"Hello, friends!" "Some days ago, Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey said that he's resigning from his position." And the new CEO of Twitter will be Parag Agarwal. An Indian-American. "Born in Ajmer, Rajasthan." He completed his education at IIT-Bombay. "It's an interesting case," because it can be looked at from 2 perspectives. "On one hand, people say that it is something to feel proud about" that Indians are so successful in foreign countries.
They're making India
proud. "But on the other
hand," some people term it as Brain
Drain. "Memes are shared with
""Indians study, for America to prosper.""" People blame things for caste reservations for this Brain Drain. What's the truth? How should we look at this? "Come, in today's Blog, let's try to understand it." """We've been hearing about
Brain Drain for a long time."""
"""37-year-old Parag Agarwal is the CEO of
Twitter.""" """The
opportunities abroad are much better and much more advanced than here." "And you have a chance to get better
livelihood abroad.""" """This
Brain Drain could turn into Brain Gain, had anyone thought about
that?""" An Indian origin
person "becoming the CEO of a big
American company," "has so
many examples, friends" that you'd
be surprised. "After 2014, Satya
Nadela became the CEO of Microsoft."
"Since 2015, Sundar Pichai has been the CEO of Alphabet Inc or
Google." "Since 2007, Shantanu
Narayen is Adobe's CEO." "From
2020, Arvind Krishna is IBM's CEO."
Anjali Sood is Vimeo's CEO since 2017.
"Amanpal Bhutani, GoDaddy's CEO since 2019." "During 2006-2018," Indra Nooyi was Pepsi Co's CEO. "During 2010-2020, Ajay Banga was
MasterCard's CEO." The list doesn't
end here. The trend isn't seen only in
American companies. It is also seen in
Australian companies. Stockland's Tarun
Gupta. Orica's Sanjeev Gandhi. Link's Vivek Bhatia. Pact's Sanjay Dayal. Newcrest's Sandeep Biswas. Cleanaway's Vik Bansal. Some examples can be seen in British
companies as well. "Like Laxman
Narasimhan, Reckitt Benckiser's CEO."
"The examples that I quoted, friends," Most of these people are of Indian origin. Meaning that they were born in India Grew up in India. Completed their education from some popular
Indian colleges like IIT-Bombay "or
IIM Ahmedabad," "BITS Pilani
or Manipal Institute of Technology,"
"After completing their studies, they moved to another
country," "In some cases, they
even took the citizenship of other countries." "And now, they are working in high
positions at companies of those countries." "America, Australia and Europe,"
you'll get many such examples of Indian origin people living
at these places. But what about Asian
countries? "China, Korea, Japan,
Singapore, the UAE," are there such
examples here? "Friends, to answer
that, it is very rare." You'll
hardly get any examples of it. "Like
the CEO of Singapore based DBS Group, Piyush Gupta." "In 2015, it was announced" that the CEO of the Japanese Bank SoftBank "could be Nikesh Arora, a person of
Indian origin." It was decided and
caused a lot of sensation. Because it is
very rare for this to happen in a country like Japan. This decision was later overturned and a Japanese person continued to be the
CEO. "Even in a country like China,
to look for such examples is next to impossible." Don't imagine it to be a conspiracy against
India. The real reason behind it is that these Asian countries have a very closed-off
culture. The people there do not readily
accept foreigners to the extent that
they could become a CEO of a company in their country. You wouldn't find it too weird because we have a similar culture in India. "In fact, in India, it is so
closed-off," "that a foreigner
becoming the CEO of an Indian company is so far fetched, "
"even Indians themselves don't get the chance to become
the CEO in an Indian company," because
most of the Indian companies are
actually running a family business. Have
you ever noticed that the names of many Indian companies is based on the surname of the family? "Adani, Tata, Birla, Godrej, Bajaj,
Mahindra," "Jindal, Mittal,
Oberoi, Goenka, Byju's, Shiv Nadar,"
"Using one's family name as the company isn't out of the
ordinary," but the problem arises
when the top leadership positions of
these companies are occupied only by the
family members. We get to see an
unhealthy amount of Nepotism here and
Meritocracy is strictly lacking. "Think
about it, for an IIT graduate," "it
is much more difficult to become the CEO of Godrej, Mahindra or Bajaj
group" as compared to becoming the
CEO of Google. Because there are so many
family businesses here. "In most
companies," "people from
outside the company are hardly, if ever, given the position of CEO." Another interesting trend is seen here "that of the Indian origin CEOs," most of them work in the field of tech.
"Most of these Indians are software engineers," who've studied in the IT field. And then they started working at these big
tech companies or product companies and
took their careers to the next level. "This
can be done by studying Data Structure Algorithms," "System Designs, Data Science and
similar topics." So many CEOs have
studied Software Engineering "and
almost all the CEOs have an engineering background," so you'd imagine that there is a good scope
of engineering in India. "But do
you know the reality, friends?" "According
to an Employability Assessment Survey, by Aspiring Minds" "95% of India's graduate
engineers," are not qualified for
software engineering jobs. Tech
Mahindra's MD has also said that "94%
of the engineering graduates in India, are not fit for hiring." "Actually, if you ignore the top
colleges like IITs," "then
apart from these prestigious universities," the standard of engineering colleges in India is terrible.
The root problem is that these low-quality engineering colleges "are simply churning out engineering
degrees," And the actual skills
that need to be taught "to the
college graduates, aren't being taught by them." That's why their graduate engineers have no skills. And are unfit for jobs. "Thankfully, there are some companies
that are working to reduce this gap."
"An example of one such company is, Scaler.com."
"Scaler.com is an online tech academy," where each student is taught by the subject
matter experts working at the top tech
companies. "They are focused on
upskilling college students and tech professionals," so that they could become the best Software
Engineers. For the country and for
themselves. Scaler Academy claims that "that their students got more placement
in companies like Amazon," even in
comparison with institutes like IITs. "They
teach all the necessary skills," "that
will be useful for a job," including
cracking interviews. "If you are
interested, you can go register on scaler.com" The link to it is in the description below. "Now, let's return to the topic." "As Indians, we feel very proud" if an Indian origin person becomes the CEO of
an American company. But in how many
Indian companies "are from America,
Nigeria, China, Japan?" "In
fact, how many examples are there of a foreigner being the CEO of an Indian
company?" It is very rare. One example that I can think of "is the CEO of Tata Motors, Guenter
Butschek." He was the CEO between
2016 to a few months ago in 2021. But
such examples are very rare. "Similarly,
Indians feel very proud when a person with Indian ancestry," gets to a political position in a foreign
country. Like Kamala Harris and Bobby
Jindal in the USA. Priti Patel and Alok
Sharma in Britain.
"Jagmeet Singh in Canada," "Deepak Raj-Gupta in Australia," "Mahendra Chaudhry in Fiji," Anerood Jugnauth in Mauritius. "But when it comes to Sonia
Gandhi," then the very first point
of criticism that we have is Sonia
Gandhi's Italian origin. How can an
Indian politician be born in a foreign country?
How can they have ancestry from abroad?
"Millenniums ago, our Upanishads talk about the concept of
""The World is my Family"" " Every people in the world is like a family
member. "Today, you can describe it
with one word" Cosmopolitan. "While on one hand," "countries like Australia, the USA and
the European countries" "have
accepted the ideology of Cosmopolitanism,"
"On the other hand, India and many other Asian countries," have not embraced the spirit of this concept
yet. "Just for the sake of saying
it, we say ""Guests are like God""," but the ground reality is that "we get to witness attacks on
Africans," "we see
Xenophobia," "distrust of the
foreigners," and hatred against the
foreigners. "The situation was so
bad in 2016," that African Heads of
Mission had issued a statement regarding this in New Delhi. "Asked the government to counter this
racism,"
and the attacks against Africans should be stopped. "Our then External Affairs Minister,
Sushma Swaraj," responded to this
by saying that stringent actions would be taken against the culprits. "Not only the foreigners, " "for people travelling from one state to
the other in their own country," it
becomes difficult to do so. "We get
to see such examples in states like Maharashtra and Gujarat," how the UP and Bihar migrants have to suffer
atrocities there. There are attacks
against them. """The boys
that have come from UP, Bihar with fake certificates," "have been driven away," "And people from Maharashtra should get
admission here.""" "Kashmiri
students are attacked in states like Rajasthan, UP, Haryana." "In 2021, ICSSR commissioned a
Government Study." "They
interviewed about 1,200 people" "across
6 metro cities," It was found that
North-eastern people have to go through
so much harassment ever since the Covid outbreak. They are often insulted and harassed by
calling them Coronavirus.
"Or take Nitish Kumar's campaign from the 2015 Bihar
elections," "in which the
campaign uses the slogan ""Biharis versus Outsiders""" "Apart from this regionalism," we also see the problem of religious
communalism. The multitude of clashes in
the country in the name of religion. We
also see the problem of casteism. Run
this Google search. You'll get more than
50 news articles on it. "There are
so many such incidents, every week, every month." "And when we talk about the issue of
Brain Drain," "about how
Indians go abroad and become the CEOs of foreign companies," the blame is often put on Caste Reservations. "But if you think about it," do you get caste reservations in private
jobs? There are no caste reservations in
private jobs. "There are no caste
reservations if you want to start your business," or your company. Caste reservations are in the government jobs
only. And the government jobs form a
very small percentage of the total workforce.
"There are caste reservations in colleges as well," "but the people that have gone and
become CEOs abroad," have studied
at prestigious colleges. "In many
cases, they've studied at Indian Universities and Indian colleges." "Even then, why did they choose to go
abroad?"
In comparison to staying in India. "The real reason behind it is that the
societies of these countries," are
very open and accepting of outsiders. "And
these countries do not have Casteism, Communalism, Regionalism like in
India." Neither is Nepotism seen in
family businesses. It is easier to do a
job or a business without having to face these discriminations. "And obviously, the other reasons," "The law and order of the country," "a lesser degree of corruption," "having to face no political
harassment," also play a part. "It's not that America doesn't have
extreme right-wing people," or that
there are no racist attacks. "Many
cases have been seen in Australia, Canada," Racist attacks against Indians in America. "But these cases are very rare, first of
all," and the second and more
important thing is that the police take
these things seriously there. They work
to maintain law and order. Politicians
don't come out with rallies in favour of racist people. "There have been some recent examples
like Donald Trump," "but
generally, the police there work diligently," to maintain law and order. The third thing is that the governments often
acknowledge these problems. They don't
look the other way. "Like in 2009,
the Australian Prime Minister," condemned
the racist attacks against Indians. "Talking
about being a Cosmopolitan," America
stands out the most when compared to all other countries. America is thought to be the Land of
Opportunities And it is quite true. It is one of the major reasons why America
could become a superpower. "I
talked about it in an older Blog," about why America is the World's #1
Superpower today. "In this Blog, I had told you," a major reason for it is that America
attracts good talent from other countries.
"Whether it is Nobel Prize winning scientists Har Gobind
Khorana," "Albert Einstein,
" "Astronomers like Kalpana
Chawla and Sunita Williams," Artists
like Charlie Chaplin or Priyanka Chopra.
Or business executives like Elon Musk or Parag Agarwal. All of them are immigrants who became successful in America because
America gave them the opportunity to. "If
you look at the list of Fortune Top 500 Companies of 2017," "you'd find that 57% of the CEOs of the
Top 35 companies," are immigrants.
"Either they are from outside America," or they are the children of immigrants. "And of all the immigrants, Indians are
the dominant group for tech startups."
So big question that arises here How
can India become a Land of Opportunities?
It's not that India had 12-13 talented people "and all of them have become CEOs of
American companies," There is still
so much talent in India. How can that
talent be capitalised on? There are some
solutions here. The first is to make
India a safe country where the law and
order actually works. That is not under
the rule of goons. I talked about this
in the last blog. Society needs to be
created where everyone feels safe and
secure. "Where there is no
discrimination in the name of Caste, Religion, Region or Family." "Not only degrees, but skill development
also needs to be taken seriously." So
that people would actually be trained for work.
The government should spend more of the budget on Research and
Innovation. The tax system and the
process of setting up a business should be simplified. And made so easier that it could be done
without needing the help of a CA. "And
finally, remember one thing," Brain
Drain is better than Brain in the Drain.
Did you get what I'm trying to say?
There's no use in blackmailing people
into staying in the country and asking them to look for opportunities
within the country only. "If people
feel that there are more opportunities abroad," that they can better utilise their talent
there So they should be allowed to do
so. They shouldn't be forced to stay and
use their talents only in India. "Because
instead of wasting the talent," it
is better that it's used somewhere. The
focus should be on building better opportunities how the country could be improved. I hope you found the blog informative. Let's meet in the
next blog. Thank you very much!