From remittances to brain gain

The World Migration Report 2026 records that India received nearly $137.7 billion in remittances in 2024, becoming the first country to cross the $100 billion threshold. These flows represent the labour of millions of Indians working across the world – nurses in Dubai, construction workers in Riyadh, engineers in Silicon Valley, and students in Toronto. Migration is deeply embedded in India’s economic structure.

For decades, the migration debate in India has been largely framed around remittances, and understandably so. These inflows sustain household incomes, finance education and healthcare, support consumption, and strengthen India’s balance of payments. In states such as Kerala, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, and Rajasthan, migration-linked income has become an important source of economic resilience.

Reducing migration to remittance volumes alone is analytically inadequate. A country aspiring to become a global knowledge economy must confront a harder question: can India continue exporting skilled labour while simultaneously positioning itself as a centre of innovation, research, and advanced technology?

The concern becomes sharper in sectors central to long-term competitiveness – artificial intelligence, semiconductors, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, and research-intensive higher education. These sectors depend on specialised human capital created through years of public investment in universities and technical institutions. When highly skilled graduates migrate permanently, much of the return on that investment is captured by destination economies rather than India.

The costs extend beyond lost foreign exchange. Persistent high-skilled emigration weakens domestic capacity in medicine, academia, and applied research. Universities struggle to retain distinguished faculty, research ecosystems face talent shortages, and innovation capacity is gradually diluted when entrepreneurs, inventors, and scientists are permanently absorbed into foreign labour markets. The long-term challenge is therefore the erosion of India’s domestic innovation ecosystem.

This does not mean migration should be viewed negatively. China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Israel demonstrate that diaspora communities can become engines of technology transfer, venture capital, research collaboration, and industrial upgrading. In these cases, migration generated national economic dynamism because states created institutional mechanisms that transformed mobility into knowledge circulation.

India has moved only partially in this direction. Diaspora engagement remains largely symbolic. A country with a diaspora exceeding 35 million, spread across leading technology hubs, universities, and financial centres, cannot afford to treat its overseas population primarily as a source of remittances and cultural sentiment. What India requires is a strategic shift built around four priorities.

First, India must develop structured diaspora research and innovation networks connecting universities, laboratories, startups, and industries with Indian professionals abroad. Second, India should institutionalise flexible return fellowships and visiting scholar programmes for Indian academics, scientists, and technology professionals working overseas.

Third, India must strengthen its domestic institutions. No meaningful brain gain strategy can succeed unless India invests seriously in its universities, laboratories, and innovation ecosystems. Fourth, India should facilitate professionals working abroad to contribute to Indian institutions, industries, and research agendas.

Enhancing institutional capabilities

Highly skilled professionals often access global mobility opportunities with relative ease. Low- and semi-skilled workers, however, continue to face recruitment fraud, exploitative contracts, and inadequate legal protection. A migration policy that privileges elite talent mobility while neglecting the vulnerabilities of workers whose remittances sustain millions of households would be economically short-sighted and morally incomplete.

The international migration system that supported India’s remittance expansion cannot be assumed to remain stable indefinitely. Immigration restrictions are tightening across North America and Europe, while labour nationalisation policies in the Gulf countries are reducing dependence on migrant workers.

India’s migration story has therefore outgrown its traditional frame. It is no longer simply about workers sending money home. It is about how a rising economy positions itself within global networks of talent, technology, and intellectual production. Remittances remain important, but long-term economic strength will increasingly depend on institutional quality, research capacity, and technological capability.

The central question before India is whether it can build the institutional capacity to transform the global mobility of its citizens into enduring national economic and intellectual strength.

(The writer is an associate professor of Economics and Director, Centre for Economics, Law and Public Policy, National Law University, Jodhpur)