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Brain drain plague

Nadella as new Microsoft CEO means introspection for India

There’s been much chest-thumping in India over desi boy Satya Nadella being anointed Microsoft’s new mogul. The 46-year-old, Hyderabad-born, cricket-loving engineering executive, who has been with Microsoft for over 20 years, takes over the reins from retiring tech titan Steve Ballmer.

It’s undoubtedly a moment of pride for the country. After all, the techie was chosen from a global pool of putative talent, and will now helm a global behemoth whose turnover may well equal the GDP of a small country!

Teachers at the Manipal Institute of Technology — Nadella’s alma mater — have called his elevation a “great moment” while the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, weighed in by saying he had made “the Telugu people proud”.

But even as the techie’s old friends and associates recall his ample talent and sing his paeans, it ought to be a moment of reflection for India as to why it lost a volcanic talent like him to America in the first place.

After all, what could have stopped a genius like Nadella — whose brio has been acknowledged by no less than Bill Gates — from storming the bastions of India Inc and conquering it? Instead, like millions of other ambitious and bright fellow Indians, he left the country’s shores to try his luck elsewhere. Small wonder Time magazine once termed CEOs as India’s leading “export”, adding that the subcontinent could be “the ideal training ground for global bosses”.

However, Time may well have used a euphemism for a dark reality called ‘brain drain’ that has plagued India since the 60s. The phenomenon refers to the trend of ‘skilled workforce emigrating from poor countries to the rich in search of better job opportunities and living conditions’. Many young men and women educated at India’s highly subsidised public institutions started leaving India in the 1960s to improve their academic or career prospects in the Western world.

Disillusionment with the country’s political dysfunction and entrenched corruption and inefficiency propelled them there. With its treasured human resource moving abroad in search of greener pastures, India continues to lose a major chunk of its skilled doctors, engineers, scientists and technicians to Western economies.

The country’s ossified education system, among other things, exacerbates this flight. Lately, the cut-offs for admissions have become close to 100 per cent in the best Indian universities. This drives thousands of bright Indian students abroad for studies as they have an edge over students from other countries in terms of skills and knowledge. According to industry surveys, Indian students going abroad for higher studies have ratcheted up by a whopping 256 per cent in the last 10 years. A report by the Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India points out that when a large number of students flock to foreign universities, it costs India a whooping $16 billion annually.

Most of these students prefer staying back in the host country due to better work opportunities, heavier pay packages and a high quality of life tempting them to settle there permanently. As a result, over the years, India has become a major supplier of skilled and talented young workforce to the Western economies.

Nor has India been able to provide a fertile research environment in which students or scientists can prosper and contribute to enhance their knowledge. India’s science policy aims to position the nation among the top five global scientific powers by 2020. But how can this be achieved if qualified academics, researchers, scientists and engineers leave our shores? A country devoid of rich intellectual capital can hardly provide a firm bedrock for progress and economic growth.

What India needs right now therefore isn’t mass jubilation but a reality check. Harsh as it may sound, the next time another Nadella conquers a Microsoft-like summit outside its borders, the country should feel a tad sad about the development rather than implode with collective pride.

Neeta Lal is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi