Ragam Gupta
The appointment of Parag Agrawal as the CEO of Twitter adds another person to the list of successful Indians that are outside India. Many CEOs of other tech giants such as Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, and IBM’s Arvind Krishna are also a considerable part of this list. Apart from Tech companies, India also has successful people in other fields, such as Ajaz Patel in New Zealand’s cricket team and Gita Gopinath appointed as the first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Though many Indians celebrate it, this opportunity for celebration also questions Indian society and the problem of the brain drain associated with it. Brain drain refers to the migration of skilled and educated people from their home country to another (host) country. This problem has been a great concern for the Indian Government and many state governments, especially Punjab Government. According to the 2020 UN World Migration Report, India has the highest number of migrants living abroad with over 17.5 million. It is also popularly known that one-third of the engineers in Silicon Valley are Indians, whereas 10% of the world’s high-tech business CEOs also come from India. Numbers show that India contributes more millionaires to the world than any other country. With such data, tracing the cause and effects of Brain Drain becomes necessary. The factors that cause Brain Drain are broadly classified into two types – pull factors and push factors. As the name suggests, pull factors are the factors that are better in the host country and attract a person. Pull factors include free education, better employment rates, better salaries, better chances of promotion, etc. Push facts are the facts that are poorer in the migrant’s home country than in the host country and encourage Indian people to migrate. Let’s discuss some push factors prevalent in India-
Unemployment due to the lack of skills and innovation – Today’s condition of unemployment is not hidden from anyone. India’s 45% of Management and 48% of Engineering students are unemployed. Of the 1.5 lakh engineers who graduate every year, 80% remain unemployed. Even at IIT Bombay, one of the most prestigious engineering colleges in India, 20% of students from different courses remained jobless despite being IITians. Unemployment is a result of various political and social factors encompassing alack of skills and innovation. A study by ‘Aspiring Minds shows that less than 1.4% of Computer Engineers in India know how to code correctly and only about 4.8% know how to use correct logic. Due to this, it becomes obvious for the companies not to hire unskilled people. If we think deeply, this lack of skills or creativity is an effect of India’s poor education system, where theoretical knowledge is given way more significance than practical knowledge, and no significant work is done to make students able to solve various problems in different situations. According to a study, 60% of faculty don’t talk about the application of concepts in the industry and only 47% of engineers attend any industry talk. This situation can also be proved by the fact that despite producing more engineers than the total population of Switzerland in a year, the USA and China have three times the number of engineers who know how to code properly than India.
Lack of research facilities – According to many analysts and researchers, another reason for Indian students leaving the country to go abroad is the lack of research. One of the main causes for the decline in the research sector of India can be regarded as students losing interest in research due to long Ph.D. programs and fewer salaries. A student with Ph.D. in India earns less than a software engineer with just a B.Tech. Many Indian students are also financially unstable and to support their families, they have to join jobs just after their bachelor’s. Inflation also plays an important role in shifting a student’s mind from research to joining the corporate world to earn money. Thus, even if a student has a research interest, his/her scientific temper fades with time when he/she joins the job.
Another major cause of India’s lacking research is the less investment in research by the government. Investment in the R&D sector is stagnant at 0.7% of India’s GDP. This makes many universities financially weak in terms of providing proper study material or infrastructure for research. This also encourages the Indian youth to migrate to other countries for better research facilities.
Low chances of getting higher positions – There are numerous businesses in India whose names are based on family surnames such as Bajaj, Tata, Adani, and Mahindra. Naming the business by one’s surname is not a problem, but the real problem arises when the top and most crucial positions of these businesses are only reserved for family members. Mostly the skills, knowledge, or experience of the family member don’t play a fundamental role in his/her promotion. This degrades the value of the skills and knowledge that an experienced employee from outside the family has. According to analysis, most Southeast Asian countries’ businesses do not tolerate a foreigner as the CEO of their company, but this is not the case in Western Countries. This factor makes Indian students’ chances of becoming the CEO of a foreign company higher than getting an equivalent position in an Indian company and thus, encouraging them to join a foreign company or move abroad.
Low ease of doing business – The ease of doing business index is a parameter calculated by the World Bank to analyse the ranks of different countries based on problems or difficulties faced by an individual or company to start and continue business in a particular country. According to the World Bank, India has improved in many sectors including starting a business, trading across borders, dealing with construction permits, and supplying electricity to factories. Though the rank of India in ease of doing business is increasing every year from 77th rank in 2019 to 63rd rank in 2020, still we have a long way to go. The low ease of doing business in India prompts its future entrepreneurs to start a business outside the country, thus contributing to the brain drain.
Political or international conflicts – Another major push factor includes political or international conflicts within the person’s native country which force him/her to migrate to another country. A popular example of this type of migration is Albert Einstein, who migrated to America as a result of political tensions in Germany during the Nazi regime. Apart from these push factors, some pull factors are also there which are better in the host country than in the home country. The pull factors are just the opposite of push factors and include higher wages or salaries, good employment rates, a better education system, better research facilities, ease of doing business, etc.
Along with having merits, brain drain also has demerits that largely affect the native country of the migrated workforce. The migration of the workforce from a country slows down its growth due to the loss of skilled and educated labour. Instead of contributing to their own nation’s growth, the migrants started contributing to the growth of another country. The government’s money that is invested in providing scholarships or other facilities to them is wasted once they start working in another country as the only way of return on investment is lost. Along with having negative effects on the native country’s economy, it also affects its society by degrading citizens’ confidence in the country’s government and policies.
Reverse brain drain – Reverse brain drain refers to the return of the skilled and educated population back to their home country after spending some years enhancing themselves in another country. This is a quite beneficial situation for the population’s home country as the returned people use the skills they learned in foreign countries to make economic and social developments in their nation. The Indian Governments must therefore find a way out to tackle this problem at the earliest for the sake of the country.
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