Grad Students Tackle Return Migration in Geneva Challenge

A group of graduate business students, most with roots in India, are researching how to make returning back home to India more inviting than working abroad.

“We want to increase the rate of punaragaman,” said Arnab Pandey MBA ’16, defining the Hindi word as “returning back or coming back home.” He and a team of four others have created Project Punaragaman and will be competing in the Geneva Challenge 2015.

The Geneva Challenge is an international business contest hosted by the Graduate Institute Geneva that has tasked participants with coming up with an international development program that is theoretically grounded and offers pragmatic solutions. This year, the issue of focus is how return migration can contribute to social or economic development.

Project Punaragaman’s aim, according to the group’s website, is to “mitigate the negative aspects of return migration, such as brain drain, care drain and reduced labor force in India, and promote the positive aspects of entrepreneurship,” along with an increase in remittances, to alleviate poverty and foster human development.

“India sends the most number of brains out of the country a year — more than 14 million,” said Pandey, quoting the Migration Policy Institute on a 2013 number. “We want to see how technology can make India a better place.”

Nandkumar Buxani MBA ’16 said the group accrued data from online surveys and interviews to get a sense from Indians abroad if they feel the environment is favorable for them to return home. They received more than 70 responses from 10 countries and 47 cities. Pandey, who recently started UT’s first business analytics club, said they are analyzing the information using tools such as regression modeling to see what it takes for an Indian to return home and what is keeping them away.

“We’re creating models that would improve the current situation through entrepreneurship and through legal avenues to increase money being sent back to India,” Buxani said.

“Part of this challenge is that you need a feasible implementation,” said Christina Dove B.S. ’12, MBA ’16. “You can take our campaign and implement it directly.”

The team, which also includes Rohit Shastri MBA ’16 and Chenoy Ceil MBA ’16, will submit their entry May 30. Twelve semi-finalists will be announced July 1 with the top three presenting their ideas to a jury that includes the current director of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Office in Geneva, Neil Buhne. There is a monetary prize as well.

“Part of the reason I came to UT was for the international experience,” said Dove.

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