SL:BRAIN DRAIN, NOBODY SEEMS TO CARE!!!

Brain drain nobody seems to care

I was at the graduation ceremony of the prestigious Post Graduate Institute of Management a few months ago. The new batch of MBA’s were graduating. This is an important and exciting day. Photographs are taken that will forever adorn the wall of the sitting room. Kids will look admiringly at their dads and mums achievement, and of course the proud grand-parents will have a group picture that will be shown to all visitors.
But lo and behold, a large number were not there to receive the graduation scroll and to take those photographs. Before the graduation ceremony they had all run away to Australia, New Zealand, Dubai and God knows wherever else.

This is the brain drain that nobody seems to be worrying about. The future of a country depends on its intellectual capital. The collective experience that is the catalyst, the engine room of a nation, the magic ingredient (or call it what you like) that makes things happen.

A countries long term development plan must have three components. A strategy, the money to finance it, and the people to execute it. Without all three there is no viable development plan. The most important of the three are - People.

A country is wholly dependant on its pool of intellectual capital to develop its resources and generate growth. Even if a country has vast resources but does not have the skills, it will not be able to develop them and that’s what happened for example in Ghana.

Even with no mineral resources with great intellectual capital you can create the miracle of the loaves and create something substantial out of nothing, and a good example of this is Switzerland.

We have our own examples. The southern highway and some other donor funded projects have a plan and the money, as it is donor funded but the progress is slow like a tortoise with a sprained ankle. The problem has to be the lack of people skills.

Therefore, to evaluate any long term strategy for growth and to answer the question of how we are doing as a country we need another set of new measurements. We need an index of intellectual capital. The total at the starting point will be the number of people with professional qualifications and tertiary education. The moving total will be to add new professionals and to subtract those who leave. If the index goes up it is good news like the stock market index going up and if it goes down it is bad news.

The task of a government is to create an environment where the index will go up. If the index goes down it is bad news for the Government as it proves that they failed to create the environment to increase our intellectual capital is certainly bad news now in Sri Lanka.

That is not the only index we require to monitor how we are doing. In addition to professionals we need artisans of every description. They are another tier of intellectual capital. We need electricians, plumbers, masons, carpenters, and builders with a variety of skills etc etc.. We are losing our professionals and we are losing our artisans. So we need an artisan index and we need to publish this data as well. What is worrying is that the country has no perceptible plan to keep our artisans. Instead they are committing in my view a crime by doing their best to export our artisans. We have created an institution called the Foreign Employment Bureau to export our people. It is a dreadful admission to say we cannot see a future for our country where we can use all the human skills available to us.

Therefore please go away to some other country, that has a strategy for growth that needs more than the pool of human resources available to them, and go and supplement their resources ,and help them to achieve their plans. That is the nub of it. There are countries that have used up their intellectual capital and are looking to pinch them from countries who have a surplus as they have no plans or strategies to use up their pool of human capital.

As we are so bankrupt in the optimism basket we are almost happy to export people. We even send our young mothers to do domestic service in foreign countries .They have to leave their children and perhaps elderly parents and go away and not return for one or two years. Do we suffer with them .The pain, the anxiety of leaving home and children and other loved ones. No signs of it. On the contrary some crow about the inward remittances that these poor souls send. They forget that this money comes drenched in tears, and enveloped in a curse. So, we need another index “the unhappiness index”. The number that go away to do menial functions abroad leaving their families behind constitute the unhappiness index. It is bad news when it goes up and good news when it comes down.
courtesy:dailymirror.lk