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‘Why I am going back to India’
Raghu Kumar has returned home.
After 12 years in Canada and the US, the Indian-born entrepreneur who has lived in four countries it is only when you leave your country and experience living "abroad" that you realize the true beauty of India.
“As much as we like to criticize the red tape and the daily frustrations doing business brings about, the truth of the matter is that India encourages entrepreneurship and has untapped potential in virtually every sector in its economy,” he wrote in a commentary published recently in India.
Prajakta Dandekar Jain, a researcher who was earlier doing research at Germany’s Saarland University, says in a similar vein: “The freedom to choose the workplace and attractive salary packages are some factors that may help reverse India’s brain drain.”
He is among some 500 Indian scientists who have come back from abroad and are working in various institutions across the country.
“Of these only six have gone back for various reasons," said T. Ramasami, Secretary of the India Department of Science and Technology
Non Resident Indians (NRIs) have started returning from Canada US, UK and EU to their home country in large numbers report recent statistics and surveys.
According to one study by recruitment consultancy firm Kelly Services India, nearly 300,000 NRIs (non-resident Indians) will return by 2015.
In another study published by the Harvard Law School, 50 per cent of NRI returnees are doing so for entrepreneurship and business start-up reasons. Some key findings of the same study:
10 per cent of Indians surveyed held senior management positions in the US, but 44 per cent found jobs at that level in India
61 per cent of Indians found opportunities for professional advancement better at home than in the US
Most also found better opportunities to start a business in India
79 per cent were motivated to return home because of growing demand for their skills in India
Just 6 per cent of Indian students surveyed would like to stay permanently in the US
Most fear the US economy will lag global growth rates in the near future
86 per cent felt the best days for India's economy lay ahead
53 per cent of respondents hope to start businesses in India
Going by the figures maintained by India’s science and technology ministry, the majority of the reverse brain drain of scientists has happened from the US, Germany and Britain. Recently, scientists have also started coming from South Korea and Japan.
Credit must be given to the several schemes run by the Indian government to encourage scientists and engineers of Indian origin from all over the world to take up scientific research positions in India, especially those scientists who want to return to India from abroad.
The Ramanujan Fellowship, Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) Programme and the Ramalingaswamy Fellowship are among those that provide a platform to scientists willing to return and work in India.
An internal analysis by the ministry of the reasons for the reverse brain drain revealed that tough competition abroad, better research opportunities in India, love of work for the motherland and aiming to contribute to science were some of the major factors that drew Indian scientists to their homeland.
Family obligations was another reason that attracted them back home.
Sheeba Vasu, who was doing her post-doctoral research at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, said she came back as she always wanted to work in India.
"I wanted to come back and start my work in India after getting trained in the US. Moreover, it is not easy to get a job as a faculty in any of the universities in the US as there is a tough competition," Vasu, who is a Ramanujan Fellow since 2008, told IANS. She was in the US for six years.
"I think academic work outside India is stressful and it is a bit more relaxed in India and I am saying that in a positive way," Ashwin Srinivasan, a professor at Delhi's Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, told IANS.
Srinivasan, who had worked at Oxford University, said there is an economic crunch in the academic setup abroad and it is tough to get research grants.
India, as evidenced by economists all over the world, is not only the world's largest democracy but a country with untapped and unlimited economic potential, said Raghu Kumar.”
“As an entrepreneur, I can boldly state that doing business in India is one of the many intangible treasures that few other countries can offer a "foreigner". Two decades ago, India was worried was about the "brain drain". Skilled Indian students were leaving the country and caused India concerns that they would not return. Little did they know that they indeed, would, return.”
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