India’s Union Minister of State, Dr Jitendra Singh, claimed that several Indian origin scientists abroad are keen to return home.
India is today witnessing a sort of reverse brain drain with several Indian origin scientists abroad keen to return home, India’s Science and Technology Minister Dr Jitendra Singh said at an event in Faridabad on Sunday.
Although Dr Singh did not provide any data, he said the credit for this goes to the enabling atmosphere generated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Dr Singh was speaking at an event to mark the 36th Foundation Day of the Department of Biotechnology at the Regional Center of Biotechnology in Faridabad, Haryana.
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Dr Singh also inaugurated the Fellowship conclave while releasing new guidelines for ease of doing science towards “Less Government More Governance” and a directory for the Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellows.
Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has established 15 theme-based autonomous institutes. DBT secretary Rajesh Sudhir Gokhle himself is an example of reverse brain drain. After conducting his post-doctorate at Standford University, he returned to India and joined the National Institute of Immunology. Later he joined DBT, which has given over 600 fellowships under the Ramalingaswami fellowship scheme of the department.
These fellowships are among several re-entry programs run by different departments that offer 1.2 to 1.5 lakh remuneration per month and provide long term and short term research grants.
According to the Indian government, more than 13.6 million Indians live abroad. In addition, more than 800,000 Indians have renounced their citizenship to become citizens of other countries, while India granted citizenship to nearly 5,000 foreigners in the last five years.
According to government’s data, nearly 610,000 Indians became foreign citizens in the five years to December 2021.
According to a report by The Times of India, the data shows that 42% of the more than six lakh Indians who renounced their citizenship did it to become US citizens.
