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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Nothing is pure anymore….whether its food, drink, patriotism or love for building your nation…..Maybe its not ‘brain drain’….maybe its just khudgharzee…..
oh and of course,
so does: “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
the educated who migrate for good with no intention of returning even though they have no pressures (of a family to feed, sisters to get married off..etc.) reek of selfishness.
they put themselves and their careers before the opportunity (i would go so far as to say responsibility) to make great changes in their very own communities.
their successes arent really successes to begin with.
nothing sits more apt than: “jungle mein morr nacha kiss nay dekha?”
Captain Johann–
rest of you please forgive the rather specialized comment….
When you say there are only 2800 psychiatrists for 1 billion people in India and all the mental health people leave…please remember that part of the reason is cultural hostility to psychiatric care and psychology.
For example I know of one counselor working in Mumbai. She is a psychologist, but she is limited in India. She may be counseling a 19 year old girl who has just been married and the husband is hitting her viciously. Well, we know what a psychologist will say in the States–if you are being abused you must leave that relationship and go through therapy for the trauma. In India that’s not an acceptable answer. You have to say that any two people can be successfully married as long as they work hard enough at it, that is, if you want any clients to come to your practice. So, you have to try to keep the girl with her husband even if it’s evident she is being mentally and physically damaged by that.
I imagine it would be hard to be educated in a certain field and then be unable to use your knowledge or even do things that violate your training. How frustrating it would be to feel you were not living up to your potential, keeping apace with new developments in your job, or even, because of the environment, compromising your ethics.
I also once met an engineer who had completed a project in a remote area of Pakistan and the villagers were so grateful they gave him a twelve-year old girl as a thank you.
You know, when people leave it may not simply be about money. The diaspora are not all just greedy people; good professionals can find work in a third world country disheartening for all kinds of reasons, even if its their own country.
If I were in any mental health field, India or Pakistan would be the last places I would want to work, unless I was writing a research paper. Let’s not be too hard on the people who migrate.
This reminds of the recent book, “Reluctant Fundamentalist,” by Mohsin. In this book Mohsin writes that in old days the old and children used to be evaucated or migrate first. However, if you board a plane from Lahore these days, it is the best and the brightest who are leaving the country. The Western nations welcome these twentieth century slaves (I being one of them) with open arms.
I know that the current flow of the young bright people out of Pakistan is due to political insatbility and quality of life. However, I can tell you that people who left the country in the late 60s and early 70s in the first wave were upset with the relative disparity of life style of a 12th grade educated army officer and an engineering/medical graduate from the few top schools of Pakistan. Bottom line is the dictators and feudal lords who made us come out, and kept us out.