The social media is flooded with stories of Parag Agrawal, an India-born techie who has replaced Jack Dorsey as the new CEO of Twitter! And once again, the denizens found a reason to spark a debate on the exodus of Indian talent or so-called ‘brain-drain’. However, calling it an exodus is not only naïve, but factually incorrect.

IIT-Delhi Director V Ramgopal Rao recently said that “Less than 200 of 10,000 IIT graduates from last year went abroad for job. There is now a changing perception that quality jobs are available in India. Twenty years ago, 80 per cent of the BTech class used to go abroad.” And yet some of us dare to say that ‘exodus continues’. Clearly not!

Some have gone to the extent of saying that the so-called ‘exodus’ is happening because India is still mired in poverty and inequality. This is simply a wrong cause-effect attribution. Vijay Shekhar Sharma saw an opportunity in the digital payment market in India and he founded Paytm. Deepinder Goyal could see the same in online food delivery segment and he came up with Zomato. Bjyu Raveendran came up with Byju’s, Roman Saini with Unacademy, Bhavish Aggarwal with Ola Cabs, Nithin Kamath with Zerodha and the list goes on. All these start-ups are catering to the same India which is mired in poverty and inequality.

Should we still whinge and whine on the migration of a few talented individuals? Just because they were born in India and studied in national universities to obtain their early education? Let us use the reverse logic here. There are many educated Indians who went to US, obtained their PhDs on scholarship and are now earning crores in India. Do we call it a loss to the US or brain gain for India? Similarly, many reputed judges of High Court and Supreme Court have studied in Oxford and Cambridge.

It’s time we understood that the decision on where to study, work and settle is a choice that individuals make. It is equivalent to choosing a locality. All these people are doing their bit to make society a better place, not necessarily by staying at their place of origin.

None of this is to say that India as a country is an ideal destination for students or that we have the best institutions in the world. But that is not the debate here. Leave Parag on his own. Having done that, lament that India is yet to have institutions that can compete with the likes of Harvard and Oxford and celebrate that some of our home-grown institutions produce students who are able to reach the likes of Harvard and Oxford!

The writer works as Deputy Director at Ministry of Finance. Views are personal

comment COMMENT NOW