For the sixth year in a row, Indian students have emerged as the largest group of international students in the US. In last couple of years, this has included many of my school and college friends, and also some relatives.
Why do all of you have to go to US? Is India so bad? Yes, i agree you get to have better standard of living over there, but doesn’t the place where you’ve grown up, the streets you’ve walked, learnt cycling with your dad/bro/sis holding your seat, the playgrounds you’ve played hours of cricket in the scorching summer sun, the footpaths you’ve walked on to your school/college make you nostalgic enough to hold you back? Is all that matters to you now is the money you will make? Doesn’t what you actually like to do bother anymore?
Don’t tell me so many of you actually ‘want to’ pursue graduate education for the love of the field, for i know most of you are neither aware of the intricacies of the field (as you were before taking up engineering) nor the on going research in those areas, Other than the job paying in dollars of course, and may be for more dowry you get being a techie in US over the Indian ones (ref.: AP guys). I’m sure many of you would not even want to be engineers given a choice.
Why can’t you be happy with the not-so-high paying ‘software engineer’ job in India? You wouldn’t anyway get to do earth shattering or noble-prize winning work even over there, if you aren’t already doing it over here. I think there is nothing you can do over there that you can’t do over here.

still hot..
is US of A. I was wrong in the thought that it was the preferred and hyped “places to be” of the 80’s and early 90’s. Of late India has enormous growth in economy and is creating enough jobs in the BPO and IT sector. Who the heck wants to go to US!? Yeah, i know there are hundreds of thousands of them. US of A is still damn hot! No more doctors are seen to be migrating to hatch their eggs there, nor are many of the famed IITians. The guys who are thronging to US are the ones who have an engineering degree (i’m careful in not calling them engineers) from a ABCD, XYZ, alpha, beta, gamma, delta Institute of Technology, who either can’t get a “software engineer” job in here or consider themselves worth much more than the kind of work the IT industry offers. They are the ones cramming Barron’s wordlist these days.
Whew, even a guy who struggled to clear the university exams talks about Cornell and places! Only to end up doing a masters in a much lower ranked university, working part time as a dish washer or baby sitter. (which is better than not having a job here you say?!)
This year Indian students comprise about 14.4% of the total international students in the US beating Chinese! There has also been an increase by 9.6% since last year. Read this for more information.
Best chance is that you’d end up at Mountain View with the so called technology company which appears to be the best job an average techie could dream of. Most of you are not working on majors you took in your engineering or in any of those fields you choose your electives with so much zeal. What makes you think that you will be able to get the ‘earth-shattering-job’ a 2-year Masters in US would provide that 4-year bachelors didn’t, reading more or less the same what you crammed to clear your 6th, 7th, and 8th semester exams!? Is Google, Yahoo, TI et al hiring only MS? What i am trying to say is, what you are doing now is not all that bad.
My near-Swades experience, not just in watching the movie, by going out, and seeing the actual things happening around has made it more hard for me to leave this country. It’s not all that bad for you guys, it’s much worse for many people out here. The disparity, the divide between rich and poor, is showing up. You still can have a much better lifestyle than a majority with the not-so-sacrosanct-anymore ‘software engineer’ job.
I’ll miss you guys, that’s why i am writing this blog!
‘If you can’t be happy with what you have, you can’t be happy even with a million dollars.’
UPDATE (4th DEC ’07, 2:32 pm):

Read this.
P.S.: Exceptions would be there for almost everything that i have mentioned above, i have written this on happenings around me in the recent past.
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