Research conducted by Careers 360 finds that 33% JEE toppers chose to remain in India between 1990 and 2010. This dropped to only 10% over the following decade.
New Delhi: Of the 31 students who topped the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) between 1990 to 2020, about 74% moved abroad to live and study, finds a new study. The trend of skilled students choosing to leave India has not just continued since the 1990s, but escalated over the last decade, finds Careers 360, a magazine dedicated to skilling and employment trends.
Careers 360 tracked JEE toppers over three decades, starting at 1990. It has found that while 33% of them chose to remain in India in the 20 years between 1990 and 2010, this dropped to only 10% in the next decade, 2011 to 2020.
The research shows that more than half (17 out of 31) of JEE All India Rank 1 – the toppers – now live in the United States.
The research highlights India’s increasing concern about outmigration of skilled Indians. In its 2025 report on “Internationalisation of Higher Education in India”, the NITI Aayog noted that outbound students outnumbered inbound students by 25 times, which it described as “a serious imbalance”.
It said that while in 2021-22, India hosted 46,878 inbound international students, it sent over 11.59 lakh students abroad. The number of outbound students rose to 13.36 lakh by 2024. The Niti Aayog acknowleged that at those levels of brain drain, India was missing out on opportunities to harness its demographic dividend and that its potential to build a research and development ecosystem was diminishing, hampering innovation and knowledge creation.
“If not addressed, the continued outflow of talent will hinder India’s ability to fully leverage its demographic dividend,” the report noted.
According to the new Careers 360 research, of the 31 JEE toppers between 1990 and 2020, 23 or 74% work and live outside India. Only eight remain in the country. It also found that even of those eight, five work for multinational or foreign-funded companies in India. Only three work for an Indian-owned institution or enterprise.
The trend of JEE toppers choosing to leave is a rising one. While 14 of 21 toppers between 1990 and 2010 (67%) settled abroad, this rose to 90% between 2011 to 2020. Averaged out over the three decades, 74% have left.
Just one JEE topper is still in India of the 10 toppers between 2011 and 2020. The rest – all nine – chose to work abroad.
Over the three decades since 1990, 19 toppers pursued higher education – none of them in India. Nearly 90% picked a university in the United States and 55% (11) of those found a place in one of two top-tier American institutions, Stanford and MIT, the research found.
Last March, the Union Ministry of External Affairs informed parliament that 2,06,378 Indians renounced their citizenship in 2024. In comparison, 1,22,819 Indians had given up their citizenship in 2011. This marks a roughly 68% increase.
“The reasons for renouncing Indian citizenship or taking foreign citizenship are personal and known only to the individual. The government recognises the potential of the global workplace in an era of knowledge economy,” the Minister of State for External Affairs, Pabitra Margherita, said in his written response in the Rajya Sabha.
“It has also brought about a transformational change in its engagement with Indian diaspora. A successful, prosperous, and influential diaspora is an asset for India. India stands to gain a lot from tapping its diaspora networks and productive utilisation of the soft power that comes from having such a flourishing diaspora. The government’s efforts are also aimed at harnessing the diaspora potential to its fullest including through sharing of knowledge and expertise.”
In his 2025 book, Secession of the Successful: The Flight Out of New India, author and commentator Sanjaya Baru explored the implications of growing outmigration of India’s wealthy and top talent for the economy. In an interview with The Federal, Baru said the Indian government “isn’t just tolerating emigration – it’s facilitating it” and justifying it as a “strategic asset”, which is a shortsighted mindset.
“Make it attractive to live here, not just work here. India must invest in retaining talent – not just exporting it. Reversing elite migration isn’t easy, but making India liveable and predictable is the first step,” he said.
This article went live on April third, two thousand twenty six, at forty-six minutes past eleven at night.
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