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Indian government concerned about flight of engineers

India's best engineers are abandoning government space and defense research work for better salaries and projects in the private sector, sparking a recruitment crisis, a report said yesterday.

"We are alarmed. We must find a solution," C.N.R. Rao, the head of the prime minister's research panel, told the Hindustan Times newspaper.

Rao said eight of his doctorate students went to General Electric alone this year to accept offers that promised better access to cutting-edge research and higher salaries.

"The rate of attrition has hovered around 7 to 8 percent" for the past few years, said G. Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, which plans to send an unmanned mission to the moon by the end of the decade.

Young professionals with advanced software and engineering skills at private companies in India can easily earn more than double the US$670 a month salary paid at top government-run research institutes, the report said.

The panel, which sent a report on the issue to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this month, recommended raising the retirement age of 60 as a first step to stem the crisis which also affects work at the Defense Research and Development Organization.

Global companies have hired thousands of the country's top management and engineering school graduates in the past decade to handle major research projects, the report said.

Overseas companies are forecast to spend as much as US$225 billion to outsource engineering and software services to India by 2020, according to the National Association of Software and Service Companies.
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