Posted on 03/20/2005 5:11:43 AM PST by CarrotAndStick
The tide is turning. A recent US report warned that the challenge for science and technology in America is that even if it does everything right, the world (read India, China) poses unprecedented competitive challenges. Ten years ago, such a report would have been scoffed at. Not any longer.
More and more Indian techies, scientists, doctors are homeward bound, giving up high-paying jobs abroad and joining R&D units, hospitals, government institutions or even their alma mater here. America's brain drain is becoming India's brain gain.
"It's a really exciting time to be here," declares Kunal Bajaj, project consultant with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. An engineer-MBA from Wharton, Bajaj chucked his tech honcho's job with a New York company and came home to be part of the excitement - India's booming telecom sector.
Then there's Chandra Venkataraman, who's returned to teach at her alma mater, IIT Bombay. "The wide variety of jobs in R&D, management and engineering make it a real option to live and work in India." After doing her post-doctorate from Stanford, Chandra taught in the US for a year. And yet, "I never wanted to live anywhere else but India. There's always a connection with one's country that comes through our parents of the Independence generation - a sense of public service. There's also a feeling that if one works here, one can make a more meaningful contribution."
A similar quest drew Yamuna Krishnan-Ghosh back to India from Cambridge. "Since I had done my PhD in India (IISc), I was aware that it's possible to carry out high-quality research here," says Ghosh, scientist at Bangalore's National Centre for Biological Sciences. "There are other factors such as wanting one's children to grow up here. I knew India was the one place in the world where I could feel both professionally and personally fulfilled. If I had to pick a single reason, it would be a sense of belonging: to this place, these people."
For US-returned Kaustubh Rau, fellow at NCBS, what counted was the work atmosphere. "Coming to NCBS seemed like an obvious choice since it offered a research environment with excellent institutional support, high-quality faculty and student bodies and the freedom to work on problems of one's own choosing."
But is the money good enough to hold them back? Shankar Mehta, group project consultant in a Chennai company, says his salary in the US was marginally higher. "But you need a certain amount of dollars to live in the US and a certain amount of rupees to live here. If that requirement is met, then there's no difference. The bottom line: there's no point in staying thousands of miles away when you can stay comfortably here."
Of course, life here may not be as smooth and convenient as in the US. "But things are moving fast in urban areas here," says Mehta. "A lot of the basic infrastructure is in place. The work environment and the challenges are more attractive."
Not surprisingly, D Yogeswara Rao of CSIR is upbeat. "Things are looking very rosy now. We're even looking at foreign nationals working in Indian R&D companies ten years down the line. Post-globalisation, our industry has realised that R&D is an engine of growth. They realise the necessity to have their own R&D units. And beyond a point, money has no meaning. What counts is job satisfaction and the work environment. Qualified people are getting all of that in their own country now."
Ping
While I can't wish these people would fail- I'm dismayed to learn how far behind the U.S. seems to be falling. Would I be wrong to place some of the blame at the feet of teacher's unions? And a culture that seems to prize self-gratification above all else.
We're doomed. Not.
The poverty of India's lower class will continue to drag it down. As for the ChiComs, they're having a tough time holding on to power. I suspect that the coming banking crisis there will lead to a government implosion. Add the abortions and infanticide of little girls under the one-child policy, China has a lonnnnng way to go...absent a few hundred million males becoming homosexual because there aren't enough women.
Bill Gates, Mike Dell - do y'all hear this? Y'all don't need all that money. So how about writing out a check for Jim Robinson?
Coming from a fella in India.... where the ratio of employee/management is near 40:1 and having a government job is still thought the only way that one can get rich.
ayn rand had the boomer generation figured out in the 1960s. her book "the new left" describes their attack on american universities and its anti-science and anti-technology attitude that, thanks to teachers unions, now permeates american education:
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33. The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
by Ayn Rand (Paperback - February 1, 1994)
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If you snooze, you loose.
---while I would grant a little blame to the teachers unions, most of it can be placed at the feet of lousy parents, IMHO---
Back in the late 70s/early 80s, the refrain was that the Soviets were pumping out tens of engineering graduates for every American engineering grad. Didn't help them out too much, did it? The point is that these refrains have been around for decades (starting in the late 50s with Sputnik). Ultimately, this is a supply and demand problem. If the demand is up, the supply will increase. The demand for EEs and CS professions has been depressed since the dot-com bubble burst. It has recovered somewhat, but not enough. It also doesn't help that we still import a lot of foreign engineers.
That's where you've got it dead wrong. Sputnik spurred America's space program like almost nothing else. The Russians were a primary reason for motivating America to do the things it did, and eventually come out victorious. You really seem to have no clue how difficult the task was to overcome Russia, and how gigantically dangerous she was to America.
Once you introduce a complacency element, saying the things you did, then the future CAN turn out bleak. Let us pay heed to subtle warnings, instead of ignoring them all carte blanche.
Ten corruption-tarnished Tata billionaires and a handful of tekkies in an otherwise bottomless bog of corruption filth and unimaginable poverty -- and about a billion of those anti-productive malignantly-parasitical kill-the-host gummint wallahs you've mentioned all clawing their wat to ten-kilogram silver ankle bangles for the whole family's both legs and both arms -- and Peking's obscene pack of lying looting, thieving, mass-murdering every-bit-as psychopathologically-hesperophobic self-styled "mandarins" -- all shipping out their ill-gotten loot way faster than Western corporations and other assorted idiots can ship it in -- do not a challenge to the Greatest Nation in the History of the Humans Species make!
And three failed East Indians going home per million arrivals does not indicate a trend.
Not necessarily. If anything drags India down, it will be socialism.
Each highly-paid professional is a job multiplier. The realities of life in India means that a highly-paid professional can cheaply afford to keep a staff of household servants, plus use the services of small businesses.
The big advantage of India is that it's been far too poor to afford a welfare state. If you're poor, you MUST work at something, for somebody.
I can understand your charge of complacency--I used to believe as you did. However, I have seen enough of these polyanna predictions that I now take them with a grain of salt. Especially when I see so many existing engineers either underutilized (doing Power Point engineering) or unemployed. Apparently, you seem to be clueless about that.
US' brain drain is India's brain gain - SAIRA KURUP: The tide is turning.....
SCHADENFREUDE !
A couple of observations:
1. " If I had to pick a single reason, it would be a sense of belonging: to this place, these people." -OK Dilep, if you loved your country so much how come you abandoned it to strike it rich in the U.S. in the first place. Let's call a spade a spade. You are a greedy opportunist who would go anywhere to benefit yourself. Your allegiance is to you.
2. I was watching a movie with Bob Hoskins this weekend called "Long Good Friday". It was made in 1979. At the end, Hoskins' character gives a 5 minute soliliquay on how Britain is on the way up and America is on the way down because Britain is filled with visionary entrepreneurs and the U.S. is filled with narrow minded cowards. Well, we all know what happened over the next twenty years after that. We keep hearing this in every generation. The one problem with these predictions is that they assume the U.S. goes into a coma over the next 20 years and does nothing to react to the competitive forces. Since when has that happened?
3. Final observation: When we do truly become global, corporate or sector allegiance will become as strong as national allegiance was in the 19th century. People will move around the globe to fill positions where they are. What is interesting is how the U.S. already has been making that happen here for the last two decades. Soon, the Indians and Chinese will demand equal pay with Americans doing the same job. The competitive price advantage will disappear. Then the Indians and Chinese will learn that they will have to compete at home for jobs against Australians and Americans. To get skilled professionals, a universal language will be adopted. Guess what? Its going to be English. In the years to come, when the playing field is truly leveled and everyone gets paid similarly for similar skills (which they will eventually demand), Americans will come out on top again because we have been selectively bred for courage, self-starting, ingenuity and motivation. Remember, everyone there who dared to dream ended up here.
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