To be frank, 90% of revenue I earned since I graduated 6 years ago has been spent for anything little more than building a house for myself in Bangalore and greasing some corrupt palms in BBMP offices. The question is, Does the special skills, knowledge and talent I acquired with my engineering degree when compared to rest of the population is worth for just a single house to myself ?? Thanks to rising Inflation, the cost of living in Bangalore is so high that there is hardly any savings left to be able to do anything else.
Many talented and skilled workforce in India who go on to win lucrative jobs abroad are doing very little to give back to the development of country. There is so much brauhaha being created about success of Indians abroad as I see some spam emails floating around stating- as many as 12% scientists and 38% doctors in the US are Indians, and in NASA, 36% or almost 4 out of 10 scientists are Indians, One-third of Silicon Valley engineers are Indian etc etc. There is unnecessary hype generated around them saying they represent India in the World, act as cross culture exchange, make India proud and other crap like that. I believe, single benefit they bring to our nation is making huge deposits in banks here. India is the world's leading receiver of remittances from its citizens spread around the world and account for approximately 3% of the country's GDP. Together with software exports from in house engineers, 10% of our country's GDP comes from highly talented engineers and doctors. Software engineers and Doctors are supposed to be creme de la.... All that best of the best workforce contribute to our nation's GDP is 10% which is still less than 17.7% GDP from Agricultural exports from illiterate farmers and laborers.
Is foreign exchange reserves the only advantage we can derive from these best minds ?
Little do we know that, these huge cash remittances only end up in corrupt babus/netas pockets through various corruption scams like 2G scam, CWG scam, land scam etc. Today, land mafia and politician nexus has ensured that buying a land or flat in metropolitan cities is nothing less that 30-40 lakhs which means 8-10 years of average software engineers savings. India loses two billion a year in resources, through brain drain of 1,00,000 skilled computer professionals to the U.S alone, according to a UN report. Business Week called IIT graduates one of the hottest exports India has ever produced. The same foreign companies who hire/import Indian cheap labourers sell their end products to India with huge profit margins.
Indian Defense import costs more than remittances of Indian workers abroad. Thanks to low wages at ISRO and DRDO. Today, India is world's largest importer of arms and ammunition from other countries.
There is a need for Indian skilled Diaspora to use their special skills to catalyze changes in social, and economic attitudes in India and help bring in technological innovation and drive the reforms.
Here is my wish list of the opportunities for applying the skills towards betterment of our country :-
1. India has the largest area of cultivable land, after only the United States, and enjoys growing conditions suited to most crops, vegetables and fruit. Yet it imports many oil seeds and crops from other countries. There is a need for another wave of Green revolution which should be targeted at attaining self sufficiency in agricultural produce.
2. 20% of food crops either go rotten or eaten by rodents in FCI godowns of India. Yet about 380 million Indians suffer from hunger and malnourishment today. There is a need for better public distribution systems and technology.
3. We pay billions of our foreign exchange money to French and US based Nuclear companies to build power generating nuclear reactors to fulfill our energy needs. Yet, we are utilizing only 18 percent of the hydro electric potential, 10% of wind enery potential, 5% of Biomass potential to generate electricity. India has 6000 Km of coast sea surface, it has potential of about 40,000 MW tidal energy, its currently harnessing none. UK having much less coastal surface is tapping 10% its electricity from ocean. There is a need for Research and Development targetted at harnessing our natural resources.
4. Korea having coastal surface area which is about 10% that of India still captures 70% of world's fishing export market. Reason being...Indian fisherman do not have technological fishing aids such as cheap mechanized boats etc. There is a need for better weather forecasting and fishing cultivation technologies.
5. Of the total world's area under cultivation for floriculture, India has 25% share but Kenya exports much higher than India. There is a need for agricultural innovation to increase the yield and efficiency of cultivation.
6. We boast our self that nine out of 10 diamonds used in the world are made in India but very few of us know that 20% of gold in the world is used by Indians alone. There is a need to cut down on cosmetics and get rid of goldphilic women mentality.
Back in 1970's, when our country was reeling with acute shortage of food, we brought in 'Green revolution' to boost agricultural production. Now its time for 'Silicon revolution'.
* Views expressed here are my own and statistics collected are from various economic publications which might be obsolete.
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