I have seen two clear trends around me.
First, a lot of couples after marriage are going to foreign locations
for honeymoon. If they can’t afford to go to Europe, they would not mind going
to neighboring countries like Thailand or Srilanka. Basically they want to go
anywhere buy India.
Image: This poll done on Twitter by Kunal Shah shows clearly where Indians are headed to
Secondly, a lot of folks are going to the US and other countries for
masters degree after working for a few years after B.Tech. They pass
engineering in India, work for a few years in whichever company (mostly IT)
they get job in, then spend whole of this saved money in funding their overseas
education. Often they also take education loans (which come at a low interest
rate than other loans) in India and then go to abroad.
Both these trends are loss-making events for Indian economy. First, if Indians
spent money on tourism and vacations inside India, local economy would get a
boast. Similarly, if Indians did higher studies in India, the money spent inside
India would help in our GDP growth. The Indian currency going outside is not
helping our economy either. All those foreign counties are benefitting from the
hard earned and saved money inside India, just because Indians choose to go
abroad.
There are no easy fixes to reverse this trend. The biggest challenge is
to change the mindset. It is often said that Indians do not show patriotism unless
there is a war or if there is a Cricket match. Jokes aside, it would be very
tough for India to compete with other nations in this globalized world, if Indians
keeps spending money abroad. I think our government must look into this trend
and do something about it before too much harm is done.
If you are reading this, try to think what your contributions are to
Indian economy and how you can help our country to get better every day. Try to
spend wisely, in a way which can help our national economy.
- Rahul Tiwary
No comments:
Post a Comment