The term brain drain was coined by the spokesmen of

the Royal Society of London to describe the outflow

of scientists and technologists to the United
States and Canada in the early 1950s. Since then the
term has become synonymous with human capital or
the migration of highly educated individuals from the
developing, mostly third world countries, to the
developed ones.

Over the past few decades, more since Pakistan has

been lurched full throttle into economic and political
chaos, the phenomenon has become the bane of the
society. The number of repining Pakistanis who wish
to settle abroad is rising every year and the ones who
are actually capable of breaking loose are
coincidentally the educated ones, contributing
alarmingly to the growing crisis of the Pakistani brain
drain. To leave the country and settle abroad has become the zeitgeist of current day
Pakistan.

Unfortunately either the government does not

realize the severity of the problem or prefers to
brush it under the proverbial rug like so many
other issues. The migration of the Pakistani
professionals to foreign countries, namely, US,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand has
increased considerably with young educated and
skilled Pakistani such as doctors, IT Experts,
scientists and other professional either already
gone or planning to leave. The fact that workers
from all skill levels are losing or have completely
lost faith in the economic future of the country
was revealed by the Gallup survey that
indicated that even the semi-skilled and
unskilled workers want to migrate outside in
search of better prospects. 62 percent of the adults who were surveyed expressed the
desire to migrate abroad while 38 percent said that they would prefer to settle outside
permanently.

It is often thought that the transmittance of funds by

the ones who leave the country as a result of brain
drain is a good enough substitute for these
individuals actually staying in the country and
working. But that idea is valid only to a minimal
extent as there can be no substitute for services
these professionals could be rendering the country
by staying within the borders and adding to a far
rapid economic, scientific and technological development of the country. Again, that can
only happen if the proper infrastructure is provided to them whereby the country could
earn manifold the money it receives from transmittance from the migrated workers.

According to Dr. Fitzhugh Mullan of George

Washington University every doctor who leaves a
poor nation leaves a hole that cannot be filled. He
says,

‘That creates enormous problems for the source

country and the educational and health leaders in the
country who are attempting to provide healers’.

Research shows that at 20 countries export more than

10 percent of their physician work force to richer
nations with nearly no reciprocation as the US exports less than one-tenth of 1 percent
of its doctors. Economic factor is primarily responsible for this mass migration of the
scientific community from poorer, host countries like Pakistan. In Pakistan the value
placed for a scientist with an advanced level degree is Grade 17 which comes with a
salary that is totally insufficient to meet the basic requirements of a family. So it is no
surprise that the advanced countries are exploiting the situation by offering these
individuals far more handsome incentives.

Asif J. Mir writes in ‘Pakistani Think Tank’,

 ‘We cannot achieve long-term economic growth by
exporting our human resource. In the new world order,
people with knowledge drive economic growth. We talk a
lot of poverty alleviation in Pakistan. But who is going to
alleviate the poverty—the uncreative bureaucracy that
created poverty? Hypothetically, the most talented should
lead the people, create wealth and eradicate poverty and
corruption’.

Phillip Bonosky, contributing editor of Political Affairs, writes in his book

‘Afghanistan-Washington’s Secret War’,

‘Pakistan seems to have nothing but problems. Endemic poverty which was Great
Britain’s imperial gift to the colonial world—a poverty on which the sun never sets—
skilled (badly needed in Pakistan itself) abroad in search for jobs. Hardly any country
has suffered more from the ‘brain drain’ than has Pakistan. Nearly 3,000 (annually)
graduates of Pakistan’s medical colleges are jobless; most go abroad. The educated see
their future not in their home country but in any country but their own’.

According to a report in the ‘The Observer’, London,

‘Pakistan is facing a massive brain drain as record numbers of

people desperate to leave their politically unstable,
economically chaotic country swamp foreign embassies with
visa applications…The biggest number of applications for
British visas are from Pakistan. Doctors, lawyers and IT
professional and leading the exodus, but laborers and
farmhands are joining the queues of malnourished people
who gather daily outside the US embassy in Islamabad’.

The greatest effect of brain drain on any country is what is seen in Pakistan today;
rampant corruption, poor administrations, lack of motivation and a fast diminishing
nationalism. Unless there is nationalism there can be no collective progress and poverty
and crime will continue to increase under the umbrella of plethoric apathy. Whatever
the solution it needs to come fast and it needs to be come now otherwise ‘when the
educated are away, the uneducated will play’ as they are playing at the moment.