By Daksh Bhandari, BFIA’24

Over the last two decades, one issue that has been pertaining throughout our education system is brain drain in our country. India is undoubtedly one of the largest producers of top-level executives of not only tech giants but also all other forms of business. From being at the top of global marketing giants to FMCG companies, Indians are virtually everywhere. Fun fact, out of the Fortune 500 companies 60 of them have Indian CEOs. As much as this is a feat to be proud of for the families, and the people of India, it also is a big issue that needs to be addressed. When several Indians in aspiration of better quality of life, steeper career growth curve and in general greater standards of living, leave India for a job abroad, they deprive the country of the required talent nurtured within but not utilised. 

This, as many things, is not without contradictions. Many people have pointed out several logical reasons and explanations for this which highlight the faults in our system. As much as we like people tending to stay in their birthplace and work for its betterment, India as a specific case appears to many as a career roadblock. Extremely high competition among peers because of the existence of a multitude of aspirants for one post or job is one of the primary reasons for this brain drain. The competitive nature of the Indian job sector is not unknown. In a country where there are over 15 lakh applicants sitting for an engineering entrance exam with only 12000 seats in top tier colleges, which by the way is less than 1%, it is logical enough to have an equally competitive environment in the corporate job ladder as well. It is not easy for students of other streams as well. Many medical aspirants are choosing to pursue their education from abroad because of expensive medical colleges and fewer prospects of a successful career because of the increased number of doctors. In the case of other streams, foreign influence has already taken over our education system with commerce and humanities aspirants looking for premium foreign universities which specialise in these courses. 

Talking about the brain drain post graduation and for post-graduate education, which is primarily professionals leaving for better jobs abroad, we need to understand this by analysing the root problem, that is, the teaching and job requirement mismatch. All through our years of independence we have attempted to master the art of teaching and producing the sharpest minds in the entire world. In this process, we not only improved the level of education through foreign inspiration but also modelled our basics of teaching on the foundations of premier foreign universities and colleges. While doing this to perfection we forgot the skills we needed to impart for a suitable executive in an Indian firm. To look at a peculiar case, the government of India had established the IIMs to be pioneer institutes in producing executives for government posts and Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs). However, as time progressed, instead of joining government PSUs these young professionals chose to join as executives in corporations in India or abroad because of better pay and better working environment. This continued over the years and as the courses got modelled and remodelled according to foreign standards these professionals primarily targeted jobs abroad because of better quality of life.  

Now that we have analysed major reasons for brain drain in India, we move towards understanding where we stand in the current scenario and what we can expect in the future. Take, for instance, the top tech giants of the world like Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, IBM, Twitter, Adobe and many more. Earlier, it was believed that the dominance of Indian executives is only limited to tech and IT companies. However, recent developments have shown Indians leading consumer retail companies like Chanel, and even the food and beverage sector like PepsiCo and Starbucks. This shows the dominance of Indians in almost all fields in the international corporate world. However, what does it mean for the home country? The sharpest minds of the country who are capable of creating value beyond imaginable terms for the country have not been contributing to the country’s growth and progress. 

In conclusion, we can clearly see the issue of brain drain and their reasons which highlight some pertinent issues with our education and corporate systems. Something that we need to work on if we aim to preserve our best talent within the country. Having said this, it has to be mentioned that the situation has clearly improved in the last few years with the number of successful start-ups rising at a rate like never before and new and modern innovations being born in India itself. Along with this our education system has also gained enough reputation in the world through these top executives and has attracted other nations to try and replicate Indian education systems in their countries. Thus, the brain drain has most definitely brought some shortcomings in the quality of talent available in our country, it has brought in more popularity and international recognition for our country.