Diaspora money in a Punjab village goes, in rough order of frequency, to the gurdwara, the village gate, a sports ground, a water cooler, an ambulance, a school building, a road, and a family house that stands empty.
It very rarely goes into productive enterprise, for the reasons set out on the remittance page: the sender is not there and the returns are poor.
Village development committees of non-resident Punjabis exist for a large number of Doaba villages and fund specific projects, often with an annual visit and a foundation stone.
The pattern produces villages with marble gurdwaras, floodlit sports grounds and failing schools, which is a fair description of what happens when private generosity substitutes for public provision.
Some of it works very well. The eye camps, the ambulances and the water supply schemes are real and they save lives.
None of it has been studied at scale, and a proper accounting of what diaspora money has built in Punjab and what it has not would be one of the more useful pieces of research available.
The money goes to gurdwaras, to schools, to hospitals and dispensaries, to sports grounds, to village gates and to street lighting, decided by a committee at the giving end.
It is the largest source of discretionary capital in rural Punjab and it is entirely unregulated and unmeasured. Nobody knows what it adds up to.
It also concentrates. A village with a strong diaspora gets a school and a hospital and the village next to it gets nothing, and the difference is visible from the road.