Mr. Rajeev Chawla asks IIT Alumni to discharge their liability

NDIASome Brain Drains Back
By Keya Acharya

BANGALORE, Apr 15, 2011 (IPS) - They were the face of India’s "brain drain" - the best and the brightest government-educated scholars who eventually left for foreign shores. Now, they have opted to give back as a gesture of thanks for the top-notch education they received.

They are alumni of the Indian Institutes of Technology, the country’s premier academic institute which the Times Higher Education Supplement has ranked the world’s third best technology institution, after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley.

Set up by the government for post-war and post-independence industrial development, IIT started in Kharagpur in West Bengal in 1950. It now has 15 campuses all over India, its graduates considered among the country’s academic and professional elite, many of them successful industrialists, entrepreneurs, businessmen and achievers.

Their education was heavily subsidised by the government, and they were at one point criticised for taking taxpayers’ money only to leave the country, mainly for the United States.

"An awareness has now started that you must give back to society," said Collur Dhananjay, an electronics alumnus of the IIT in Kharagpur and secretary of the Bangalore chapter of the IIT Alumni Association of Kharagpur