The term brain drain was coined by the spokesmen of the Royal Society of London to describe the outflow of scientists and technologists to the United States and Canada in the early 1950s. Since then the term has become synonymous with human capital or the migration of highly educated individuals from the developing, mostly third world countries, to the developed ones.
Over the past few decades, more since Pakistan has been lurched full throttle into economic and political chaos, the phenomenon has become the bane of the society. The number of repining Pakistanis who wish to settle abroad is rising every year and the ones who are actually capable of breaking loose are coincidentally the educated ones, contributing alarmingly to the growing crisis of the Pakistani brain drain. To leave the country and settle abroad has become the zeitgeist of current day Pakistan.
Unfortunately either the government does not realize the severity of the problem or prefers to brush it under the proverbial rug like so many other issues. The migration of the Pakistani professionals to foreign countries, namely, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand has increased considerably with young educated and skilled Pakistani such as doctors, IT Experts, scientists and other professional either already gone or planning to leave. The fact that workers from all skill levels are losing or have completely lost faith in the economic future of the country was revealed by the Gallup survey that indicated that even the semi-skilled and unskilled workers want to migrate outside in search of better prospects. 62 percent of the adults who were surveyed expressed the desire to migrate abroad while 38 percent said that they would prefer to settle outside permanently.
It is often thought that the transmittance of funds by the ones who leave the country as a result of brain drain is a good enough substitute for these individuals actually staying in the country and working. But that idea is valid only to a minimal extent as there can be no substitute for services these professionals could be rendering the country by staying within the borders and adding to a far rapid economic, scientific and technological development of the country. Again, that can only happen if the proper infrastructure is provided to them whereby the country could earn manifold the money it receives from transmittance from the migrated workers.
According to Dr. Fitzhugh Mullan of George Washington University every doctor who leaves a poor nation leaves a hole that cannot be filled. He says,
“That creates enormous problems for the source country and the educational and health leaders in the country who are attempting to provide healers”.
Research shows that at 20 countries export more than 10 percent of their physician work force to richer nations with nearly no reciprocation as the US exports less than one-tenth of 1 percent of its doctors. Economic factor is primarily responsible for this mass migration of the scientific community from poorer, host countries like Pakistan. In Pakistan the value placed for a scientist with an advanced level degree is Grade 17 which comes with a salary that is totally insufficient to meet the basic requirements of a family. So it is no surprise that the advanced countries are exploiting the situation by offering these individuals far more handsome incentives.
Asif J. Mir writes in ‘Pakistani Think Tank’,
“We cannot achieve long-term economic growth by exporting our human resource. In the new world order, people with knowledge drive economic growth. We talk a lot of poverty alleviation in Pakistan. But who is going to alleviate the poverty-the uncreative bureaucracy that created poverty? Hypothetically, the most talented should lead the people, create wealth and eradicate poverty and corruption”.
Phillip Bonosky, contributing editor of Political Affairs, writes in his book Afghanistan-Washington’s Secret War.
“Pakistan seems to have nothing but problems. Endemic poverty which was Great Britain’s imperial gift to the colonial world-a poverty on which the sun never sets-skilled (badly needed in Pakistan itself) abroad in search for jobs. Hardly any country has suffered more from the brain drain than has Pakistan. Nearly 3,000 (annually) graduates of Pakistan’s medical colleges are jobless; most go abroad. The educated see their future not in their home country but in any country but their own”.
According to a report in the The Observer, London,
“Pakistan is facing a massive brain drain as record numbers of people desperate to leave their politically unstable, economically chaotic country swamp foreign embassies with visa applications-The biggest number of applications for British visas are from Pakistan. Doctors, lawyers and IT professional and leading the exodus, but laborers and farmhands are joining the queues of malnourished people who gather daily outside the US embassy in Islamabad”.
The greatest effect of brain drain on any country is what is seen in Pakistan today; rampant corruption, poor administrations, lack of motivation and a fast diminishing nationalism. Unless there is nationalism there can be no collective progress and poverty and crime will continue to increase under the umbrella of plethoric apathy. Whatever the solution it needs to come fast and it needs to be come now otherwise – when the educated are away, the uneducated will play – as they are playing at the moment.
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I think _one_ way to do this is to initiate and further support projects like the LUMS SSE (I’m not affiliated in any way). Great universities are an ABSOLUTE prerequisite to the kind of progress we all wish to see….and it really should not be that hard!
I’m a Ph.D. student (in the U.S.) and I can tell you that there are MANY top-notch, bright Pakistanis who really do want to make a positive impact on their country….the reason most of them do not, is because they wonder where they would be employed….money is not everything, but, in all honesty, you cannot expect them to spend years in an intense graduate program just to waste away in some government university.
Also, a lot of countries have trouble finding hard-working, talented students….again, we don’t have that problem! Pakistani O/A-level students have broken all kinds of records…unfortunately this performance stops at the high school level simply because of the sub-standard education available. Children of the well-to-do go abroad for their education in the thousands every year…..maybe LUMS, etc can create a system similar to the one the Ivy-league schools use: charge high tuition from the wealthy, and give out generous financial aid to those who qualify.
I’m no fan of India (as many of you know), but I think Pakistan should adopt an IIT-like model…..I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that India’s success in this area is largely attributable to their investment in such schools…where we have been sorely lacking.
It would be great if someone did a salary survey or something about scientists or people with Ph.D. degrees working in Pakistan…
I think most everyone covered both sides of this topic..
I am coming to a point where I think we need one or two people that are competent, sincere, honest and capable- to lead a position of public entity – to turn this country around..
Why only 1 or 2 people? well they may start a chain of events..
JUST ONE OR TWO…
Now that is if they are not kicked off their post before making any significant impact.. which happens WAY to often in our country..
Believe me, i want to go back to Pakistan Soo Soo bad. Well, I wont say i want to GO BACK, since i have never lived there.
But i do want to go there and mke some impact, I have many an ideas aspirations and plans.
More importantly the problem for me is my family (parents), that live me (or I live with them ) which makes it difficult.
Plus of course the thought of failing, which always creeps in.
One day I will just pack-up and move there and do something.
I just hope that I don’t end up in the same market that a suicide bomber is.
On the related topic, i saw a very interesting post at Lahore Metblogs a few days ago. here is the link. A good read!
http://lahore.metblogs.com/2008/03/23/on-the-natio nal-day-in-the-late-00s/
What do we do with the undrained? I’m positive the bulk of it remains in the country. Ours is the God-gifted land where doctors and engineers, the so called professional product, after completing their degrees choose to join the civil service of the country. What wonders they do and why are no secrets. Compare the life style of a professor in a university and any senior civil servant, you would see the difference. And now, courtesy long dictatorial rule by the military, we see senior officers asserting their self-granted previliges, which they lovingly call perks. No matter how dumb the boss anywhere may be, by sheer dint of his/her office, his/her merits are given new heavens by those who want their pound of flesh. At times it looks like everyone who has some power to bring a change wants his/her share. The executive becomes a vegitable when bureaucracy becomes partisan or corrupt or both. The laws and rules are nothing if none is interested in regulating them. The fall of Soveit Union became possible mainly because the bureaucracy there had become an obnoxious interest group. Our case is not much different: we have our regulatory body whose majority is both partisan and corrupt.The party is self interest and as someone put it the most corrupt are those in anti corruption setups. The first thing a new combunt of a public office does is to see whether his/her office and residence go with his/her designation and taste. The corruption has become so institutionalized that today education department is considered one of the most corrupt departments. Education is what gives a nation its tomorrows. If that is gone to dogs, what is left behind? The brain? No! One fleeing from one’s land you call brain? What a joke! It is only the clever and cunning who is eveready to exploit any situation.Do not call them our brain who have abandoned us to our fate. I wouldn’t worry them. As the persian saying goes: Khus kum jehan pak( less dirt makes world purer). Our job and duty is to mind the undrained, the ones who prefer to stay here. The solution ought to come from education, from the wise ones. The blind Terrisias in Greek tragedy Oedibus says: “To be wise is to suffer”. Do our wise suffer? No, they either run or hide behind the gun. We send our smartest boys and girls to bureaucracy which is universally considered the least creative profession. Our wise are wonderful, aren’t they?
Set the direction of education right, the rest will follow.
well! its is true that we have seen migration trend or u can say brain drain throughout history .but in pakistan’s case it is really a problem. Look at our education and health system now, total apathy. Just visit any good reputable instituation of pakistan and you can see most of the top brilliant student there want to leave the country for good because of either they know it very well that one day when they forbade student life and enter into practical life the situation will gonna change for them. It is true that they might get a job but not to their standards. I have seen many examples in pakistan that a person who failed in every subject get the highly paid job due to some source and the most brilliant student belonging to a rural or lower class end up in having nothing.