I belong to that generation of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) alumni, most of whom went off to the US immediately after graduation or a few years later. Ninety-five percent of them never returned. In fact, the IITs were strongly associated with the then-popular term “brain drain”. But as independent India completes 76 years, many of my IITian friends see a very different trend.
Today, most of India’s best engineers are not going off to the West as soon as they get a BTech degree. Among those who do, quite a few are coming back after a few years. This has been especially noticeable in the last decade or so.
The IITian brain drain was triggered by India’s socialist economic policies which reached their peak during Indira Gandhi’s first stint as prime minister. Private sector businesses were more or less penalized for trying to achieve higher growth and profits. Chairmanships of cash-rich public sector companies were thoroughly politicized. Corruption was rampant. Unemployment among the educated reached record levels. I was only a child in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but I remember food stalls at Durga Puja pandals in Calcutta with signboards reading: “This stall owned by unemployed engineers. Please support us.”
I have heard from several IITians who graduated during those years that it was actually easier for them to get a scholarship for higher studies in the US—which had liberalized its immigration laws for Asians in 1965—than to get a job in India. And once one went, the quality of both personal and professional life was so incredibly better that hardly anyone ever returned.
We need to remember that till the beginning of the 1990s, Indian business had been fully in the grip of the licence Raj. It took years to get a phone or a cooking gas connection. Other than the super-rich, no one had access to or could afford even a pair of Levi’s jeans. Job prospects of an IITian who stayed back to work in India were limited to the few professionally run multinational and Indian private sector firms, sluggish public sector firms and family-owned “lala companies” where the family was focused primarily on enriching themselves.
And wherever you worked, the job demanded very little of what one had learnt at an IIT and in many cases, was intellectually deadening.
Things began changing slowly about 30 years ago with economic liberalization, but really picked up pace in the late 1990s, with the coming of the internet and the telecom revolution. And as the West scrambled to make sure that Y2K would not cripple all its systems, the Indian infotech industry, with its lower costs and large pool of technical talent, exploded.
Of course, all this was low-level work, but gradually the Indian software industry began setting its sights on higher-hanging fruits.
Several things then happened. One, with India becoming part of the global business ecosystem, the young Indian engineer realized that they could stay in India and have home food and also spend time in the West on assignments and enjoy that lifestyle. Now you could have the best of both worlds.
Two, as consumption grew, industries across the board expanded and flourished. To take just one example, India is today the world’s fourth largest automobile market. This would have been unthinkable 30 years ago. The result has been a virtuous cycle where both job opportunities and salaries have also increased sharply in almost every sector.
Three, global recognition of Indian talent grew. Global corporations began shifting higher-end work, including research and development—and not only in software—to India. Indian managers began to be posted in senior positions across the world. It is now not uncommon to find IIT-ians or MBAs whose 20-year career has been divided almost equally between India, Europe and the US. It may not be long before many managers from India rise to head corporations globally. This has already begun happening.
Four, if you are a successful engineer or manager today in India, you can enjoy as comfortable a lifestyle as your peer in Manhattan who earns the same salary as you do on a purchasing-power-parity (PPP) basis. In some ways even more comfortable, because you can own a larger house and afford chauffeurs and domestic helps. This might sound highly elitist, but it is the truth, and a key reason why many Indians with successful careers in the West are preferring to relocate to India.
Every top global brand, from L’Oreal to Lamborghini, is available—vastly different from the days when you begged an uncle who was travelling abroad to get you a bottle of Yardley perfume. Digitalization has cut down petty corruption—you don’t need to pay a bribe to get a driving licence renewed or an insurance claim processed.
Five, the eruption of the entrepreneurial spirit in India, the likes of which the country has never witnessed, and the rapid growth of an ecosystem to support start-ups. The number of young Indians who prefer to stay back in India and do their own thing has grown exponentially in the last 15 years.
Yes, it is undeniable that India lags in manufacturing and what is referred to as “core engineering”. It may take decades before we see engineering innovations coming out of India that can shift a technological paradigm. IITians who are truly committed to research still prefer to migrate to the US and rightly so. Out there, they can work with the best minds in their field at the cutting edge of science.
India still faces grave problems and has a poor record on several economic and social parameters. But for many of its brightest minds, it is a good place to stay back in or return to. This is not about patriotism at all. Right now, if you are good at your job, India offers great opportunities to fulfil your potential and earn well and have a comfortable life where you can also be as global as you want to.
India’s is certainly the most vibrant growth story today among all major economies, and is likely to stay so in the foreseeable future as consumption increases and more global capital flows in. It makes sense for smart people to invest in their own future here.
Bullish on India is an ongoing series. Read more articles in the series.
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