The great Indian emigration

NOBODY talks any more about the brain drain from India. We talk instead about the diaspora's contribution to India by way of money and entrepreneurship. And it is enough that we take pride in their achievements in Silicon Valley. It may be unfashionable to raise questions about the great Indian middle/upper middle class out migration and I may well upset many close friends, cousins, nephews and nieces. But as the outward flow of the educated continues unabated it is appropriate to ask what this eagerness to leave the country says about ourselves and those who have left.

For most Indian graduates a course in a United States, European or an Antipodean university must be an enriching experience that is a world removed from the stifling education at home. However, it is a safe bet that a good proportion of the students who go to the U.S., in particular, are eventually going to settle down there. All of them may not have already planned things out this way, but it is yet another safe bet that the idea is there, if not in the front then in the back of their minds. With their family, friends, peers and society at large giving them more than tacit support, it would be foolish not to think of this option.

When the opportunities for work fulfilment are so much greater in the West, and when you do not have to worry if water will flow in the bathroom tap in the morning, one can hardly carp at the great Indian emigration. This is as much a statement about the failure of Indian society to provide opportunities to its youth as it is about the attractions abroad of a satisfying career and a relatively easy material life. But what is worrying is that all the signals and encouragement for even the members of the urban, upper-middle class/rich, well-connected and educated Indian youth are to "Leave the country".

One cannot paint everyone with the same brush. The composition of the students-who-become-migrants has changed. Earlier they were largely members of the elite of metropolitan India. Now they include a large number of young people from small towns and from members of the middle, and even lower, rungs of the caste strata. For these young men and women, the only alternative to a satisfying career in the West is probably as a "writer" in the local tahsildar office or as a clerk in a bank. But where there must be a question mark is about the class which has the best of India - in wealth, position, power and education - and yet encourages its children to leave. You do not have to be fired with revolutionary zeal to realise that the country needs people with education and skills. And if there is zero social consciousness about one's responsibilities to society even when one is in a position to fulfil them, the future must indeed be bleak. I read or heard somebody question the commitment of the top echelons of the bureaucracy by arguing, "All their children are settled in the U.S., why should they be bothered about India's future?" It cannot be as outrageous as that, but there must be a germ there which is passed on from one generation to the next.

The typical response is that perhaps one can contribute in other and better ways by living outside the country. However, not everyone makes a contribution. In pure financial terms, it is the low and semi-skilled workers in West Asia, not the professionals of Europe and North America, who have been shoring up India's foreign exchange reserves for more than two decades. And in entrepreneurial and investment behaviour, the Indian disapora shows up very poorly compared to the interest the Chinese disapora has shown in China - even after we account for the differing composition of the Chinese and Indian emigrants. But the biggest contribution of the Indian disapora is surely one which the country could have done without. Much of the support - financial and otherwise - for the divisive agenda of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has come from the Indian community in North America. Anxious to resurrect the mythical "glories" of an ancient "Hindu" Indian society, aggressive North American Indians have had little qualms about financing communal politics in a society they have otherwise abandoned.

There is a sea change from the 1950s and perhaps even the 1960s. There was hope and commitment among the best and the brightest about staying and building a new India.

Now, it is exactly the opposite. Call it what you will - the hope has disappeared or selfishness now rules - but we have created a society where the educated and connected young Indian would rather build another society in another country.

C.RAMMANOHAR REDDY

E-mail the writer at crr100@india.com

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