Over the past three decades, Dr Sadan-and Nanjundiah, Professor of Phys-ics at Central Connecticut State Uni-versity, thought of coming back to India several times. He even sought the assistance of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India (GoI) and the Indian Embassy at Washington DC in 1985. While the Indian Embassy never responded, he received a rather rude reply from the MHRD. “Margaret Alva (the then Minister of State, MHRD) actually wrote back to me saying that India did not need the services of people like me,” tells Nanjundiah.
Cut to 2012. The MHRD is giving final shape to its Brain Gain Policy (See pg 18). As per the policy note, it is pulling out all stops to motivate Indian diaspora to return home to start with creating a climate of excellence at India’s 14 Innovation universities. “We will extend it to other institutions of excellence (IoEs) also, in due course. Meanwhile, we have to build a set of objective criteria as to what is an IoE,” says a senior official of the MHRD. The ministry is also considering a proposal by Dr Sam Pitroda to set up a global fund of $500 million to attract select professors
and researchers to India. A year back, it launched a webpage for non-resident Indians (NRIs) and persons of Indian origin (PIOs) on its website. The page says, “This is going to be your window to opportunities in higher education sector back home. India is taking giant strides in the field of education and you can be a part of this journey…”
In fact, in early 2011, Kapil Sibal, Minister of HRD, GoI, in a special edition of MHRD newsletter brought out on the occasion of Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas, said, “The knowledge sector in India needs the creative potential and the strategic vision of global talent particularly those of Indian origin.”
India Calling
The government is clearly opening its arms wide to woo the best of Indian academics abroad. But even when there was no clear policy or intent to embrace them, there were some Indians teaching abroad who would return home. They were mainly spurred by a desire to contribute to nation building and give back to society they had been part of. “I just wanted to come back and work for the country,” says Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala, the renowned professor at Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M). Jhunjhunwala got his MS and PhD degrees from University of Maine and taught as assistant professor at Washington State University for two years before he joined IIT-M in 1981, a time when the institute did nothing particular to attract talent.
Around the same time, Sudhir K Jain, Director, IIT Gandhinagar, also returned after a PhD at CalTech to teach at IIT Kanpur as he felt a strong sense of engagement with India and gets a high sense of worth by contributing to the country. “I have been an earthquake safety activist and of late an academic administrator. In both areas, India provided me great opportunities to do things that gave me the greatest satisfaction,” he says.
But Jhunjhunwala and Jain were among a small band of people then. “Today there is much more readiness among (global) Indians to come back,” observes Jhunjhunwala. He is right. In fact, Dr Debashis Chatterjee, Director, Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Kozhikode, says that he receives one application every month from India-born professors in the US, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. “Many of them are tenured professors or those who would get their tenure anytime. Around 25 per cent of the 30 new professors we have added in the last two-three years are from the US,” he says.
He is not alone. His counterparts at various top notch higher educational institutes (HEIs) like the IIMs, IITs, International Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) and Indian School of Business (ISB) are experiencing a similar influx. “About a quarter of our staff had taught abroad before coming to ISB and almost all our faculty have PhDs from top-grade schools abroad,” says Ajit Rangnekar, Dean, ISB.
However, Chatterjee and his ilk do not have too much hard-selling to do these days. “India is selling itself,” he says.
Favourable Climes
While the gross domestic product (GDP) of most developed nations in Europe and the US is growing at less than three per cent, India’s GDP growth rate continues to hover at around eight per cent. That means, the decision to return to India is no longer entirely driven by patriotic fervour, but has also begun to make sound economic sense.
It has also become easier to relocate to India. Since 2005, PIO with foreign citizenship, have the option of an Overseas Citizenship of India card which gives them a lifelong visa to India and allows them to work in private Indian institutions.
Huge budget cuts for higher education, after the recent economic recession, in the US and other Western countries, are pushing their universities to downsize. That is resulting in job cuts, faculty freezes, forced vacations for professors and a drop in tenured positions. So, chances of a good academic career in the US, UK and Europe seem bleak, whereas India still needs many more PhDs to keep pace with its fast-growing economy. Plus, getting a green card is much harder now. Thus, growing opportunities in India are becoming a big lure for Indian academics abroad.
No wonder, well-known economist and Professor at Metropolitan State College of Denver, Dr Kishore Kulkarni wishes that he was younger today and at the start of his career, so that he could come back to India for good. “Right now, India is most attractive. Salaries have increased considerably. Also, there are way too many openings now and the demand for good teachers is surpassing the supply,” he says.
Sun Rises in the Sector
That’s no surprise. India is aiming for a gross enrolment ratio (the per cent of the population in the age group of 18-24 years which gets enrolled in colleges) of 30 per cent by 2020, from 12 per cent in 2010. This would mean an enrolment of 40 million students, an increase of 24 million from the current enrolment. As per the recommendations of the National Knowledge Commission, India needs to establish 1,500 universities to take its GER to even 15 per cent. So, not only is the government establishing new universities, colleges and polytechnics; it is also encouraging large-scale private participation in expanding the higher education capacity.
To ensure that quality does not suffer during this race to create and expand capacity, it is important that India’s higher education system quickly finds good quality, experienced teachers. By the end of Tenth Five Year Plan, India had a strength of 4.92 lakh faculty to teach 140 lakh students, which was woefully short of the requirement. According to Ernst & Young EDGE 2011 report, there is a need for continued focus on faculty augmentation initiatives. The report says that faculty appointment for higher education has grown at a slower pace than enrolments— 2.28 per cent from 2005 to 2009, as against 6.2 per cent (student enrolment) in the same period.
As there is a huge faculty crunch even in the existing HEIs, including highly reputed ones like the IITs, IIMs and central universities, with nearly 21-35 per cent of the posts lying vacant, it would be that much more difficult to get quality faculty for the new institutes. In such a scenario, the only way to quickly get readymade, trained faculty is to bring back India-born professors abroad.
Counting the Lost Sheep
In fact, some of the best Indian teachers do not teach in India. They teach at the universities in the US, UK and various other developed nations. That is mainly because the country failed to recognise and nurture talent. Take the case of Pune-born Dr Thomas Kailath, for instance, the Hitachi America Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, Stanford University. The government awarded a Padma Bhushan in 2009 for his contribution to science and engineering, but when he applied to IIT Kanpur, after his doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961, he did not even get a positive reply. “My memory is a bit hazy about those days. But I either got a rejection letter or no reply at all. So I joined Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Later, within 18 months of my PhD, Stanford offered me associate professorship,” says Kailath.
Not just Kailath, but there are thousands of cases where India’s loss became the gain of United States or other nations where knowledge was nurtured. Most of them went there for postgraduate studies and then stayed on as they got lucrative offers. According to American Universities Admission Programme, a global consulting firm, in 1997-98, a staggering 4,092 Indian professors were teaching in the US universities. Currently, in Pennsylvania State University alone, the number of Indian professors is over 100, which was revealed at an India summit held there recently. If this figure is extrapolated, the number of Indian academics in the US can run into several thousands, considering that the US has around 6,000 HEIs. Similarly, UK, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand
also have a large number of Indian academics. While a significant number of them are interested in coming back, there are many who never thought of returning. Dr Rajdeep Grewal, Irving and Irene Bard Professor of Marketing, Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University is among the latter.
Research: The Grey Area
“I spend 80 per cent of my time on research and my belief is that such an approach would be suicidal in an Indian university in terms of career progression,” says Prof Grewal, who is a visiting faculty at ISB. He feels that for business schools, universities in India are not ‘there’ in terms of infrastructure and a culture that values research.
Unlike Grewal, Dr Nirmalya Kumar, Professor of Marketing, Director of Centre for Marketing and Co-director of Aditya V Birla India Centre at London Business School has thought about returning to India. However, he cannot. “There is no institution other than ISB in India for research in my area and ISB is in Hyderabad, where I do not wish to live for personal reasons. Other business schools do not have a research cohort with whom I would be able to interact,” he says. This makes it amply clear that returnees are willing to change their location of work, but not their research goals. “Top-quality faculty members need assurance that they will find a strong research supportive environment, where research clearly is the most important aspect of their performance. It also includes easy access to all the databases they use, strong IT capability, support like statistics, research assistants and access to companies,” says Rangnekar.
However, most HEIs in India are focussed on teaching, not on research. Also, our research standards are not yet globally competitive. “Perception (some reality) of poor research standards and lack of good PhD students act as blocks stopping top US professors from going to India,” says Dr Arogyaswami Paulraj, Professor Emeritus, Electrical Engineering Department, Stanford University.
Recognising this problem, GoI has begun increasing research grants for public HEIs. For instance, IIM Calcutta recently got a research grant of Rs 20 crore to conduct research in global finance markets and to upgrade its financial research and trading laboratory to support advanced applied research.
Money Still Matters
Another key concern is that compensation package in Indian HEIs does not correspond to the salary levels globally. Most public institutes, including IIMs and IITs, pay as per UGC or AICTE scales which remain fixed for 10 years and do not correspond to the changing market realities. While the Sixth Pay Commission has narrowed the gap between academic and industry salaries, it is still a long way from global standards. It is important to make salary levels attractive for the brightest to return. “I have not seriously considered coming back for good as I do not see in India the combination of research environment and monetary compensation that is currently available in the US,” says Dr Srinivas Palanki, Professor and Chair, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of South Alabama.
Universities in the US pay faculty their market value driven by a resume, just like private sector in India does. “If I look at the business model adopted by multinationals and IT companies in India, clearly an enhanced compensation model that is comparable to western countries would help attract top-quality professors to India. For instance, if you work in IBM USA and want to work for IBM India, you can get roughly 70 per cent of your US pay in India. Furthermore, it is quite likely that you would get an enhanced managerial responsibility. Clearly, higher pay has to be tied to a higher level of performance,” says Palanki.
The only HEI in India which is known to follow this model of faculty compensation is ISB, Hyderabad. “We peg our salaries with international standards on a purchasing power parity basis. In absolute terms, we pay roughly around 60 per cent of global salaries,” says Rangnekar. A typical B-School in the US offers salaries ranging from $80,000 to 120,000 per annum.
Paulraj says, “We cannot fix compensation easily. But for short-term we should offer US compensation. China has done this.” (See Box on pg 21) according to Chatterjee, even Pakistan has begun giving market salaries to attract its professors from the US. “It is only a matter of time before India too goes the same route,” he says.
Is the Shine Real?
Other than monetary compensation and research environment, some of the other key concerns seem to be quality of life (housing and hygiene), peer group, academic freedom and non-academic pressures (too much of teaching burden, compulsion to sit on various committees, etc).
Family pressures also play an important part. According to R Dandapani, Dean and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, “Mostly professors who have taught in the USA for a while will have established families with grown up children. It will then be hard to move the entire family.”
Even if they decide to move, spouse’s career and children’s schooling often become deal-breakers, particularly in non-metro institutions. “We lose some of the senior people we aim for as global quality education for their children is their top priority. Career for spouses is another important issue affecting their decision,” says Rangnekar.
Too much government intervention and rigid processes are also dampeners. “There is as much interest in returning to India in the academic community as there is among entrepreneurs. But what is holding top faculty back is the Indian bureaucracy and the government control of education,” says Vivek Wadhwa, Professor of Duke University, and Researcher at Harvard Law School, who conducted a study of returning Indians and Chinese. According to him, if the Indian government removed the shackles and allowed foreign institutions to compete with local institutions, it would see a flood of returnees. It is the academic freedom at the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad that has attracted so many professors who have taught abroad earlier. “Our professors have freedom to choose their research areas, course design and participation in institutional processes and have flexibility in teaching methodology and evaluation of students,” says Dr Rajeev Sangal, Director, IIIT Hyderabad. Curriculum at the institute is research oriented even at undergraduate level and colleagues and students are available in diverse areas, enabling faculty to form research groups for joint work.
Apart from a strong peer group locally, the faculty also wants easy access to global researchers. “Every year several top global professors visit ISB as part of the academic conferences we host,” says Rangnekar. The business school is among the few HEIs in the country which encourage faculty to work on collaborative research projects with peers from around the world.
“When people doing research in India see that good work done here has recognition abroad, they gain confidence. We followed a simple rule: all senior people must be recognised among their peers worldwide for the work they have done at Tata Research Development and Design Centre (TRDDC). People were happy when they started getting invited to give talks at conferences; to join programme committees; and to be reviewers for research papers,” says Dr Mathai Joseph, former executive director of TRDDC, who returned after teaching for 12 years at the University of Warwick.
Magnetic Attraction
While there is interest in returning, the real challenge for India will be attracting and retaining strong faculty. It is for this that IIT Kharagpur is planning to appoint ‘magnet’ faculty. “A bright faculty acts like a queen bee and helps in attracting a team of other faculty and researchers to him/her,” says Dr Damodar Acharya, Director of IIT Kharagpur.
The institute is considering recruitment of such faculty through invitation from other countries, with an initial research grant of around Rs 10 crore, good working space, support of three to four PhD students and one to two post-doctoral fellows and furnished accommodation.
While many HEIs provide faculty housing on campus, IIT Gandhinagar offers them hassle-free service apartments. “We provide a conducive environment where they do not feel burdened with too much teaching,” says Jain. A few HEIs like ISB encourage their faculty to publish in the top-tier academic journals. ISB also follows the ‘tenure-track system’ of faculty evaluation and provides the necessary research budgets and assistance. “The fact that we do all of this with a quality that is directly comparable with some of the best schools in the world makes it an attractive proposition for top-notch global faculty who are looking to move to India,” says Rangnekar.
While ISB funds exploratory visits of prospective faculty, IIIT Hyderabad is also planning to pay for travel so that Indian faculty abroad can visit its campus before deciding to join it. Even the more conservative public HEIs like IIMs and IITs have begun advertising faculty positions in the journals of various academic associations in the US. Some like IIT Kharagpur use their worldwide alumni network, particularly the one amongst the academia, to identify bright candidates abroad. “We usually reach out to our visiting faculty and those who are known to my colleagues with offers of 50 to 100 per cent more than average remuneration, research support in the form of assistants, funding, database access, etc., and flexible working conditions like working from home,” says Prof S Sriram, Executive Director, Great Lakes Institute of Management. While the salaries are limited to a government scale in public institutions, some like IITs, IIMs and IIITs are raising private funds to be able to offer their faculty with liberal research grants and various other incentives. For instance, IIM Kozhikode offers Rs 10 lakh for the best research paper.
National Gain Plan
The Union Government has announced a slew of fellowship programmes, aimed at bringing back scientists and researchers of Indian origin. These programmes include Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship and Ramanujan Fellowship Programme for brilliant Indian scientists and engineers from all over the world to take up research positions at any of the scientific institutions and universities in India. Both are given for a five-year-duration, including a fellowship of Rs 75,000 per month and a contingent research grant of Rs 5 lakh per year. The former also includes a house rent allowance of Rs 7,500 per month.
To augment research and teaching resources of universities, UGC has introduced ‘Operation Faculty Recharge’, where 1,000 highly talented candidates would be inducted into universities across the country over the next five years after a global competitive selection based on their research work and publications.Final selection of overseas candidates would be made based on a video-conference interview and personal appearance. Apart from the usual emoluments and benefits, these faculty members will be given funding for their research project and a start-up grant to set up the laboratory facilities.Through its scheme Encore, UGC is targeting NRIs/PIOs working in overseas academic, research and business organisations to enhance faculty resources of universities, stimulate global quality research and enrich the academic milieu at universities. Adjunct faculty or scholars in residence will get Rs 1 lakh contingency grant per annum in addition to a salary of Rs 80,000 per month, office and accommodation.The government is also thinking of sharing revenue from intellectual property with the researchers, a viable method for ‘brain gain’. Future Hub of Intellectuals.
According to Ernst & Young EDGE 2011 report, ‘40 million by 2020: Preparing for a new paradigm in Indian higher education’, there exists a need for developing international centres of excellence (CoEs) to attract students and faculty. The Nalanda University and the 14 innovation universities among others are part of an effort by GoI to set up such CoEs which aim to attract the best students and faculty from across the globe.
Among the private HEIs, Amity is setting up CoEs across domains. “These CoEs provided an excellent platform for over 30 Indian professors based abroad to join us and actively focus on their area of academic interest,” says Dr Gurinder Singh, Pro Vice Chancellor, Amity University.
Dr Dinesh Mehta, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Colorado School of Mines, has also considered coming back. “But I do not really understand how higher education works in India. What kind of politics one has to deal with, what type of lifestyle is possible with the salary one would receive at an HEI, how much emphasis is there on research in addition to teaching, what resources are available for research, etc.,” he says.
It is to clear such doubts that Dr Jain makes presentations to Indian graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in numerous universities worldwide about the exciting opportunities IIT Gandhinagar offers to faculty. He has, so far, held such meetings at Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford and Caltech at the US; EPFL in Switzerland and NUS and NTU in Singapore among others. “It enables potential faculty to ask questions and clarify their doubts about opportunities that we offer,” he says.
These opportunities are not limited to enhanced monetary benefits alone, but include those of self-esteem and self-actualisation as well. “Indian HEIs can offer ‘grand challenges’—both societal and technical— to researchers. In a country like ours, there is a chance for research to connect with society and work on larger social problems, thereby seeing fruition of one’s work beyond publications,” says Sangal.
So far, institutions like IITs and IISc have attracted back many good US PhDs of Indian origin. “While there is a lack of comprehensive framework in attracting eminent academicians of Indian origin, HEIs of high repute have put in place mechanisms of their own to attract and collaborate with them,” says Dr TLS Bhaskar, an independent researcher.
Interest in India is on the rise and all the global socio-economic conditions are ripe for India-born academics to return in large numbers. As of today, only a handful of islands of excellence like IITs, IIMs and IIITs are taking advantage of this opportunity. Rest of Indian HEIs need to get their act together if they too want to grab the best brains among the returnees.
Will the academics of Indian origin, either by returning or visiting, transform the quality of higher education in India, even while it contemplates an exponential growth in quantity? Will the HEIs capable of wooing Indian academics abroad succeed in raising their numbers in India?
It is yet early to say, but a beginning has been made. Perhaps some tweaking of policies and procedures on the part of the government and revamping of higher education system in the country will hasten the process.
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