Mashelkar Confirms Brain Drain Reversal Francis C. Assisi

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Mashelkar says that changing patterns of scientific emigration and immigration have convinced him that India is on course to become one of the world's greatest intellectual and economic engines.

In the essay appearing in Science magazine, Mashelkar says he is confirming a claim he made five years ago during his presidential address to the Indian Science Congress, when he predicted: "The next century will belong to India, which will become a unique intellectual and economic power to reckon with, recapturing all its glory, which it had in the millennia gone by."

Mashelkar observes that rather than fleeing the country, often for good, more and more young scientists now are opting to stay or at least return to India.

That’s because not only have living conditions improved, but also opportunities for exciting work are exploding as a result of research and development (R&D) centers that multinational companies have been establishing in India in recent years.

Moreover, says Mashelkar, India's indigenous R&D culture is shifting from one of emulation to one of innovation across categories ranging from biopharmaceuticals to automotive engineering.

A "returnee" himself years ago even as his peers were leaving India, he argues that a positive-feedback dynamic--one that even might be abetted by pedagogical innovations that could quickly shrink the country's illiteracy problem--has set in, opening the possibility that India, a country of 1 billion people, could become the world's top center of knowledge production by 2020.

Mashelkar says that his dream “is to create a global knowledge pool for global good through global funding.”

He goes on to observe: ‘This past December, I visited the John F. Welch Technology Centre in Bangalore. With 2300 employees, it is General Electric's (GE's) largest single location for R&D in the world. I found that 700 of the employees were young Indians, who had chosen to come back to India from the United States during the preceding 3 to 4 years. GE is not alone in setting up shop in India. More than 100 global companies including IBM, Motorola, and Intel have established R&D centers in India during the past 5 years, and more are coming. Many Indians who received their training and early work experiences abroad are now returning to India to work in these research centers. There is a silent scientific repatriation taking place in India.’

Other points cited by Mashelkar:

There is more in house innovative research in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry

The latest Intel chip and the latest GE aeroengine are being designed in Bangalore.

The Indian automobile industry now is exporting indigenously designed and manufactured cars such as the Indica to European markets.

francisassisi@hotmail.com