How brain drain persists as India’s silent but severe crisis

An apparently innocuous news item recently came from China: “Internationally Renowned Materials Scientist Seeram Ramakrishna joins Tsinghua University as a full-time faculty member.”

According to Xinhua News Agency: “On March 23, Tsinghua University held a ceremony for the conferment of Tsinghua University professorship to Prof Seeram Ramakrishna, officially welcoming the internationally renowned materials scientist to join Tsinghua University as a full-time faculty member. Qiu Yong, secretary of the CPC Tsinghua University Committee, Li Luming, president of Tsinghua University, attended the ceremony.”

Li Luming noted that Prof Seeram is a world-leading scientist in the field of nanoscience and technology, with deep ties to both China and Tsinghua University.

Prof Seeram observed that since joining Tsinghua University, he has gained “a deep appreciation for its rich academic heritage, strong humanistic spirit, and vibrant energy”. He added that he hoped to “contribute to the development of the university's discipline, construction, scientific innovation, and educational undertakings through concrete actions”.

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For someone like me, who has spent more than five decades in India, this raises a serious question: why are Indians (and especially noted scholars) leaving India for so-called greener pastures?

Seeram, who graduated from MIT, Chennai, later earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge and worked at the National University of Singapore (NUS) from 1996 to 2025, is undoubtedly fond of China.

Why are Indians leaving?

Out of curiosity, I asked an AI site for some figures about Indians leaving the country.

An average of 2 lakhs Indian nationals voluntarily renounced their citizenship annually between 2022 and 2024.

Nearly 9 lakhs in the past five years have left Bharat for the West: “Major destinations for those leaving include the USA, Canada, Australia, and Germany.”

They don’t move only to Western nations; 13.6 million NRIs live abroad, with significant numbers in the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

The statistics on ‘renunciation of citizenship’ are telling: “The trend of renouncing citizenship has risen by 70 per cent in the last five years, averaging roughly 220,000 per year.” It is the new ‘normal’.

The reasons for leaving are better career opportunities, a better lifestyle, personal convenience, and seeking better education for the children. Some 75,000 Indian doctors are working abroad, and one in three IIT graduates is working outside the country.

Can remedies be found?

This is a serious issue which should be honestly investigated by the government, and remedies should be found. India’s rapid development is fine, but Indians are still leaving the Indian boat?

One can presume that there is no quick-fix solution, a focus on eliminating corruption in all domains of life, would obviously go a long way. There is no use proclaiming, ‘there is no corruption in our house’, when there is, but who is interested in eliminating corruption today?

‘Clean India’ would be another major contribution. I see that it is in none of the manifestos of the parties going to local polls in the coming weeks.

Of course, more radical (and perhaps) unpopular decisions would have to be taken by the government.

A small way would be to honour those who have done a lot to make India known to the world, particularly some ‘ferengis’ who are today forgotten or not well known. I am thinking particularly of people like Sister Nivedita, the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram or Alexandra David-Neel, the French explorer; who I have always felt close to her for opening the gates of India and Tibet to tens of millions in the West.

Alexandra David-Neel

A few years ago, I gave a presentation in BHU on ‘Alexandra David-Neel: A Great Adventurer in Mystical India’; very few among the scholars were even aware of her existence.

There is no doubt that Alexandra David-Neel, born on October 24, 1868, in Saint-Mandé, France, was the greatest adventurer of the first half of the 20th century and a great lover of India; her book The India Where I Lived, chronicling her experiences in India, sold in millions.

As early as 1886 (when she was 18), Alexandra embarked, without informing her parents, on a trip to Spain and a ‘Tour de France; it was highly uncommon at the time.

She first encountered India (and Varanasi) at the age of 23: “What then can be said of such a journey undertaken in 1891 by a young woman of twenty-three?” asks Jean Challons, her biographer, adding: “Even today, it takes audacity and a spirit of adventure to travel to those lands where the Light flourishes and where, even during trips meticulously organised by reputable agencies, whimsy multiplies its unpredictable, and sometimes unfortunate interventions."

It was in Varanasi that she met her first teacher, the yogi Bhaskarananda, who introduced the young Parisian to the techniques of yoga: “Alexandra would never forget Bhaskarananda and would keep his gift, his orange scarf. Bhaskarananda is the first of these small, human-faced guardian deities who would appear and then disappear, their mission accomplished, in Alexandra’s Asian destiny, guiding her path toward enlightenment like so many milestones, like so many steps. And this is one of the great wonders reserved by India for its chosen ones: the enduring presence of these little deities performing great miracles,” explains Challons.

After a short avatar as a classical opera singer (1895-1902), she discovered Buddhism in June 1898, when she participated in a Tibetan Buddhist ceremony at the Guimet Museum, led by Agvan Dorjiev, a Buryat monk and close confidant of the 13th Dalai Lama, in the presence of Georges Clemenceau, the future French Prime Minister.

In August 1911, Soles of the Wind, as she was nicknamed, left Europe, supposedly for eighteen months; she would return …fourteen years later. In 1912, during a stopover in Pondicherry, she met Sri Aurobindo and wrote to her husband in France: “In the evening I had a conversation with a Hindu whom I don’t believe I’ve ever mentioned to you, as we don’t correspond and I only knew of him through the praise of friends. I spent two wonderful hours discussing the ancient philosophical ideas of India with an interlocutor of rare intelligence, belonging to that uncommon breed—and with whom I have all my sympathy—of reasonable mystics.”

Her travels continued; in Kalimpong, she met the 13th Dalai Lama, the ‘Yellow Pope', as she called him.

Then, later that same year, came a second stay in Varanasi: “This week, we had three days of jubilation in our usually very peaceful neighbourhood. A festival of the God of the World! …It's Vishnu in the form of Jaggernath,” she explained to her husband (who stayed in France!).

At the end of the year, she discovered Sikkim, the Himalayas… and Tibet. Between 1914 and 1916, she meditated in a cave in Sikkim with her Tibetan guru, the Gomchen of Lachen. At that time, she took the opportunity to enter Tibet for the first time via northern Sikkim; she reached Shigatse and met the Panchen Lama at his Tashilhunpo monastery.

The culmination of her travels came in 1924, when she reached the Tibetan capital: “For the first time since the earth has existed, a foreign woman has beheld Lhasa.” “And then came Japan, Korea, and Tibet again.”

Throughout all these travels, she met yogis, philosophers, lamas, mystics, administrators, and princes, but also ordinary people and terrifying bandits. These encounters in India and on the Roof of the World would become the subject of more than 30 books.

In 1937, at the age of 69, she decided to return to China via Brussels, Moscow, and the Trans-Siberian Railway; she had decided to study ancient ‘Taoism’… and it was during the war that she found herself in Tibet. Upon her return to France in 1946, Alexandra settled in Digne in the Alpes-Maritimes.

But Alexandra was homesick: “In truth, I long for a country that is not my own. I am haunted by the steppes, the solitude, the eternal snow, and the vast blue sky ‘up there’! I remain under its spell.”

On February 28, 1973, her ashes were scattered in the Ganges at Varanasi by her devoted secretary, Marie-Madeleine Peyronnet. It was her final return to India, a country she loved so much.

Like for Alexandra, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, the old Sanskrit formula from the Maha Upanishad (‘the world is one family’), should become a living mantra for all, not a mere political slogan.

While promoting Bharat, scholars like Alexandra should be given due respect and recognition; it could be a small step to ‘attract’ individuals to study in India. Let us not forget that at its apogee, Nalanda Mahavihara used to draw the best brains from all over the world; they added their own genius to that of Mother India. Why is this not happening anymore?

Incidentally, there is an excellent chapter consecrated to ‘India, (a Home to Many)' in Exploring Society: India and Beyond, the recently published textbook for Grade 7. Fascinating, but who will read it?

(The writer is Distinguished Fellow, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence (Delhi). Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)