The other day a Turkish cab driver in NYC asked me "What is w/ Indians? Are all of you Doctors or something?" and then I realized how true is he..with most of the other white collar jobs being outsourced to India, most NRI families have been getting their kids to focus more and more in medicine related professions.
In the US, Indians and Indian-Americans make up the largest non-white cluster of the medical community (they account for one in every 20 practicing doctors). The presence has come more to forefront in recent times with more charitable activities, more political lobbying, less high paying jobs in other sectors of the economies, increase of outsourcing of radiology reports and abundance of health tourism (where an american would go to india to get a knee replacement surgery than paying almost twice here).
I mean most of us know that we Indians have a history in medical stuff (Indian Atreya and Susrata established medical schools around 600 BC before people knew about Hippocrates or his oath :-) ) however statistics as "Indians make up roughly 20 percent of the International Medical Graduates - or foreign-trained doctors - operating in the U.S" are kind of social triggers that convince more and more Indian parents settled in US to infuse their kids with the thoughts that they gotta become a doctor. This sense of choosing a profession based on job security and monetary returns is a 3rd world phenemenon however it seems that most Indian parents in USA have not yet been able to curb their inner insecurities for money and stability over years.
Why cannot the Indian Americans be something else in life? I mean how many Indian Americans are good script writers or artists or painters or musicians or social activists or comedians (I can only recall Manoj 'Night' Shyamalan and Russell Peters)? Why most Indian Americans are doctors? I know a few Indian Americans who are doctors because they love being doctors, however what about the rest? Why do they still want to run the rat race?
2 comments:
Regardless of backgrounds or origins, I think parents should let their kids do what they want to and what they are really good at.
It is better for everybody to have a good plumber than a bad doctor.
Yes it is true.. Let children decide what they want to be
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