Over the past half century since the first of India’s 15 and especially six vintage IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) was promoted in 1950, they have established a global reputation for excellent engineering and technology education. Therefore it’s come as no surprise to me that IIT-Bombay is the highest ranked Indian ‘university’ in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2011-12, although it’s been awarded an unflattering non-specific rank of 301-350. More encouragingly, within the narrower category of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) higher education institutions ranked by Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd — another highly respected university rankings publisher — IIT-Delhi and IIT-Bombay are ranked among the world’s Top 50 institutions.
However, it’s also undeniable that an estimated 35 percent of IIT graduates and postgrads press on for higher study and/or employment abroad — especially to the US — and most don’t return. This phenomenon has prompted a large and growing number of academics and critics to argue that the IITs — which provide heavily subsidised world-class engineering and technology education to the brightest and best students of India — have been benefiting the US rather than India’s economy and industry.
Although there’s some substance in this charge, it might be more useful to discuss and debate how IIT alumni resident abroad — especially in the US — can help India, and ways and means to reduce the brain drain to the US in future.
These questions need to be debated within the framework of a changed world order and the emerging global economy. Today, as testified by fully-loaded civil aircraft criss-crossing the world, national borders have become porous. It’s pertinent to note that almost half the population of Ireland has emigrated to all parts of the world, especially the US. Therefore many of our youth see greater professional growth and development opportunities abroad than in India. Already 22 million Indians live overseas and of them 2.5 million live in the US. Indians who migrated to countries such as the West Indies and Mauritius many decades ago, were daily labourers. But unlike them, those who emigrated to the US were highly educated, since US laws encourage qualified professionals to migrate to the country.
Over the past two centuries, this immigration policy has benefitted America tremendously. Some of America’s biggest business and technology corporations have been funded and/or grown by immigrants. These include Intel (Andrew Grove), Yahoo (Jerry Yang) and Google (Sergey Brin). Moreover, all recent Indian Nobel laureates in the sciences chose to make the US their home. They include Hargobind Khorana, Subra-hmanyan Chandrasekhar, Amartya Sen and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan. Indeed it’s a telling commentary on the R&D environment in India that after C.V. Raman, no Indian Nobel laureate has chosen to live and work in this country. Even some of India’s best corporate managers who head Citibank and Pepsi, are based in the US.
Against this background, it is advisable to be positive and view the Indian diaspora as a national asset, particularly since most of them are ready, willing and able to aid India’s socio-economic development effort. They want to build businesses, education institutions and hospitals in India. Therefore we should encourage them to plow back their money and talent, to benefit this country.
In the 1990s, a large number of IIT alumni settled in the US volunteered to help build endowment corpuses for their alma maters. But Murli Manohar Joshi, the then Union minister of HRD, declared that NRI endowments to specific institutions were not permissible. All donations had to be made to the HRD ministry which would allocate private donations and endowments at its discretion. Unsurprisingly, donations dried up.
In sharp contrast, it’s instructive to note the magnum size of endowment corpuses of the following American universities: Harvard $32 billion (Rs.160,000 crore), Yale $16 billion (Rs.81,600 crore), Princeton $13 billion (Rs.66,300 crore), Stanford $12 billion (Rs.61,200 crore), MIT $10 billion (Rs.51,000 crore). Against this, the endowment corpus (excluding sponsored research) of IIT Bombay accumulated over 50 years aggregates a mere $3 million (Rs.16 crore).
It is important to encourage the inflow of donations and endowments from NRIs and India Inc, to stimulate research in higher education. Almost all major breakthroughs in science and technology have come from America’s best universities. If IITs are allowed to freely receive donations from their alumni, they can put this money to good use, researching problems and situations peculiar to India.
In the wider context, emigration from India can be reduced if we create opportunities and level playing fields in our own country. After liberalisation in 1991, the Indian economy has more than doubled its annual rate of GDP growth, and opportunities for personal and professional growth have multiplied manifold. Yet these opportunities must be made available in a fair and competitive manner, just as admissions to the IITs and IIMs are fair and competitive. If such elementary conditions are satisfied, I am confident that many IIT graduates will seek long-term careers in India.
(Dr. Lalit Kanodia is the IIT-Bombay and MIT, USA-educated founder-chairman of the Datamatics Group)