I'm in the U.S now for a short visit and met a person from India who has been living in the States for the past 17 years. He came to US for has post graduate studies and after college stayed on and started working. He is now married with two kids, has a very good job and makes pots of money – his house alone is valued at more than a million dollars. He also has as a side business, two Indian grocery shops, a catering service specializing in Indian cuisine and even is involved in import and distribution of certain food products from India.
With all this, he is still not satisfied. He wants to go back to India. Why? Because there are more "opportunities" in India !!. He has got caught in the hype about "India being the next big thing".
Yes, I too am a believer in the "India story" but a lot of it is just media hype. This person has not thought about the adjustments he and his family has to make by relocating to India after 17 years in US. It is easy to get lured into the hype only to realize later that things don't always work out the way you want them to be.
I recently read an interview of Wipro's Asif Premji in which he made an interesting observation – that Wipro gets scores of resumes from Indians living in the U.S for jobs back in India but usually as a policy does not recruit people who have been in the US for 10 years and more. Reason for this was that Wipro found that people who were in US for such a long time find relocation and adjustment to a life in India very difficult with the results that their careers suffer.
So my take on this is that though one may think that the grass looks greener on the other side, one has to think long and hard about any decision one might take and impact of that decision on ones life.
