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** * * <http://www.jharkhand.org.in/forum> ** ** ** For almost 50 years, the hard-earned money of India's taxpayers has gone down the ``brain drain'' as many of the engineers trained at the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology went overseas and didn't return. That is now changing. The supply of top-end technical talent by Indian universities is beginning to create its own domestic demand: The class that graduates from the seven IITs this month will mostly stay home -- or return after short stints abroad -- and pay back the nation's investment, according to a survey by Evalueserve, a New Delhi-based business-research company. Every third alumnus of the IITs went abroad from 1964 to 2001, mostly to the U.S.; out of the more-recent graduates -- including the Class of 2008 -- 84 percent have chosen to remain in India, the survey says. The post- and pre-2001 groups have very different attitudes. ``The drop in the number of IITians who believe the U.S. offers a `better standard of living' has been remarkable, from 13 percent to almost zero,'' says Alok Aggarwal, author of the report and an alumnus of the IIT in New Delhi. India's example, which has great relevance for policy makers in developing nations, clearly shows that the relationship between education and growth isn't a one-way street: More of the former doesn't always produce more of the latter. Sometimes the economy has to cross a threshold level of development before the investment in human resources -- especially higher education -- starts producing results. Demand and Supply India, which set up its first IIT in 1951, had to wait until 2002 before the promise of rapid economic growth -- and new industries and companies that were born as a result of that expansion -- pushed up demand for top talent to a point where the country could begin to absorb a greater proportion of the domestic supply. ``Education may influence the economy in subtle ways, interacting with other factors,'' says the Commission on Growth and Development, a group of business and government leaders led by Nobel Prize-winning economist Michael Spence. ``India turned out world-class engineers and scientists for decades before its economy took off,'' the commission said in a report released last month. Yet, this investment in skills yielded limited economic results, says the commission, ``until India discovered a global demand for software services, a demand which has since broadened to include outsourced research-and-development and a wide array of services delivered over the Internet.'' ``India, in short, had to solve a demand-and-supply problem, not just a supply problem,'' the commission said. Changing Destination The changing career destination of IIT students has important ramifications for both India as well as the U.S. Each year, the IITs award about 4,000 undergraduate diplomas. Typically, one out of four alumni surveyed by Evalueserve has gone on to start a company. Others have become top executives at multinational companies or have opted to teach in top U.S. and European universities. In other words, the direct economic output of IIT graduates has accrued overwhelmingly to the developed economies. Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Santa Clara, California-based Sun Microsystems Inc., is an IIT Delhi graduate. Arun Sarin, chief executive officer at Britain's Vodafone Group Plc, studied at IIT Kharagpur. Narendra Karmarkar, the mathematician who wrote a linear-programming algorithm that bears his name, graduated from IIT Bombay. Economic Implications As more of this top talent stays home now, domestic entrepreneurship in India is going to receive a big boost. Almost half of the respondents in the Evalueserve survey see entrepreneurial ventures emerging as the best career option for IIT graduates by 2017. Such optimism for entrepreneurship bodes well for India because it shows that the supply of senior business leaders -- which could quickly become a constraint in a high-growth economy -- won't dry up, says Aggarwal. And what will be the ramifications for the U.S.? A three-part study by researchers at Duke University and University of California at Berkeley offers some interesting clues. The study showed that from 1995 to 2005, 26 percent of all the U.S. technology and engineering companies started by immigrants had Indian founders. Will the source of this entrepreneurship disappear? Not so soon. Standard of living isn't the only, or even the biggest, motivator for an undergraduate engineer in India planning a career. The lure of graduate education in the U.S. is still very powerful. However, even here there's a problem. Thanks to a multiyear wait for permanent-residency status in the U.S., there is the potential for a ``reverse brain-drain'' of skilled workers, say the Duke-Berkeley researchers. U.S. education and immigration policy makers must pay close attention to the changing destination of IIT graduates. The surplus that India will export will dwindle even as the U.S. works harder to retain the talent that eventually comes its way. bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_mukherjee&sid=a4nDoUoP4kqI Super 30 Famous as maths wizard Anand Kumar who once sold 'papad' on the streets to eke out a living is a happy man today with all the 30 aspirants of IIT-JEE from his coaching institute, Super 30, making it to premier IITs. Kumar, who runs the coaching institute with Additional Director General of Police Abhayanand, set it up in 2003 for providing free coaching and boarding to students from economically weak backgrounds. The number of students from the institute who made it to the IIT rose from 18 in 2003 to 22 in 2004, 26 in 2005, 28 each in 2006 and 2007 to 30 aspirants this year. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar congratulated the students of Super 30 and also Sithikant, a student of St Michael's High School in Patna, who topped the All India Merit List for IIT-JEE this year. "Bihar is rising and the renaissance has begun. Sithikant and students of Super 30, will inspire future aspirants," Kumar said in his message. Anand's house at Kathpulwa on the outskirts of the state capital wore a festive look with parents of children who cracked the IIT JEE distributed sweets to everyone in the area. ADGP Abhayanand who teaches physics at the institute told PTI, "We shortlisted some 30 students and coached them for the All India Engineer Entrance Examination (AIEEE) and all of them made to the IIT list. We will increase the number of AIEEE students from the next batch". economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News_By_Industry/Services/Education/Bihar_students_make_ it_to_IITs_with_help_from_maths_wizard/articleshow/3088579.cms ** <http://www.jharkhand.org.in/contact.htm> . * <http://jharkhand.ning.com/> News TV <http://www.indian-tv.blogspot.com/> Blog <http://www.jharkhand.org.in/blog> Photo <http://www.jharkhand.org.in/photo> Music <http://www.jharkhandi.org/music.htm> Video <http://www.jharkhandi.org/video.htm> Live Chat <http://www.jharkhand.org.in/live> Directory <http://www.jharkhand.org.in/directory> Testimonials <http://www.jharkhand.org.in/directory> Forum <http://yahoogroups.com/group/jharkhand> Contact <http://www.jharkhand.org.in/contact.htm> . Check out => Jharkhand.ning.com <http://www.jharkhand.ning.com/> * -- Jharkhand Blog [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jharkhand Online Network www.jharkhand.org.in/blog
