Every H-1B visa denied is not necessarily a win for India. It is a win only if India creates the conditions for Indian talent to build, innovate and prosper at home.
Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal’s optimism about India’s technology ecosystem and growing GCCs is understandable. But celebrating restrictions on Indian talent abroad misses the larger question: Why does India still struggle to retain the value created by its best minds?
Indian bureaucracy has failed too many entrepreneurs. Tax uncertainty compounds the problem. A slow, unpredictable and frequently gamed legal system completes the challenge. Regulatory harassment continues to make entrepreneurship harder than it needs to be.
Viksit Bharat must begin with Samarth Bharat.
The IIT alumni community represents an extraordinary reservoir of talent, capital and global influence. The AI boom could multiply its wealth several times over. Yet much of the value created by Indian-origin talent accrues outside India.
AI leadership today is driven substantially by private enterprise, capital, research and computing infrastructure—not simply by governments. India cannot afford to remain a consumer of technologies built elsewhere.
But the answer is not to discourage talent from going abroad.
As Professor B. Nag used to say:
“Brain drain is better than brain in the drain.”
IIT engineers are among India’s most valuable exports. We need an export council for talent that facilitates global careers, builds international networks and develops fair mechanisms to recover part of the public investment in education. The goal must be reciprocal value creation, not restricting individual mobility.
After more than 75 years of independence, a government job is still widely perceived as a safer route to status and security than entrepreneurship. Until that changes, Viksit Bharat will remain an aspiration.
There is, however, reason for optimism.
Manoj Sinha in Jammu and Kashmir, Anurag Jain at NITI Aayog, Sanjay Malhotra at the RBI, Shashank Mani in the Lok Sabha and Ashish Chauhan at NSE represent a group of IIT BTech graduates who have taken on consequential institutional responsibilities.
Their willingness to serve in these roles deserves recognition. Credit is also due to the Prime Minister for empowering these individuals.
India has invested enormously in its technical institutions. The cumulative public investment in the IITs, IISERs and other premier institutions runs into several lakh crore rupees. The question is whether we are generating commensurate national value from that investment.
The objective is not to stop brain drain. It is to end brain waste—and make India a place where the world’s best talent wants to build.
That is how Samarth Bharat becomes the foundation of Viksit Bharat.
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