Russia-Ukraine war, NRIs from the country comes second.

Moreover, to emerge as key leader in the pacific region, to balance growing Chinese influence and incursions, NRIs from oceania region were at the third in the list.

Above all, in order to be a leader of global south, the NRIs from African countries figure prominently in the list.

NOW TAKE A LOOK AT 2003-2023 REGION WISE AWARD LIST 

• ASIA – 92 
• North America – 66
• Africa – 53
• Europe – 46
• Oceania -23
• South America/Carribean – 16

The 2025 Pravasi Bharath Samman seems following the trend of last 20 –years, as Asia topped the list in 2025 also.

But the contrast in 2025 has been, NRIs from Europe have come second.

NRI SERVICE RECOGNITION

A look at the above table shows that Pravasi Samman was bestowed maximum for community service (8), followed by Business and Medical Science (5), Education (4), politics (2) and Public affairs (1), S&T (1).

The past trend shows the following.

• Public affairs/Community service – 147
• Business – 63
• Media/Art/Culture/literature – 35
• Promoting Indian culture – 5
• Sports – 5

A comparative analysis shows Community service bagging the highest spot in 2025, and was followed by Business, mirroring the trend.

However, in 2025, the awards for excelling in Medical science bagged the same honours as that of Business, Education has also gain prominence.

COUNTRY WISE

Take a look at the maximum NRI awardees from countries between 2003 and 2023.

• USA – 50
• UAE – 17
• UK – 17 
• South Africa – 15
• Canada - 9 
• Malaysia – 6
• Saudi Arabia – 7
• Oman – 7

In 2025, since US has the largest NRI populace, it bagged the maximum of 3, mirroring the trend. New countries figuring on the map this year has been Russia and Spain.

Spain has NRI populace of around 69.98k, and none have ever received Pravasi Samman since inception. The country gained recognition in the 18^th PBD held in Odisha.

Note: President of Spain Pedro Sanchez paid visit to India in 2024 – a first by any Spain president after a gap of 18-long years. Spain is a member of Nato and important partner in EU.

Similarly, Russia has around 60k NRIs, but have never bestowed with Pravasi Samman since last 17 PBD conventions.