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Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again

nytimes.com

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again

#21
For my mother, repating to Pakistan was very easy. After the '01 recession, she had been looking for telecom work in the US for years, despite a PhD from MIT. Finally she sent her resume abroad and got immediate responses.

But she did hit issues with the opacity of government, which was even more of a problem with Pakistan than India, because she was there during the rule of a military dictatorship. The unfortunate thing is her program, which was establishing extensions of foreign universities for Pakistanis to get top-notch engineering degrees, was killed with democratic reform. No one would argue it was a bad program, but in Pakistan's cut-throat political environment, all of the opposition's ideas are bad.

It's easy to find articles about the crumbling American Emperium, and the vertical rise of new economies in the East, but that's overlooking how much America (and the West in general) has going for it, and how important some of those components are. The quality of a society is not directly proportional to the growth rate of the economy; government, social welfare and cultural attitudes also play important roles.

As much as we bitch about our government, it's an order of magnitude more established and stable than that of India and Pakistan. Corruption, while an issue, is eclipsed by the sort of problems you'd see in these countries. And from my experience, these two countries see social order in a very hierarchical experience; this is the exact opposite behavior to what is needed if we are to assume that the new economy consists of shrinking organization sizes and flattened management chains. These issues exist in China too, except in many ways they seem all the worse.

India, China et al. have a lot going for them, but this article reminded me that it's not all sunshine and roses, and there are still some significant hurdles to overcome. Based on my mother's experience, I don't think the issues associated with repating are simply because those returning are too Americanized - it is a product of many of these unforeseen positives that are so easy to overlook in an atmosphere of cynicism in the West.

Re: Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again

#22

None of these articles even attempt to mention culture and upbringing, which plays an immense role. For example, the person in the article came to the US when he was 7. He is most likely very much Americanized and would feel a foreigner in India, whereas 20-something Indians that come to the US to do their masters/PhD probably can't wait to get back, where they can feel at right at home.

The article isn't about going back. It's about the feudal culture in corporate india, and the way the feudal structure jeopardizes the future of the country.

Re: Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again

#23
post #19

None of these articles even attempt to mention culture and upbringing, which plays an immense role. For example, the person in the article came to the US when he was 7. He is most likely very much Americanized and would feel a foreigner in India, whereas 20-something Indians that come to the US to do their masters/PhD probably can't wait to get back, where they can feel at right at home.

Did you read the article? That was the whole point of the article. For example: Returnees run into trouble when they “look Indian but think American,” It was specifically talking about people who had spent lots of time outside of India (if not their entire lives) before going (back) to India. It was not referring to people that had just gone to grad school abroad then went right back.

Even though its about going back, in this case, its about how the feudal structure hinders the real growth. What good is to have good minds and not put them to use?

Re: Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again

#24
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this an over-generalization? It's not fair to stereotype all government officials in India like that, is it?

Unfortunately, the generalization is well-deserved. The behaviour of the official named Mr. Brahmachari : feudal, mercurial, inconsistent, authoritative...is the template. If you're lucky, there's often exactly one guy somewhere in there who is sincere, professional, and is literally the one doing all the work, and he sympathizes with your case. The number of young Indians who, in theory, can transform Indian cities…

It is worth remembering that feudal, mercurial, inconsistent, authoritarian are not simply individual problems but rather go together.

The hand-written offer given to Mr. Ayyadurai wasn't just an unprofessional act, it was act intended to put him between hope and doubt and thus reinforce the power of his superiors. This style of management by confusion and manipulation also exists in the worst western companies but it's clearly more common in India.

Oddly enough, it's worth remembering that the good part of bureaucracy is fixed rules which allow any member to know where they stand.

Re: Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again

#25
"But a study by Mr. Wadhwa and other academics found that 34 percent of repats found it difficult to return to India--compared to just 13 percent of Indian immigrants who found it difficult to settle in the United States."

Because Mr. Wadhwa is the one who usually writes articles about how more and more international students who study in the United States will return to their countries of birth, this finding is important. Two things are going on here:

1) The United States, because of its historical pattern of settlement by recent immigrants from a variety of countries, really is easier to blend into for a new immigrant than are many other countries that also have friendly natives, developed economies, and reasonably transparent governance.

2) REVERSE culture shock is usually rougher on a returning expatriate than the original culture shock of leaving the native country. I say this as an American who studied Chinese as an undergraduate, lived abroad in Taiwan (with visits to Hong Kong and China) in the 1980s for three years, and then returned to the United States. Then I went over to Taiwan once more for another three-year stay beginning in 1998. It has always been more unsettling to my established assumptions to return to my "home" country after a stay abroad than to go abroad in the first place. When a person goes abroad, sure there are problems with culture shock, wherever you go, but the psychological inner dialog takes the form of "Of course this is weird; I'm in a foreign country." But upon returning "home," after a long and locally connected stay abroad, the inner dialog becomes "Hey, I thought I was coming back home, but now everything feels weird here too." People aren't always sure where "home" is if they have sunk down enough roots in the foreign culture. As G. K. Chesterton wrote, "The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land." A long enough foreign stay will do that to one's mind.

Re: Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again

#26
America did not become the country it is because smart, entrepreneurial people from abroad emigrated to America to join its government. It became the country it is because smart, entrepreneurial people emigrated here to shine as entrepreneurs, and then, often to serve their selfish interests, and some times out of social consciousness, worked to create a government, a system and an environment that is very conducive to progress.

If you emigrate back to India, please, please start a startup. Don't join the government, especially if it is going to be under some long time bureaucrat.

I am sure there will be exceptions to this rule, but in most cases, you will help India (and yourself) more by being an entrepreneur who works to make government more efficient than by being a government official who works to make entrepreneurship (or something else) easier.

Re: Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again

#27
post #7

When an Indian leaves the country to go west, he's made to feel like a traitor for leaving his "motherland". A lot of Indians live with some form of guilt for having a happy and healthy life outside India. The guilt takes some people like the ones mentioned in this article to go back and do some good for the country. I think Indians at home need to realise that there is a world outside India. It's exciting, it's beau…

"When an Indian leaves the country to go west, he's made to feel like a traitor for leaving his "motherland"."

By whom, exactly? I haven't had a single friend or relative imply that I am a traitor. Yes, many tell me I should come back because they miss me, because it would be good for me now that India is booming and it would be good for the country.

There will always be some people with extreme opinions, but I don't think your generalization is true to any substantial degree.

Re: Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again

#28
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people still make it work. Solutions for the problems quoted: 1. Pollution: Dont live in the city. 2. Traffic: Get a big car and a driver ($140 a month). You can sit in the back with a laptop and 1MBps connectivity for $15 a month. 3. Corruption: Work in the private sector and not in the public sector. I was just in India and the undercurrent of the country is very positive which I cant say about the present…

Well you can do all these sitting in NY, minus the inconvenience. As long as you have an original good idea for business, you don't need to move to india (or anywhere else) to make it successful. I guess my main beef with this feel-good, nationalistic, let's-all-go-to-india movement is that whether you like it or not - regardless of your original intentions - this will only benefit the elite few, the rich will get ri…

"the rich will get richer and poor will remain where they were before you went to india hoping to make a difference"

If this were categorically true, capitalism as a system should be considered a failure. Let us say you go back to India and start a startup, and create 10 jobs, that's 10 more jobs in the economy that surely will increase some poor but educated guy's chances of getting a job. He will then hire some poor uneducated guy as his cook, driver etc. How can you say it will only benefit the "elite few"?

Re: Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again

#29
There is more here than meets the eye. A blog post here http://horadecubitus.blogspot.com/2009/11/csir-bitten-by-one... sheds some more light on it. In general, I have little sympathy for either side - one comes across as an imperious bureaucrat who does not know what accountability is and the other someone who assumes that India should be willing to roll over merely because he's returned from the US to fix it. Governments are hard to deal with across the globe.

All is far from wine and roses in India, but I'm not sure I'd use this incident as a litmus test.

Re: Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again

#30
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this an over-generalization? It's not fair to stereotype all government officials in India like that, is it?

Unfortunately, the generalization is well-deserved. The behaviour of the official named Mr. Brahmachari : feudal, mercurial, inconsistent, authoritative...is the template. If you're lucky, there's often exactly one guy somewhere in there who is sincere, professional, and is literally the one doing all the work, and he sympathizes with your case. The number of young Indians who, in theory, can transform Indian cities…

It still seems unfair to extrapolate from one anecdotal instance to the broad assertion that the smarter 'water' must flow west.

Very condescending.

Edit: My objection is this.

You're saying: A := is-smart => B := must-go-west Therefore, ~B => ~A, or not-in-the-west => not-smart.

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