Greener pastures

LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Sub: Greener pastures
According to a report by the US based Institute of International Education, India has become the second largest exporter of students to US, second only to China. This year 54664 students headed to the US from India, just 5275 behind China. Enrolment from India was up by 29 percent, from China by 10 percent while that from Japan has slipped. It is a pity that even so long after independence, number of pupils who want higher education abroad is on the rise. This signals that India is unable to provide quality education of international standards.
It is almost certain that most of the students who go abroad for higher education will not return home after their studies. This is in addition to large-scale migration of highly qualified scientists and engineers. The statistics as to what percentage of our IIT Engineers will be going abroad will be alarming.
Thus, while US and other developed countries reap the fruits of our technical and scientific skill, India remains way behind the advanced countries inspite of having abundant talent in the country. We have miserably failed to tap these huge reservoirs of resources and talent and channelise them for the nation building. Consequently India continues to crawl trying to catch up with the big and end up with mediocrity. But who cares?

E.M.ADITHYAN
December 3, 2001
Elangalloor Mana
Edapal-679 576
Kerala