Rumi, what you have said is beautiful and perhaps true to a certain extent.
However, it is just due to this brain drain that today the Indians have the largest slice of jobs in the job market in America where they are valued much more than the ppl of this land itself. It is due to this that today 30% of the jobs have moved back to India and India has become such a big global player.
In India, an average middle class employee earns maybe a around 3 lakhs of rupees, which is roughly around 7.5 thousand dollars. he pays taxes, and tries to make a decent living there.
Now, this man becomes an American citizen, and his roots pull him back to visit India. What does he do? He happily pays a visit, spends around 10 thousand dollars for a visit, visits some tourists spots, spending maybe another 5 thousand odd dollars, in total adding almost 15000 dollars to the Indian economy........roughly 7.5 lacs in one go.....and he does that almost every year, sometimes buys some property for his folks for maybe another 20 thousand odd dollars (something if he was living in India would only dream to do) and in all he actually adds double of what he would have spent had he been living in India, that too in foreingn currency, to the economy.
Besides, he gets to live a marginally comfortable lifestyle and have a job satisfaction where his work, and not his 'yes sir and the dada' attitude wins him accolades. He is not denied promotions every year because he refuses to be political and beleives in hard work.... He also, more often than not, funds a few poor kids back in India, actually giving them a new life, something he would have been unable to do had he been struggling to put his own kid thru an expensive school in India,after of course cleaning out his savings to dole the the donations to that school, because he could not even dream of sending his school to a govt school. But being in States actually means he is in a much better position to help his own kith and kin.....
On a personal level, in India, I had a very laid back lifestyle, had a cook, 24 hr maid to look after my kid, a maid to clean and even fold my laundry, had every comfort that I could think of. I had the freedom to move around alone in a city in a rickshaw, or had the choice to accompany my hubby in the car, yet thought 10 times before buying a quality product for my kid because it cost 10 times more and did not fit my budget. I could not get a decent stroller for my kid because I had some interfering people who made a huge issue if I spent so much on my own kid..... and for most women the freedom to work is of course unheard of, and unfortunately i am not the only one. Unless of couse I am an enginner,or a doctor, or a teacher, or work in a bank.
Not to mention I almost lost my child due to lack of proper medical facility where we lived, and had we not moved right on time to Calcutta to show him to a doc who charged 250 bucks for each visit, I even shudder to think of the consequences......
Today, I have to work almost 18 hrs each day to keep my house clean, cook, look after my house and kids, drop and pick them up from school and any other place they need to go,and not a single person to put food on the table if I am sick . . But in those 18 hrs, I have the freedom to do what I like, cook if I want to, or maybe just eat a sandwitch. Clean if I want to, or just decide I want to net instead. And not have a busy neighbour breathing down my neck trying to find out if I was having an affair on the sly. And I can actually work professionally, something near to impossible in India, without being a doc or an engineer or work in some equally respectable place. Not to mention the everyday tension, interference and woes your extended family brings everyday to your doorstep.
Here I can't just go out the shops or the market because there are hardly any public transport, so i have to depend on my hubby to ferry me everywhere. But I get guaranteed quality things off the racks, that too in my budget. And my kid has actually learned to say 'Good morning' to the cleaning guy on the road. For me, that is the biggest culture on earth, learning to respect a fellow human being, no matter what his job is.
I love India, I love Bengal, I miss Durga Puja like nothing else, but I would say, I don't have any misplaced sense of patriotism. For me, patriotism means trying to do whatever little you can for your country, in whatever fashion you can, from whichever part of the world you are in.
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