The term brain drain refers to the migration of educated and talented professionals to some other country. When highly skilled professionals like a doctor, engineer, scientist or financial professional leaves his/her own country and relocates to another country in search of a better job, career opportunities, higher pay and standard of living, it’s a brain drain for his/her country of origin. Brain drain is common in developing countries where unemployment and other national issues like lack of social security continue to be the leading concerns.
What Causes Brain Drain?
Highly qualified and talented professionals look for better opportunities to use their skills and knowledge. They work hard to earn great positions and above average payouts in giant corporations. But many developing countries are seen to be very unfair to these exceptional talents. What factors cause disappointments in the professionals and prompt them to migrate?
A study result showed that scientists who migrated to other places were able to produce 4.5 times more publications and 10 times more patents than the counterparts in their home countries. The study found out the basic reasons for brain drain were the unavailability of funding, technical supports and infrastructure in their home countries. Political and community pressure was also the leading factors.
Another Stanford University study revealed that the rate of migration is quite high in Malaysia because of less attractive salary and benefits offered to the skilled professionals. Similarly, many dignified families leave Malaysia because of the limited access to a high-quality education system.
One of the reasons of brain drain is the prevailing political instability in a country. Political instability restricts economic growth of the developing nations. Rivalries between political parties cause unrest within a country. Corporations operating in such unstable conditions delay expansion plans and stop recruitments. As a result, despite having the requisite skills and qualifications, these professionals are denied of worthy work opportunities.
Many developing countries still didn’t recover from the grip and unrealistic belief of Casticism. Extensive discrimination in the name of Casticism often causes disappointments in the workplace and prompt young professionals to migrate.
Slow economic growth is another big reason for brain drain. A country with no growth of employment can’t offer sufficient jobs or attractive salaries to the talented professionals.
How Brain Drain Affects a Country?
For a country, it’s a loss of skilled manpower. If the Government has to deploy educated, knowledgeable and highly skilled professionals for strategic positions in the Government sectors, or for the growth of the industries, it will never have enough requisite workforce. It will create technological gap between the developed and developing countries.
When a country loses a great scientist, it also loses the scope for innovations. This is why countries with the highest number of brain drain often can’t make revolutionary success in innovative projects.
Plus, the Government loses a huge amount of revenue received as tax from these talented people.
How to Stop Brain Drain?
A country needs well thought out policy approach to solving the problem. As countries like India suffers from severe brain drain problem, the Government in that country needs to prevent this by engaging Universities in cutting edge research so that they can retain the best minds in the country.
The Government has to reduce the rate of poverty and unemployment. For this, a country needs to work on industrial developments. Also, a country should assure social security and a high living standard to its people to retain the talented resources. Economic and education system developments have to be the indispensable parts of the agenda.
