INDIA -- A SUPERPOWER

Gone are the days when Indians aspired to do a job in the US. We all were attracted by the higher standard of education and living, and a more liberal economy.The US supposed to be the power house of brains drained off the best talents form the developing countries.But today we are witnessing a shift in the balance of brain power towards India & China.

                     

                                       With India becoming a hot favourite destination for MNCs,a 'reverse brain trend' is the norm of the day.Thousands of Indian IT professionals working abroad have returned India. The "INDUS ENTREPENEURS" ,an association of Indian IT professionals in the USA estimates that some 80,000 IT Professionals returned India from California's "Silicon Valley" in the past year. Today Brand INDIA is booming & Indians abroad want to be a part of the development process.The negative aspects of being a second citizen abroad ,the greatly improved India's education system,family roots & greater avenue for advancement bring them to their motherland. The result of this influx is that India today has a large pool of talented technocrats and managers with global expertise and India is ready to take the world by storm.                                                  

                                  The US companies' foreign policies have also helped us. In 1980s & 1990s, only blue collar manufacturing jobs were outsourced to India for two reasons - quality labour at cheap cost..But late 1990s they started outsourcing knowledge -engineering technology,product design,research,software development to India. INTEL CEO Barret has warned the US Govt. that this outsourcing has created about 250 million highly skilled innovative technocrats in India and China.From the US perspective,its true that they are boosting profits in the short term.But in the long run, they are eroding their own creativity to generate new products.US presidential candidate Barack Obama mulls tougher tax scheme on companies outsourcing to India , but with 3.5 million jobs to be outsourced to India by 2015, the trend is set to continue. 

                                      India's education (technical) institutes have also come a long way.Today India produces 3.5 lacs engineers while US churns out only 70,000 engineers per year.Even George Bush admitted that Indian students fare better in maths and science as compared to their US counterparts.With India Govt. providing greater incentives in Research,Space Technology, the future looks rosy for India. The worrying factor for the US is that it has few home grown talent. 53% of the employees of Silicon Valley are foreign born.Since the post 9/11 clampdown on immigration,people applying for visas to work in the US in technology sector have come down by 55%.

                                      Thus India's pool of talents is increasing by manifolds but USA's pool has eroded.That India will overrun the US as the powerhouse of brains in the near future is ,therefore, definitely there on the cards.