AGARWALJI KA BETA…..

Apart from Omicron, the newspapers and social media cant seem to get anough of the new golden boy of India – Parag Agarwal.

This 37-year-old is now the CEO of Twitter and all headlines are quick to remind the world – An ‘Indian born’ American leading Twitter. The pride for us is in the “Indian born.”

Agarwal has indeed done us all proud and will be a beckon of inspiration for millions of IIT aspirants. He will now motivate so many more to become the coveted ‘Computer engineer’ from IIT. All that which Aamir Khan tried to teach with 3 Idiots is history, after Agarwal and Pichai, the pressure would have only gone up further to ensure the child gets into IIT.

Agarwal’s credentials are impeccable, sheer brilliance – a ranking of 77 in JEE, education in IIT Bombay, further education in Stanford. He now joins the elite ranks of global tech CEOs from India such as Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, IBM's Arvind Krishna, and Adobe's Shantanu Narayen.

The new CEO will receive an annual salary of $1 million-plus bonuses plus stock compensation worth $12.5 million. This is enough to drive some more parents insane!

So, two points come to our mind. First – why is it always that such greats of modern India are only “Indian born” but citizens of America or UK or some other country? When one of the best institutions, IIT, has the power to nurture such brilliant brains, why is that the country is not able to nurture it further and bring greatness to India? This ‘brain-drain’ is a serious problem and this cannot be plugged with a policy or some reform – we will be able to retain talent and brains only if collectively, over a period of time, we have built an environment which can nurture and build creativity and intelligence; that freedom of thought and the spirit needs to come; we need to put education for the sake of knowledge and not for the sake of making money as our priority.

Secondly, well, lets be proud with at least “Indian born”. Something is better than nothing. It does feel good to know that some of the biggest global companies of the world are led by Indians. This, if nothing else, puts India and Indians in the right perspective – the way Indians are perceived abroad has changed and that’s thanks solely to the Indian IT industry first. With Indians leading such huge companies, it makes it legitimate for many others to put an Indian on the forefront. Let’s not forget that there have been a few noble laureates too from India - four recently of which only one is Indian born and still in India - Kailash Satyarthi for Peace, 2014. The rest - Abhijit Banerjee for Economics, 2019, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan for Chemistry, 2009 and Amartya Sen for Economics – again Indian born but not Indians any more.

As we said, something is better than nothing. One day, our country too will regain its lost glory of being the Nalanda to the world; till then let’s be happy that we produce brains which rule some of the best companies in the world.