Why does middle class young India want to go abroad no matter what?

   

Photo by Redd F on Unsplash

 In the not-so-very-distant past, only the academically brilliant or the children of the well-heeled would go abroad to study and possibly work there. Going abroad was very expensive, and most middle-class Indian youth who were good at studies ventured out of their hometowns to study at an engineering or medical college only after completing their schooling. The rest of them would go on to graduate from their local college.

 All of that is ancient history now. Young people from the most provincial of towns with barely any acquaintance with the English language, aspire to and actually go ahead and gain admission to colleges and universities around the world-the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Cyprus, Poland and until the war broke out there, even Ukraine. An overwhelming majority of them end up in second-rung and third-rung institutions and some even with non-recognized institutions as well. They have propped up an international higher education industry worth billions of dollars.

Most of these people hail from families of modest means who often sell agricultural land and ancestral property or take loans to send their children abroad for an education they feel will make them a fortune. Many of the students have started availing of student loans as well to fund their dreams.

 Why do they do it? Haven't they heard of the economic troubles abroad and the growing resentment in the "developed" nations across the world against outsiders taking their jobs? These countries don't mind the revenue they earn via the fees these colleges and universities collect from Indian overseas students, but are they assured of adequate employment in terms of the emoluments they will receive after they complete their education?

After all, they need to make up for the humongous amounts of money they and their families spent on their overseas adventure. With the flux that the major developed economies of the world are in and the high cost of living there, what kind of jobs and what standard of living are they looking at? Add to that the cultural and social alienation they would experience living amongst people who may resent their presence or worse still display racial intolerance towards them. Living so far away in a foreign land away from one's loved ones can have a terrible impact on their mental health as well.

Yet, there seems to be no stopping this outward flow of young talent. It has almost become a matter of prestige and a statement of having arrived for a family to send their child far away to a foreign "uni" that may be for all practical purposes running out of a barnyard. One fears for the future of all those hundreds of thousands of youngsters who are headed West (or East for that matter). Do they know what they are doing?