Brain Drain and It's Impact

Hey readers.I am Safa. Hope you are doing good.Today, I am going to elucidate about  brain drain. A few weeks back Indian born techie replaced Jack Dorsey as CEO of twitter and at the same time Indian born economist  was promoted as the first deputy managing director of the IMF. They  both have added their names to a growing list at the prominent global  organisation. It can be looked from two perspectives. On one hand, people believe something to feel proud and Indians are successful  in foreign countries. On the other hand, people have named it as “BRAIN DRAIN”.

You may be awed! "Do Indians build brand names or do they represent the lost Indian talent?"

Yes, you might feel staggered to hear that since 2016, six lakh Indians have given up their citizenship and since 2014, 23,000 millionaires have left India.

India is the second most populous country where talent is something that it has in abundance and it should not really be such a big deal.

Yet, it is limiting the innovative capacity  of India. Is it hurting our economic growth? It is an affirmative yes. Let me explain.

Brain drain has become buzz in India .Now, what is brain drain?

The loss of human capital and expression that refers to a flight of skilled labours from developing to developed countries.

There are numerous examples : an Indian origin becoming the CEO of a big company. After 2014 Satya Nadella became the CEO of Microsoft, 2015 Sundar Pichai  became the CEO of google, from 2020 Arvind Krishna is IBM’S CEO, from 2006-18  Indra Nooyi PepsiCo’s CEO. During 2010-20 Ajay Banga was the CEO of Mastercard.

Now, I would like to drop some of the reasons for brain drain and  it's conflicts they are  lack of opportunities, political instability and health concerns. West has benefited from brain gain which simply means large scale immigration of skilled labours. During 1970’s, many young Indian graduates have graduated from elite institutions like IIT’s, NIT,IIM etc…only to find jobs in India as they were not financially attractive. So, they started leaving the country to make most of the degrees and skills to get better rewards and unlike short term contract workers go to gulf nation and most of these Indians never returned. They ended up as prominent bankers, scholars, entrepreneurs, innovators. This  was at that time, when indian’s needed skilled professionals the most. According to one estimate, more than half of the first rankers in class X and XII  board exams between 1996 to 2015 migrated abroad.

I would like to bring to spotlight by saying, they “Money isn’t everything but everything needs money." Just look at the wages in purchasing power parity  by comparing the average wage of India vs America.In academics, you can earn six times in America compared to India, in IT sector more than double and in management more than three times. Clearly money is the factor and also social security, health benefits, gender equality and quality of life.

A lot of reputed colleges in India have skyrocketing cut off. Students leave to study abroad and land in better paying jobs.

There are better roads, quality of education, hospitals etc.. Indians who became the permanent residents of Canada were 39,000 and in 2019 it jumped to 80,000. And another reason is that India’s case is too close that a foreigner becoming the CEO of indian company is so far fetched that even Indians didn’t get chance to become the CEO of Indian company because they are running a family business eg. Adani, Tata, Birla, Godrej, Bajaj, Mahindra etc…Top leadership positions are occupied by family members. We can see an unhealthy amount of nepotism here. Think of an IIT graduate, it is more difficult to become the CEO of Godrej, Mahindra etc.. than to become the CEO of Google or Twitter. This shows nepotism is boon for one and bane for others.

Indians also feel very proud when a person with Indian ancestry gets political position in a foreign country like Kamala Harris, Bobby Jindal in USA.

Foreign countries have accepted the idea of cosmopolitan. On the other hand India has not yet embraced the spirit of concept yet, we can see xenophobia i.e. distrust against the foreigners.

Next comes gender equality and I would like to highlight on gender equality by saying ,“It’s a time that we see gender as a spectrum instead of two sets of opposing ideals.” echoes Emma Watson. In 2021 the gender gap in India widened to 62.5% .There aren’t enough women in technical and leadership roles and this stems from gender disparities in educational sector, labour force participation and income levels. This makes a lot of highly skilled women to shift abroad with no intention to return. For a lot of people the tag of being NRI is the badge of honor, call it a colonial hangover or a gift from Bollywood. There is no one reason for leaving and returning India and we may disagree with many of these reasons but that will not change the fact.

We end up contributing more to the host country than to the home country. When they return to India they are often spent force with Ideas and skills that are no longer required. Now, this apparently leads to reduced economic growth, limited innovation capacities and lack of skilled manpower.

According to US National Centre for biotechnology. India is the world’s biggest exporter of doctors and this is very disturbing fact that there is one indian doctor for 1,325 Americans and one Indian doctor for more than 2,400 Indians. Some of the MBBS students say that they want to become a doctor and treat patients who are poor for free of cost but they end up going  abroad for monetary benefits. India is losing its doctors, engineers and entrepreneurs to other countries. Its losing much of its skilled human capital to other countries.

There is an urgent need to understand what is driving this trend and reverse it.

Why is it? 

Why do rich families with roaring business want investor green cards?

Why does an IT Employee pray day and night for an H-1B VISA?

Why does an Indian student want to go  abroad after school?

Why do Indian born innovators disassociate themselves from their birthplace?

These questions are matter of concern and they keep ringing in my ears and lingering in my mind. They are uncomfortable, yet important questions. Questions we need to answer at all levels. Friends, Let us reflect and end the great indian brain drain to stop non-residential Indians becoming non-returning Indians.

I would like to conclude, by expressing a poem written by me-

We were affected by a chronic disease called brain drain,

That forced to export our talents to another plain.

We came to fulfill our dreams,

Leaving our noble motherland with goodbye tear streams.

People are chasing materialistic things and become more greedy;

Ain’t they crazy?

We educated our people to progress our nation;

But they ended up disappointing us with defamation.

Is it right for you for leaving Nation's progress in lurch and cripple?

Motherland expects your role and contribution be in triple.

Don't you want to safeguard Nation's prime heritage and legacy?

Bureaucracy and hypocrisy shall be left to controversy.

We curbed our IT’s to get job in Wall Street;

We sacrificed our banks for a Goldman Sachs sheet.

Now it's your choice to return and contribute for progress,

For God's sake not to misunderstand and prefer regress.

But why did we do such a big mistake?

Its not too late to cover the wounds with bandage.

I feel a need to mobilise reassurance, best perks and solid recognition,

My dead mighty migrants, welcome home and join in our largest congregation.

"PADHEGA INDIA...BADHEGA APNA DESH"talisman is super and in ups,

But the prevailing concept "PADHEGA INDIA....BADEGA VIDESH" gives us hiccups.

Keep pondering. Be the change that you wish to see in this world. Stay tuned to read the next blog.