Brain Drain Essay
Brain drain is defined as the migration of highly trained, D skilled and educated personnel from one country to the other for better remuneration and facilities provided by the employer. This term was initially used by the United Kingdom to describe the arrival of Indian scientists and engineers in the country post colonial period. It causes the origin country the loss of expertise and skills due to lack of opportunities and good pay scales.
Human emigration can be understood in three contexts namely, organisational, geographical and industrial. Organisational emigration refers to the migration of educated and skilled personnel from one organisation to the other, geographical emigration refers to the emigration of well qualified and trained individuals from their area of residence to other countries like United Kingdom or the United States for higher studies or jobs whereas industrial emigration is referred to as the movement of traditionally skilled workers from one sector of an industry to another. Movement of humans from one place to the other is basically in search of better job opportunities, higher standard of living and proper infrastructures. It sometimes leads to population explosion of the areas of movement.
Instances of human migration can be traced from the recent past. During the Holocaust in Europe, the country experienced influx of intelligentsia. Albert Einstein had immigrated permanently to the United States in the year 1933 and Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, had finally decided to emigrate permanently with his wife and daughter to London, England, in 1938.
Brain drain has become a major area of concern in the developing countries like India leading to loss of skilled and qualified professionals like doctors, engineers, scientists and technicians. High cut-offs in the national universities, outdated courses and low pay scales add to the misery of the people. Students and professionals who are not able to get the required courses or packages tend to migrate to other countries.
Movement of Indian scientists, doctors and engineers to the United States has increased by 85% in last 10 years, a report of the chief scientific body of the United States outlined. And among all the Asian countries, India continued its trend of being the top country of birth for migrant scientists, doctors and engineers, with 9,50,000 out of Asia’s total 2.96 million. India’s 2013 report showed an 85% increase from 2003. From the year 2003 to 2013, the number of scientists, doctors and engineers dwelling in the US rose from 21.6 million to 29 million. As per the UNESCO report, 2009 China surpassed the figure of students going abroad by 421,000, following India with an approximate migration of 153, 300 students.
Vijay Raghavan, the secretary of the department of biotechnology rightly said, ‘India’s huge population of talented youth means that we have enough young minds who can contribute to India from India and to India from outside India. We must continue to develop more excellent institutions and opportunities here so that the best talents have avenues here and not only abroad. This development of excellence is indeed required for the fast development of our country.”
Our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi rightly said, ‘We must reverse ‘brain drain’ into ‘brain gain’. The government of India is working towards achieving the goal and has been successful in it too. The rate of brain drain has decreased in the recent past due to measures adopted by the government. Also, in order to curb the practice, the government and private institutions focus much on creating high scale job opportunities and better working environments. Also, universities must work on the cut-offs lists and aim at providing quality education to all potential individuals.