THE PROBLEM OF BRAIN DRAIN AND HOW INDIA IS TACKLING IT

Recently, while welcoming the students to school after the summer break, the students of class XII raised the issue of Brain Drain during the assembly. This left me thinking that in spite of the fact that India is such a patriotic nation with people firmly attached to its roots; brain drain has always been a significant setback for us. How can you imagine a nation to grow and prosper if its people are ready to become an asset to a foreign country? Some people still often say that they would like to work in some other country. When probed for the reasons they accept that they are not happy with how the policies are implemented in India.

“Over the years, millions of young talented Indians from various disciplines have left their soil in search of better opportunities. This is what is termed as “Brain Drain” and policymakers have been grappling with this issue for a long time. It is well known that the consequences of brain drain are severe, especially for a developing economy like ours. It adversely affects the quality and quantity of human capital formation, which is the bedrock of modern economic development. A higher number of Indian students, professionals, doctors, and scientists are working abroad now than ever before. On the other hand, the money they are sending back to our country (as remittances) is declining. There is an urgent need to revisit the problem and find new and innovative solutions to reverse the trend quickly.”

The major reasons for brain drain are:

1.      The population of our country is 1.4 billion and granting job to the whole of the youth of this nation is next to impossible. Millions of engineers are graduating every year in India, so it’s nearly impossible to give a job to every engineer graduating. Jobs are not matching the growing population, and thousands of engineers remain unemployed, and they have no option but to fly to foreign countries as they welcome them with joy.

2.      One common answer we get is that India did not have the right opportunities for their specialization. It’s true for technical PhD holders who need employment from research institutes which might not have been prevalent in India with quality as required.

3.      But what about entrepreneurs? They had a market of 0.7 billion people, something that nobody would like to ignore. Instead of going to a foreign land and toiling hard to become entrepreneurs, why did they not remain in India and do the same here? After all, India being a developing nation could have provided them a chance to experiment as well as capture market share. It is easy to say that they were greedy, did not care for our country and flee to the US for greener pastures. But the real reason lies in the political & economic system.

4.      And not to forget the sheer amount of running/lobbying one had to do to get hundreds of approvals to start a business in the license raj era. Such policies led to corruption in the system which forced honest businessmen to flee the country.

5.      Another reason why India’s young, skilled labour force leaves is in search of better rewards for their effort and talent. When seen in the context of the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), average wages for a person in the US is more than six times of his Indian counterpart in the academia, more than three times in management and more than double in the IT sector.

6.      Are wages the only major reason why youngsters migrate abroad? The simple answer is no. Quality of higher education in India is one of the other factors which pushes brain drain. India, having come a long way in almost ensuring every kid goes to primary school, lags behind the developed world in terms of quality higher education.

Here, I want to point out that the roots of this problem lies deep within the system and it’s very complications. We are unable to provide basic facilities at a very basic level. Hence, people move from villages to small towns looking for better opportunities. The ones who do good, move to metros and from there they look forward to moving out of the country. With the human resource shifting to the cities, villages continue to lag behind.

One recent policy decision by a state government is perfect example how people are pushed to move out of their native olace. The Government of Rajasthan implemented the policy of giving admission on the basis of percentile for higher education. The reason was that they wanted to normalize the marks as they thought that students from CBSE affiliated schools get more marks than students from RBSEaffiliated schools. As a result, enrollment of CBSE students in colleges reduced drastically. They were forced to go out of the state for higher education. Once this happens, most students do not come back to their roots. This is an example of how policies force people to leave their roots.

To overcome this situation certain number of seats should be reserved as state quota. This is a common practice in many state universities and I feel that there is nothing wrong in that.

There is always a solution:

All this does not mean that the problem of brain drain cannot be curbed. We need to provide the youth of our nation with better opportunities. With the growing start up trend we can hope that the young entrepreneurs are here to stay.

Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences claimed that Over 1,000 Indian scientists working abroad have returned to India in the last two-three years. Meanwhile, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) is all set to roll out a scheme to attract scientists from abroad on a longer term basis. The program, called Visiting Advanced Joint Research (VAJRA) Faculty Scheme, will offer accomplished NRI scientists the opportunity to undertake research in India for a maximum period of three months every year, while granting them the status of adjunct faculty in an Indian institution round the year.

Industry in India is also contributing support in establishing research laboratories, creating collaborative projects between academics and students, and sponsoring research projects. IIT Kharagpur has attracted significant funds from a leading corporation to carry out advanced research in power technology. 

The Indian government launched a prime minister’s fellowship scheme for doctoral research with industry partnership last year for science, technology, engineering, agriculture, and medicine. Under the scheme, 100 fellowships will be given to selected candidates working on research projects jointly with industry.

When it comes to easing out policies and regulations to promote small scale and large scale business, our prime minister has taken many commendable steps but there is still a long way to go.

Ultimately, I would like to say that preventing brain drain and keeping your country’s collective human asset intact rests on our culture and the value we place on people engaging in these types of behaviors. By supporting our youth’s efforts to share their insights, we’ll keep all the knowledge where it belongs and ensure that your youth is able to pick up the torch and run with it.