Emran Emon

Quite silently, the 'revolution of brain drain' is happening from Bangladesh. But no one cares about that! No one has time to think about the talented young generation. Everyone is busy thinking about grabbing power, exercising power, and looting the country. The competition is like—who will break the previous record!

But the young generation is an important human resource of a state. The future of a country depends on the proper nursing of the young generation and the environment in which they grow up, above all on the evaluation of their talent.

But the saddest thing is that in our country, the young generation does not get such nursing, nor does it get the desired evaluation. Here a talented person does not get proper evaluation of his/her talent. But someone less qualified than him/her is occupying his/her desired qualified seat through political lobbying or bribery. Such an instance is naturally not to be accepted by a talented person. This becomes abundantly clear if we look at our public universities recruitments in recent times. It can be seen that through lobbying and bribery, incompetent people are appointed instead of qualified people. In this country, such incidents now become headlines in the media.

When a talented person sees he/she does not get a proper assessment of his/her merit. But when someone less qualified than him/her, in many cases incompetent, gets the opportunity, then logically, the talented person cannot accept it. As a result, the talented person developed a dislike for the system and the country as a whole. Then he/she becomes desperate to leave the country. In this case one of the timeless sayings of Dr. Muhammad Shahidullah comes to mind: "In a country where there is no respect to the virtues, there can not be any good in the country (virtues cannot be born in that country)."

The number of talented people leaving the country is increasing day by day, which is called brain drain. According to a recent report published by UNESCO, a total of 52 thousand 799 Bangladeshi students have migrated abroad from Bangladesh till November 2023. Which is the highest in the history of this country! Most of them migrated to the United States. Apart from the US, their list of preferred countries for higher education includes the UK, Canada, Finland, Norway, Malaysia and Germany.

Violence poltics, political unrest in educational institutions, irregularities in the recruitment process, anarchy in the job market, non-existence of subject-related job market, lack of proper evaluation of merit—these are the reasons why the talented young generation is leaving the country in exodus. As a result, our brains are effectively being drained. And if the brains are drained, if there are no talented people in the country, the situation of the country will be terrible.

There is an investment to the government for the talented people who are leaving the country, especially those who have studied in public universities. Has the government ever calculated the outcome of its investment?

We see that when the talented people of our neighboring country India go abroad for higher education, there is a commitment from the state that after acquiring the higher education, they have to return to the country and they must use the acquired higher education for the development of their country. And those talented people who go abroad return homeland after acquiring higher education and use the acquired knowledge for the welfare of the country. That is why India is moving forward in all sectors, and is writing its name in the ranks of superpowers. India has realized that it is not possible to build the desired prosperous country without the evaluation of talented people. Does our country understand that?

Above all, the level of brain drain from the country is an ominous sign for us. If this continues, the country will soon become talentless. It is high time we turned brain drain into 'brain gain'. Effective steps must be taken to prevent brain drain.

The writer is a, eminent researcher, journalist, and columnist.