'Going Back to Desh': A Very Lucrative Option

One of the top mega trends shaping the world in the coming years would be reverse brain drain: a steady flow of foreign nationals and migrants returning home to fill vacancies for senior-level positions, according to a Frost & Sullivan report released in April 2011.

The report — World's Top Global Mega Trends to 2020 and Implications to Business, Society and Cultures — argued that the vast CXO vacancies in countries like India would be filled not only by returning Indians, but by Americans and Europeans seeking better prospects. Two million BPO-KPO jobs could go to foreign nationals from China, Poland, and the Philippines, and salaries in the BRIC nations would reach parity with developed countries in purchasing-power terms, plus better benefits.

"Frost & Sullivan defines Mega Trends as global, sustained and macroeconomic forces of development that impact business, economy, cultures, careers and personal lives, thereby defining our future world and its increasing pace of change," said Frost & Sullivan partner Sarwant Singh.

Other mega trends in the report: urbanization — 30 mega-cities, 15 mega-regions, and at least 10 mega-corridors of over 20 million people by 2020; e-mobility, with over 40 million electric vehicles sold annually worldwide in 2020; geo-networking, taking social media into real-time geographic interaction; and "Innovating to Zero" — zero emissions, zero accidents, zero defects. Women empowerment, the report said, would reach new heights, with one in three workers being a woman and up to 40% of boardrooms in some nations comprising women by 2020.

How many of those 2020 predictions came true is a fair question for another day. But the headline trend — the return flow of talent — only gathered force in the years that followed.

Reporting: The Economic Times.