Can India turn ‘Brain Drain’ into ‘Brain Gain’?

Theme :-

• 9th January is celebrated as ‘Pravas Bharatiya Diwas’ every year.

What is Brain Drain :-

• ‘Brain Drain‘ is the Nation’s loss of highly skilled professionals through emigration to developed countries.

What is Brain Gain :-

• ‘Brain Gain‘ is the return of highly skilled and well-trained emigrants to their home country to take part in the development of nation.

What is Brain Circulation :-

• ‘Brain circulation‘ is the movement of skilled talent in a way that the migration is beneficial for both the countries, that is for the destination country and for the origin country as well.

Situation in India :-

• India witnessed large scale brain drain from 1970’s to 1980’s.
• Starting from 1990’s, India witnessed return of highly skilled emigrants to India and their contribution to India’s development.
• As of 2017, over 30 million Indians are living abroad.
• Positive Side :-
  • NRIs helps to transfer advanced technology, knowledge and the best practices of education from the country they are staying.
  • A part of India’s success can be attributed to the Indian Diaspora, which contributed in terms of knowledge and financial investment to India.
  • The development of IT sector in India has the contribution of Indians returned from abroad as well.
  • Approx 80,000 NRIs returned to India in the past two years. Some of them established their own firms and created lots of jobs.
  • India is one of the top countries that get large amounts of remittances from its citizens living in foreign countries.
  • In India, opportunities for highly educated professionals are now improved tremendously.
  • Many graduates and post-graduates are now prefer to work in India.
  • Difficulty in obtaining long-term work visas and slow economic growth of developed countries are also helping India in terms of brain gain.
• Negative Side :-
  • Still there is large pay gap. India is offering less salaries to highly skilled professionals when compared to developed countries.
  • Push factors like corruption, reservations, lack of infrastructure, lack of investment and lots of legal hurdles are still highly prevalent in India making it difficult to reap the benefits of brain gain to full extent.
  • Still emigration of trained professionals is high in India.
  • Favorable policies in developed countries are attracting talented Indians. India is not giving enough competition to attract them.

What India is doing :-

• India is one of the fastest developing countries in the world. This is a pull factor to Non-Resident Indians.
• India is celebrating ‘Pravas Bharatiya Diwas’ from 2002 and is connecting to Indian Diaspora all over the world. By this way Indian Government is encouraging NRIs to contribute to the India’s Development.
• Indian government eased regulations for FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) to NRIs.
• India provided OCI (Overseas Citizens of India) cards to Persons of Indian Origin and made their legal formalities easier to return and to invest in India.
• Indian government is also planning to allocate short-term research projects to Indian scientists and Technocrats living in abroad to utilize their knowledge. These projects are about solving local problems.
• To connect to young overseas citizens of India, Indian government launched ‘Know India’ program.

Situation in other countries :-

• Many countries like ‘South Korea’ and ‘Taiwan’ are reaping the benefits of Brain Gain.
• Underdeveloped countries are at disadvantage, because most of their emigrants are unwilling to return to their home countries.

Conclusion :-

India is indeed able to turn ‘Brain Drain’ into ‘Brain Gain’. But we have a long way to go. We cannot expect NRIs to sacrifice their better lives for the sake of developing their home country. There are people who do that for sure. But not all OCIs will do that. We should look into the push factors first.

India should be able to attract the best talent allover the world by eliminating defects such as corruption, nepotism, red tapism etc. Till then, India may not be able to transform brain drain to brain gain to full extent.

Afterwords :- Do you think India will turn ‘Brain Drain’ into ‘Brain Gain’ ? Express your thoughts in the comment section below.

First published on 09th January 2017. Copyright @ Group Discussion Ideas.