

Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again - pavs
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/business/global/28return.html?ref=business&pagewanted=all

======
m0th87
For my mother, repating to Pakistan was very easy. After the '01 recession,
she had been looking for telecom work in the US for years, despite a PhD from
MIT. Finally she sent her resume abroad and got immediate responses.

But she did hit issues with the opacity of government, which was even more of
a problem with Pakistan than India, because she was there during the rule of a
military dictatorship. The unfortunate thing is her program, which was
establishing extensions of foreign universities for Pakistanis to get top-
notch engineering degrees, was killed with democratic reform. No one would
argue it was a bad program, but in Pakistan's cut-throat political
environment, all of the opposition's ideas are bad.

It's easy to find articles about the crumbling American Emperium, and the
vertical rise of new economies in the East, but that's overlooking how much
America (and the West in general) has going for it, and how important some of
those components are. The quality of a society is not directly proportional to
the growth rate of the economy; government, social welfare and cultural
attitudes also play important roles.

As much as we bitch about our government, it's an order of magnitude more
established and stable than that of India and Pakistan. Corruption, while an
issue, is eclipsed by the sort of problems you'd see in these countries. And
from my experience, these two countries see social order in a very
hierarchical experience; this is the exact opposite behavior to what is needed
if we are to assume that the new economy consists of shrinking organization
sizes and flattened management chains. These issues exist in China too, except
in many ways they seem all the worse.

India, China et al. have a lot going for them, but this article reminded me
that it's not all sunshine and roses, and there are still some significant
hurdles to overcome. Based on my mother's experience, I don't think the issues
associated with repating are simply because those returning are too
Americanized - it is a product of many of these unforeseen positives that are
so easy to overlook in an atmosphere of cynicism in the West.

------
avner
I'm not Indian but have dealt with contracts from India. It really comes down
to two things.

1) Work culture - Indian work culture, for the most part is not same as the
work culture in the US. From what I've seen, Indian bosses are a lot more
assertive and controlling than you would expect from your boss in the US. I
can only imagine what it must be like in bureaucratic government agencies in
India.

2) Infrastructure and Equality - Its just not there. It might be sprouting or
even maturing in certain places but for the most part, there is immense red
tape and corruption in India. This is common for most developing countries and
until the average minimum wage in India for a low level government official is
somewhat closer to something decent, the bribery and favourism will continue
and ambitious programs like these will continue to fail. Some of the smartest
Indians I met in college told me they have a better shot in the US because
there is no widespread favourism here.

------
known
I can _empathize_ with Shiva Ayyadurai. Couple of years back I was working for
an eGovernance project <http://mca.gov.in/>

Govt officials in India want you to be _subservient_.

    
    
        "The nail that stands out will be hammered down." -- Japanese Proverb
    

Edit: After <http://mca.gov.in/> became operational, I resigned and ran away
to Japan to join GS.

~~~
dadadooda
Isn't this an over-generalization? It's not fair to stereotype all government
officials in India like that, is it?

~~~
_debug_
Unfortunately, the generalization is well-deserved. The behaviour of the
official named Mr. Brahmachari : feudal, mercurial, inconsistent,
authoritative...is the template. If you're lucky, there's often exactly one
guy somewhere in there who is sincere, professional, and is _literally_ the
_one_ doing all the work, and he sympathizes with your case.

The number of young Indians who, in theory, can transform Indian cities into
Silicon Valleys of the East vs. the bureaucracy is like a water and dam
situation. The smarter water flows West instead.

~~~
dadadooda
It still seems unfair to extrapolate from one anecdotal instance to the broad
assertion that the smarter 'water' must flow west.

Very condescending.

Edit: My objection is this.

You're saying: A := is-smart => B := must-go-west Therefore, ~B => ~A, or not-
in-the-west => not-smart.

~~~
_debug_
I do not mean to be condescending to those who are not-in-the-west. I _do_
mean to sound frustrated about them being forced to stay in a no-win situation
where they are at the mercy of the bureaucracy.

What I meant is : it's a smart move to realize that it's a dead end and go
West if one seeks to broaden one's opportunities, chances to do some good work
and realize one's potential, that's all.

------
pavs
This made me smile. Not in an evil, condescending, I-told-you-so feeling way
(after all I am from south-east Asia). Its just one of those things "most ex-
pats" could tell you from miles away how this will end up. Going on a vacation
to India is one thing, relocating there after spending most of your life in
western nation is a totally different ball game, no matter how much money is
involved.

To say that "its difficult to adjust there" is an understatement. IMO YMMV.

~~~
keeptrying
Lots of people still make it work. Solutions for the problems quoted:

1\. Pollution: Dont live in the city.

2\. Traffic: Get a big car and a driver ($140 a month). You can sit in the
back with a laptop and 1MBps connectivity for $15 a month.

3\. Corruption: Work in the private sector and not in the public sector.

I was just in India and the undercurrent of the country is very positive which
I cant say about the present feeling I've gotten in New York city.

Bottom line: Its a big change, moving to a different country, but IMHO its
possibly a smaller problem than starting your own business.

~~~
pavs
Well you can do all these sitting in NY, minus the inconvenience. As long as
you have an original good idea for business, you don't need to move to india
(or anywhere else) to make it successful.

I guess my main beef with this feel-good, nationalistic, let's-all-go-to-india
movement is that whether you like it or not - regardless of your original
intentions - this will only benefit the elite few, the rich will get richer
and poor will remain where they were before you went to india hoping to make a
difference.

Indian doesn't need an influx of ex-pats to go to india to make a difference,
they have plenty of smart people there already, they need a change in corrupt
culture of government bureaucracy and outreach of social development that
reaches way beyond the western-looking city landscapes.

They got their priorities wrong.

~~~
keeptrying
I think India does require higher level executives. Ie COO, CFOs, CEOs etc. Ie
leaders who know how to take a company from $20 million yearly revenue to $200
million and then to $1 billion.

I have friends in Mckinsey who consult at this level and the reason they get
work in India is because lack of talent at this level.

Its the reason that at this level you can probably make as much in India as
you would in the US regardless of PP.

The good thing about this situation is that if your an "re-pat" from the US
you could get one of these jobs even if you;ve only been managing 10-14 people
before. Ie scary big opportunities which you would not get here in the states
till you'd put in 10 years at a firm.

~~~
pavs
You are talking about a small niche, I am (and most others are) talking
generally. There is nothing exclusive about those kind of jobs in India, you
will find them in most developing countries.

Most of these people, the articles is referring to, are going to India for
nationalistic reason, with some kind of assurance from government about job
security. Not necessarily because they will have better opportunity there. A
small group of people might, but most won't.

------
revorad
When an Indian leaves the country to go west, he's made to feel like a traitor
for leaving his "motherland". A lot of Indians live with some form of guilt
for having a happy and healthy life outside India. The guilt takes some people
like the ones mentioned in this article to go back and do some good for the
country.

I think Indians at home need to realise that there is a world outside India.
It's exciting, it's beautiful and it's worth exploring. It's OK to not live in
India. There are a billion people there already. The country can do with
losing some.

The closest we can get to a world without borders is for people to take the
chance to go and live in another country, when they can.

~~~
ibsulon
The problem is they're losing the most ambitious and the most intelligent, the
ones who could help the country the most.

However, the country was wasting those resources anyway.

~~~
revorad
"Brain drain" is often cited as the problem. I doubt it has as big an impact
as people claim it to have.

Even though a fraction of the top talent leaves, there are a lot of very
intelligent and talented people in India who don't leave the country.

The biggest thing that's holding back development in India is the one thing
which Indians are very proud of: culture. In a country where you have to
respect people purely based on age and status, bad ideas will continue to win.

~~~
pavs
Exactly! Most people forgets that india has more population than USA and
Europe combined!

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+population+%2B+europ...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+population+%2B+europe+population+-+indian+population)

They don't lack people who can make a difference, they lack the proper
environment to make a difference. You can take all the best and the brightest
of the world to india and it would not make _much_ difference unless the
government initiates the right environment for change.

~~~
xal
Great use of WA. Slightly easier to parse:
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=indian+population+/+(us...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=indian+population+/+\(us+population+%2B+europe+population+%2B+canadian+population+%2B+australian+population+%2B+new+zealand+population\))

The graph is especially interesting.

~~~
pavs
Yours is definitely better. I was just trying to do something quickly on the
run to make point. Its really amazing how much population India has and Indian
politicians cry foul about getting all the successful Indian people from
developed nation hoping to make a change.

The change has to come within.

------
tokenadult
"But a study by Mr. Wadhwa and other academics found that 34 percent of repats
found it difficult to return to India--compared to just 13 percent of Indian
immigrants who found it difficult to settle in the United States."

Because Mr. Wadhwa is the one who usually writes articles about how more and
more international students who study in the United States will return to
their countries of birth, this finding is important. Two things are going on
here:

1) The United States, because of its historical pattern of settlement by
recent immigrants from a variety of countries, really is easier to blend into
for a new immigrant than are many other countries that also have friendly
natives, developed economies, and reasonably transparent governance.

2) REVERSE culture shock is usually rougher on a returning expatriate than the
original culture shock of leaving the native country. I say this as an
American who studied Chinese as an undergraduate, lived abroad in Taiwan (with
visits to Hong Kong and China) in the 1980s for three years, and then returned
to the United States. Then I went over to Taiwan once more for another three-
year stay beginning in 1998. It has always been more unsettling to my
established assumptions to return to my "home" country after a stay abroad
than to go abroad in the first place. When a person goes abroad, sure there
are problems with culture shock, wherever you go, but the psychological inner
dialog takes the form of "Of course this is weird; I'm in a foreign country."
But upon returning "home," after a long and locally connected stay abroad, the
inner dialog becomes "Hey, I thought I was coming back home, but now
everything feels weird here too." People aren't always sure where "home" is if
they have sunk down enough roots in the foreign culture. As G. K. Chesterton
wrote, "The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is
at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land." A long enough
foreign stay will do that to one's mind.

------
udais
Background - spent 23 yrs in the US (Stanford undergrad, built start-up from
zero, through dot com bust, with F500 customers and revenue and sold it 9
years later) ; moved to India about 12 months back to build businesses here.

While many of the comments can be accurate based on the individual's context,
the take-aways/conclusions (both in the article and for most of the comments)
are mostly WRONG.

There is tremendous opportunity in India, and most of the issues mentioned
actually make it ___easier to exploit_ __that opportunity. The article and the
comments should not cause any trepidation about coming to India, but re-double
your resolve. It's like "shooting fish in a barrel" if you figure it out!

Sort of hard to explain to people who are not in the thick of this battle.
And, talking is not how you figure this out. But, if you are a startup type* -
tenacity of a bulldog, super hard-working, high integrity, passion driven - I
would be happy to offer you work opportunities that will enable you to figure
out the formula of how to take advantage of all of this. Note: 1) only way to
figure it out is to jump into the war (say 6 months) 2) for these 6 months
you'll have to work on my projects 3) it will be all about execution, not
talk. so it's imperative that you're a get shit done type. 4) in these 6
months, whenever you run into "india issues" being discussed in this thread, I
will work with you (show you) how to overcome them with relative ease.

*most Indians educated in ivy-league-type schools and then having worked for blue chip corps like msft, P&G, etc are NOT start-up types imho

If interested, email me udai00(at)gmail.com

------
dadadooda
What's all this about wanting more money?

[http://www.livemint.com/2009/11/04000017/Scientist-fired-
fro...](http://www.livemint.com/2009/11/04000017/Scientist-fired-from-CSIR-
crie.html)

[http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/nov/06/scientist-vs-
estab...](http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/nov/06/scientist-vs-
establishment-battle-simmers-in-csir.htm)

------
maddalab
As someone who grew up in India, studied and worked and the US and who spent 6
months attempting to help my previous employer set up an off site development
centre at a third party vendor, before returning to the US, here is my
perspective.

Management culture is not controlling or assertive in a manner any different
than that practised at my US employer. The differences are mostly in response
to such assertiveness, Indians tend to typically approach such assertiveness
by authority with mere acceptance without necessarily understanding the reason
underlying the decision. Such management assertiveness I have found to be
misguided with the same rate at both locations.

Management response to highlighting inefficiencies in work culture or
ineffectiveness with regards to output is specific to the organization, and in
my experience I found the response to be similar, hide inefficiencies rather
than work towards improvements.

I do not think I would find it difficult to go "home" (I consider US to be my
home now), I would only need to find an organization that has the same first
principles of continuous (personal and profession) improvement as I do.

Finding such an organization in either nation would be similarly difficult or
easy.

------
ajju
America did not become the country it is because smart, entrepreneurial people
from abroad emigrated to America to join its government. It became the country
it is because smart, entrepreneurial people emigrated here to shine as
entrepreneurs, and then, often to serve their selfish interests, and some
times out of social consciousness, worked to create a government, a system and
an environment that is very conducive to progress.

If you emigrate back to India, please, please start a startup. Don't join the
government, especially if it is going to be under some long time bureaucrat.

I am sure there will be exceptions to this rule, but in most cases, you will
help India (and yourself) more by being an entrepreneur who works to make
government more efficient than by being a government official who works to
make entrepreneurship (or something else) easier.

------
aarghh
There is more here than meets the eye. A blog post here
[http://horadecubitus.blogspot.com/2009/11/csir-bitten-by-
one...](http://horadecubitus.blogspot.com/2009/11/csir-bitten-by-one-it-
fed.html) sheds some more light on it. In general, I have little sympathy for
either side - one comes across as an imperious bureaucrat who does not know
what accountability is and the other someone who assumes that India should be
willing to roll over merely because he's returned from the US to fix it.
Governments are hard to deal with across the globe.

All is far from wine and roses in India, but I'm not sure I'd use this
incident as a litmus test.

~~~
awa
+1 for the link

------
ivenkys
A good data point but very limited.

Indian Government bureaucracy is not the same as private enterprises. The
inefficiency and feudalism of Government bureaucracy is very well known and
does not bear repeating.

Private enterprises,( not the outsourced variety ), do not work this way.
There are other cultural issues but such blatantly incompetent and
bureaucratic behavior you will not find.

------
martythemaniak
None of these articles even attempt to mention culture and upbringing, which
plays an immense role. For example, the person in the article came to the US
when he was 7. He is most likely very much Americanized and would feel a
foreigner in India, whereas 20-something Indians that come to the US to do
their masters/PhD probably can't wait to get back, where they can feel at
right at home.

~~~
RK
Did you read the article? That was the whole point of the article.

For example: _Returnees run into trouble when they “look Indian but think
American,”_

It was specifically talking about people who had spent lots of time outside of
India (if not their entire lives) before going (back) to India. It was not
referring to people that had just gone to grad school abroad then went right
back.

~~~
socratees
Even though its about going back, in this case, its about how the feudal
structure hinders the real growth. What good is to have _good minds_ and not
put them to use?

