India's double brain drain

India's best and brightest still prefer employment with foreign corporations, whether in India or abroad, to maximise skills honed in Indian institutions

Arvind Krishna, chairman and CEO of IBM, recently said he was bullish about the innovations coming out of the conglomerate’s India R&D centre. This is the point at which we pat ourselves on the back for our indigenous tech prowess. Indeed, the staggering range and quality of artificial intelligence and semiconductor research being done in India by multinationals is a largely unacknowledged aspect of the global high-tech boom. 

This is one element of the new brain drain. Unlike the earlier version, which saw qualified engineers and management students, many educated at government cost at top-notch institutions, head out to the West