The great Indian outflow sets off another brain drain debate

Nearly 5,000 Indian millionaires, 2% of its high-net-worth individuals, moved abroad in 2020

The Centre told Parliament in December 2021 that nearly nine lakh Indians, an average of 350 a day, gave up their Indian passports since 2015. In conjunction with several recent reports of Indians doing well in the West — Nasa scientist Swati Mohan, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, IMF’s Geeta Gopinath, other Silicon Valley tech honchos — the news triggered a renewed debate over “brain drain” and also high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) leaving the country.

It led to political point-scoring, for in October 2021, Union Home Minister Amit Shah told a meeting of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers in Panaji, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi has enhanced the value of the Indian passport.”

Nearly 5,000 Indian millionaires, 2 per cent of its high-net-worth individuals, moved abroad in 2020, a report by the Global Wealth Migration Review found. About 16,000 Chinese and 5,500 Russian HNWIs exited their respective countries in the same year.

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The UN World Migration Report 2020 put the number of Indians living abroad at over 17.5 million, the highest in the world. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), India has 3.12 million highly educated migrants working abroad, compared to 2.25 million of China.

However, the trend isn’t new.

A 2008 study published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation found that 54 per cent of doctors who graduated from New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) from 1989 to 2000 are in the US. It said Indians comprise nearly 5 per cent of doctors in the UK and about 10 per cent in the US. Another research has found that
half of those who topped Class 10 and Class 12 between 1996 and 2015 now live abroad.

The government claims it does not maintain data about the economic and educational status of those renouncing Indian citizenship. The last seven years have not seen any significant uptick in the number of people giving up their passports.

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In 2015, 1.41 lakh renounced citizenship, which increased marginally to 1.44 lakh in 2016, dropped to 1.33 lakh in 2017, 1.34 lakh in 2018 and increased again to 1.44 lakh in 2019. Possibly because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the numbers dropped to 85,248 in 2020 and grew a tad to 1.11 lakh until December 2021.

The reasons for those migrating abroad or opting to continue to live there have remained the same — ease of living and opportunities but for a significant addition — urban squalor, pollution and deteriorating healthcare.

Arvind S (name changed), his wife and children, returned briefly to New Delhi two years back. They had lived in Singapore and Shanghai for nearly a decade. The couple wanted to live closer to their parents and educate their children in India. “We did read about and bemoan societal fractures. But what convinced us to return abroad was the pollution and healthcare crisis during Covid-19,” the couple says.

Arjun, 24, who works with a German interior designing company, recently surrendered his Indian passport. “As a German citizen, the government supports me even when I am jobless. I also get to travel and work anywhere in Europe,” he says. However, opportunities remain a more robust driver.

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Aastha, a 34-year-old software engineer in the US, says she migrated for further studies and career advancement but is still holding on to her Indian passport and hopes to return someday.

Where do they go?

According to the data that the government tabled in Parliament on December 9, of the 6.08 lakh Indians who renounced citizenship since 2017, 2.56 lakh have taken up American citizenship. Nearly 90,000 took Canadian citizenship, while Australia, New Zealand and western European countries, particularly the UK and Italy, are other favoured destinations. While none took up Pakistan’s citizenship between 2017 and 2019, there were seven who did so in 2020 and 24 in 2021.

In recent years, neither has the government conceded any worrisome brain drain from India, but statements betray a concern. Harsh Vardhan, the minister for science and technology then, told the Rajya Sabha on March 23, 2021, that the Centre has observed “no significant brain drain to such an extent of affecting the developments in science and technology sector.”

The minister elaborated a “three-pronged strategy” the government has adopted to retain the best talent in the country. In a nutshell, it now provides better research infrastructure, grants and resources to Indian scientists and opportunities for overseas scientists of Indian origin to return.

In February 2020, the government said, “Out of total 103 senior research associateships awarded by the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research in 2019, 28 per cent (29) were awarded to young Indian researchers who had been working abroad.”

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In July 2019, the Centre said it had initiated efforts to stop the brain drain of medical doctors and nurses from the Central Health Services (CHS). It now allows CHS doctors to avail study leave after two years of continuous service, provided they sign a bond that they would serve the government for eight years after obtaining the degree and returning to duty.

In 2009, the government told Parliament, “Indian engineers, scientists and technocrats do go abroad for higher studies or employment. In the present scenario of globalisation and liberalisation, the movement of technical personnel across the national boundaries is inevitable.” It said it was taking steps for “initiating a ‘Brain Gain’ policy to attract talent from all over the world into the IITs, IIMs, etc.”

Reverse brain drain

A joke in Silicon Valley is that Telugu and Hindi are the most spoken languages in the tech hub. A study published by the Center for Global Development said Indians emigrating to the US also indirectly helped its own IT sector, which grew from 1.2 per cent in 1998 to 7.5 per cent of its GDP by 2012. The study’s authors, Gaurav Khanna and Nicolas Morales found that the American H-1B programme helped with a “reverse brain drain” in India.

A former bureaucrat with the department of biotechnology believes India’s population means that the country has enough young minds who can contribute by living in India and outside India. “What we need are robust educational institutions with a focus on research,” he said.

Over the years, successive governments have encouraged Indians to travel abroad, including to take up jobs. Governments have taken pride in the existence of a vibrant 3.2 crore strong diaspora, comprising non-resident Indians (NRIs) and people of Indian origin (PIOs). The facts of a strong diaspora and that Indians send back home the highest remittance in the world — $87 billion in 2021 — have been celebrated at the annual Pravasi Bharatiya Divas.

The Centre and state governments run skill development programmes to fill labour demand abroad, whether farmers in Japan or nurses in the UK. The Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi governments, during their respective tenures, have eased the process of acquiring a passport. In 2007, only 23 million Indians had passports, which increased to 74 million in 2017. If the Ministry of External Affairs issued five million passports in 2007, it gave more than 12.8 million in 2019 and is now set to introduce e-passports.

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