Growth numbers, for instance, conceal the stagnation of private investment. Denial persists in the belief that growth can be willed into existence by confidence alone, bypassing education, skills, competition, massive investments in research and development, and a single-minded pursuit of technological leadership. “Viksit Bharat”, like “Swachh Bharat”, risks becoming aspiration without strategy. Above all, there is a refusal to confront the everyday evidence of failure: The foulest air, polluted rivers, degraded cities, and precarious work cannot be reconciled with claims of Incredible India or an economic renaissance.
- Public intellectual Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Indian Express (6/1)
When you place the numbers side by side, ‘study abroad’ stops looking like aspiration and starts looking like a one-way talent and money pipeline-one that India funds, other countries benefit from, and Indian institutions struggle to counter. India is young, but youth is not the dividend. Capability is,” and “the headline population remains; the talent density thins.” “India, in effect, loses twice-struggling to pull global talent in, while steadily pushing domestic talent to look elsewhere.” “The solution is not to guilt our own students into staying; it is to make staying and coming here feel like a smart bet,” because “if India can convert its one-way pipeline into two-way circulation-the brain drain story stops being a drain and becomes an exchange.
- Saswati Sarkar, The Times of India, (7/1)
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