Who Wants to Leave India?

For a decade or more, the world has looked to India with fear and hope: with fear because so many jobs have been outsourced to India; with hope because India generates so many well-educated workers who are badly needed by companies worldwide. But is that fear and hope justifiable? How many Indians really want to migrate? And what would this migration mean for India's present -- and future -- economy?

The answers may not be what the world expects. Gallup has studied worldwide migration patterns since 2006, producing a wealth of information that is important to the business community. Rajesh Srinivasan, Ph.D., one of Gallup's regional directors for Asia Pacific, has been analyzing the results, and what he's finding doesn't always sync up with traditional assumptions about Indian workers.

For instance, as Dr. Srinivasan discusses in the following conversation, a small percentage of Indians want to leave India -- but in a country of a billion people, that's a big number of potential migrants. And the people most likely to want to go aren't necessarily unskilled laborers with few job opportunities. Instead, they are more likely to be better educated and in the middle to upper socioeconomic levels. And India might not be all that worried about brain drain; the country may even be encouraging it as a release valve for the smart, ambitious, and stymied. But will this strategy work? Or could it cause economic damage that can reach across India's borders?

GMJ: According to Gallup's data, Indians who have secondary or higher education are the most likely to want to migrate permanently. Why is that?

Rajesh Srinivasan, Ph.D.: One explanation often provided for this phenomenon is a simple supply-demand mismatch, because many of the best educated workers can't get quality jobs in India. The private sector is not generating enough jobs, and government jobs may not be appealing to the educated. There is definitely some disenchantment with existing work conditions. Well-educated workers' aspirations are high, and they may believe that they can do better for themselves and their family outside the country because their education and skills are marketable.

Many people already know somebody with a similar skill set who has left to find a job in another country. That motivates the younger generation to think, "If I truly want to be like that person who left, I better start studying to get a job like that. Once I do that, I won't even think of options in India; I'll think about getting out."

GMJ: But a relatively small percentage of Indian adults -- 5% -- want to leave the country permanently.

Dr. Srinivasan: Right. But in a country with a population of more than a billion, that's still a lot people in absolute numbers.

GMJ: So if the ambitious, energetic, educated people who would like to leave actually did leave, what effect could that have on the Indian economy?

Dr. Srinivasan: The desire to leave and the reality of migrating are quite different things. The expression "If I had a chance, I would leave now" reflects aspirational needs, while the reality is that not everyone can migrate. But if everyone who wanted to leave actually did leave, India should be extremely worried. That's because the people who want to leave are exactly the kind of workers that India needs to keep to help with the country's development -- to help develop the economy, reduce poverty, create better governance, and stimulate entrepreneurship.

Certainly, the government would like these talented, educated people to stay; or, if nothing else, the government would like to make it easy for them to consider returning at some point, and it has taken action to address this issue. But I'm not sure that the government actually recognizes that it's a big problem.

GMJ: What do you mean?

Dr. Srinivasan: With the large population and the number of highly educated people that India's generating, I think the government feels that trying to curtail the outflow of educated Indians could create tensions within the country that the government might have a difficult time managing. In other words, the government sees migration as a safety valve. If people want to leave, especially educated people seeking better opportunities elsewhere, let them go -- but let's not lose touch with them. Perhaps migrants will feel the pull to come back, and they'll return with the skills, knowledge, and experiences that they have acquired overseas.

Whether conscious or otherwise, it's been a reasonably successful policy. That's because over the past decade or two, especially with the technology boom, many successful professionals in various fields have decided to come back to India to re-establish roots, and many of them are thriving in their respective fields.