Booming India draws NRI docs home

MUMBAI: Dr Anup Ramani, 36, a uro-oncological surgeon, returned to Mumbai after eight years in the US. “Had I stayed on, I would have been doing the same kind of work even after a decade.

There were no challenges, nor room for personal growth,” says the surgeon who gave up a well-paid job as the head of two departments, the laparoscopic and the prostate and kidney cancer departments at Minneapolis Hospital in Minnesota, as well as his three-storeyed house, to come back.

Dr Prabhakar Reddy, 40, emergency room doctor at Wockhardt Hospital in Bangalore, who returned last year, says: “When I left India in 1990, there were few opportunities in India’s health services sector. That’s totally changed now. This is the right time for doctors to return. The future holds out great possibilities.”

After IT and multinational corporation professionals, its now the turn of NRI doctors like Ramani and Reddy to head home. Years ago, these doctors left India for better conditions and prospects abroad.

Now, these are the same reasons bringing them back, apart from the urge to return home. Dr Malathi Niranjan, 30, a paediatrician and mother of two, came back because she wanted to bring up her daughters “in our own culture”. Even if that means putting in an extra four or five hours of work every day at the Bangalore clinic she set up after returning from the US.

It’s a growing trend. Naresh Malhan, managing director of the job consultants Manpower India, says: “Doctors who went overseas for an education, stayed back to work. But that’s changing. This may be due to the efforts of the government to bring the best talent back, and address the shortage here.” He estimates that of about 60,000 Indian doctors in the US and UK, over five and three per cent respectively have returned home in the last three months.

Last year, over 27,000 doctors graduated from India’s medical colleges. An estimated five per cent left for overseas training, according to the Indian Medical Association’s journal. One of them is Kishore Rajan, 28, who is all set to return to India next month after he completes his three-year training programme.  

When he left, Rajan had no plans to come back. “The health sector in India has grown. At the same time, there is continuing uncertainty in the UK. I want to leave soon to take advantage of the opportunities in India.”

According to former Indian Medical Association president Sunita Kshirsagar, “the ‘US returned’ tag helps doctors secure good jobs in five-star, speciality-care hospitals”, usually with comparable benefits and the world-class facilities they’re used to. JG Lalmalani, a urologist at Mumbai’s Jaslok Hospital, who was instrumental in convincing Ramani to come back, says: “We will be the first hospital in the country to have a specialised laparoscopic surgery department. We couldn’t consider Indian doctors, as they don’t have the required experience. That’s why we decided to hire a doctor from the US, where laparoscopic surgery is a well-developed subject.”

Reddy, who works with seven other US-retuned colleagues at Wockhardt, treats patients from different countries who prefer treatment in India. Reddy spent 16 years in the US and though his current salary is a tenth of what he earned earlier, he has no complaints.

“In the US, doctors are paid well, but the job never goes beyond treating patients. In India, there is a personal touch. It’s very rewarding when patients come back to meet us.”

Quite apart from the opportunities and facilities here, experts say the continuing insecurities doctors face abroad often makes them consider returning home. “In the US we work for specific tenures of three to five years. After that, I may be sent back,” says Dr Niranjan. “Local doctors get a preference when it comes to renewing service. You are still an outsider there, no mater how much you earn.”

All may not be well in India, however. With NRI docs returning in large numbers, local doctors have started feeling the heat. Annish Suvarna, 28, applied for a post at a five-star hospital in Bangalore, but was turned down for a specialist with ‘US experience’.

In fact, most of the high-profile jobs in the metros have been scooped up by foreign-returned doctors. So Suvarna is not looking to take up a job abroad instead. “There is great demand [for NRI doctors] in the healthcare industry, and since clients are willing to pay, specialists from abroad are in great demand,” he says.

A senior doctor from a well-known hospital adds: “In the last three months, we have recruited five CEOs who have returned to India after working overseas, and at salaries at par with their colleagues abroad. This has created dissatisfaction among local doctors who get paid according to the old Indian standards, and may even lose their jobs to the ‘foreign-returned’ doctors.”

For some people like Ramani, the pay and benefits are secondary. “In the US, I remember getting just one thank you card during my time there. Here I receive one almost every day. Recently, some fisherfolk I treated sent over some promfret, my favourite fish. It made me feel very special.”

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