Sarvopama dasa: I think it’s interesting to note that there’s a whole new spin on the term “brain drain”. Twenty years ago the best and brightest from India were all heading to the West so they could take their families to places like Disney World and Six Flags. Suddenly within just the last couple years the professional number crunchers and demographers noticed those same people, while representing about one half a percent of the population, were taking up big positions of responsibility and decision making in scientific, corporate and medical America. They noted that forty-three percent of the doctors in hospitals across the US were from India. They also admitted that a disproportionately large number of top level corporate executive officers in Fortune Five Hundred companies were also from India and anyone who visits NASA will see that nearly half of the expert scientists there are also from the sub-continent. Now the brain drain is looping back on across the oceans to its source. In the last two years it’s noticed that, at a steadily accelerating rate, those same exceptionally bright people are having the good sense to come back to India. When they got to America they found a population dedicated to ideals like, “Being number one” and “Grabbing For All The Gusto”. In a naturally humble way the Indians very quietly cooperated and formed teams which effectively networked all kinds of remarkable solutions and they developed project groups that brought remarkable success that earned them recognition and lots of promotions and big power within the corporate, medical and scientific communities. Now they are giving that all up. They are leaving, some would say, a sinking ship. For whatever reason it is, I say, “Bravo! Job well done. Welcome home. Now just chant Hare Krishna and your life will be sublime. And you know what? Most of them seem to agree with me.
Good points and true. I am a Corporate Recruiter in the US for one of the largest Indian outsourcing firms in the world. About 1 out of every 2 candidates I interface with is motivated to join Infosys in the US so that they can transition back to India in a few years time. They definitely see US as a sinking ship.
I also see that our congregations and preaching is expanding dramatically in India. Unfortunately materialism is growing at a faster pace. In my office, I can barely find an Indian that is vegetarian. And the sad fact is that many used to be but accommodated to Western lifestyle upon coming to US. Same is happening in India. I sense as globalization increases materialism in India, the concomitant problems will also and more dramatically than in the US because the social and economic disparities in India are greater. Once the fissure of suffering goes deeper and wider, the prospects of preaching will increase also as they are in the US.