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No more abroad plans for Indians
By siliconindia
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Saturday, 26 July 2008, 17:31 IST
Bangalore: The 'brain drain' seems to be reversing for India. According to placement figures at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore, 75 percent of this year's graduates opted for jobs in India, writes Shoba Narayan, who returned to India after living in the U.S. for 20 years.
Unlike in the past when people queued in front of American consulate for days to get a U.S. visa, they prefer home to any other country today. Sourav Mukherji, placement director at the IIM-Bangalore, sees his students being more discerning about the jobs they take. "Going abroad is viewed as a choice, not a given," he says. Out of the 256 students in IIM Bangalore's graduating class, only 65 opted for international locations; 75 percent of the class opted for jobs in India, and four students opted out of the placement process altogether to pursue entrepreneurial dreams. Finance and banking followed by consulting are the most sought after careers, with 40 percent of the students opting for jobs in finance and 37 percent in consulting.
At IIM Ahmedabad, many students turned down jobs in prominent companies abroad to stay and work in India, according to Piyush Kumar Sinha, chairperson of placement at the Institute. The major reason is India's emergence as a 'hot' global economy. Most of the students view studying and working abroad with a nonchalance.
The article goes on to say that more women (roughly 50 percent of the IIM-B class) choose foreign postings mostly because they gravitate towards finance. Nidhi Gupta, a graduate from IIT Bombay, plans to work at HSBC in London, where she has accepted a job offer in the capital markets side for a few years. She thinks that she will learn a lot from the exposure. "But eventually, I want to come back to India and start something on my own."
And as those students, who leave for any foreign country, say that they will come back in a few years, the so-called 'brain drain' is slowly turning into a brain-gain, says the article published on Knowledge@Wharton.
Thousands of Asian entrepreneurs have proved in the recent past that there is money to be made in China, India, Taiwan and Korea. So if the money is your goal, says the article, you don't have to go abroad for that. The slowdown of the U.S. economy bolsters this argument somewhat.