Anoop Dawar
Comments
A good podcast indeed. I do think that although it covered a lot of ground on this topic, it missed a couple of things.
I'm going to make a couple of conjectures here that will help in making the point clear. First of them is that parents that felt successful in a given profession tend to direct their offsprings to the same profession. This is not an indian trait or an american trait -- but a trait in general of all parents around the world. So a very successful businessman would like to have his kids be businessmen and so on. The exceptions to this are those who felt that although they were successful they didnt like the profession in the first place and were forced into it due to circumstances.
The second one is that US immigration policy over the last few decades, as far as immigrants from asia is concerned, has been focused on bringing in professionals with high education. Thus the US immigration policy has dictated the sort of 1st generation indians that are living in the US to a very large extent. Again the exception to this are indians who were able to come to US due to money (businessmen willing to move with a few million dollars) or due to already established family presence in US (via the family immigration route).
Given these two, it is but natural that the 2nd generation indian americans (Not sure if I'm using the term correctly - but I mean the children of indian immigrants) tend to focus on the largely on same or similar professions.
In my opinion this really does not have anything to do with fundamental differences, if any, in the school systems of India v/s US or in any sort of perceived predilection of indian (All Indians in general, not just those in US) parents to push their kids towards engineering, medicine or law.
Again the key to remember is that the slice of indians the US immigration policy chose to bring into US dictates what sort of indians are here in US today and consequently what sort of professions they have and prefer.
Without any study or research, I would venture a guess that it takes atleast a couple of generations for an immigrant family to assimilate into the country. It would be really interesting to know how the attitudes differ from 2nd generation american indians to 3rd generation american indians and so on.
I'm going to make a couple of conjectures here that will help in making the point clear. First of them is that parents that felt successful in a given profession tend to direct their offsprings to the same profession. This is not an indian trait or an american trait -- but a trait in general of all parents around the world. So a very successful businessman would like to have his kids be businessmen and so on. The exceptions to this are those who felt that although they were successful they didnt like the profession in the first place and were forced into it due to circumstances.
The second one is that US immigration policy over the last few decades, as far as immigrants from asia is concerned, has been focused on bringing in professionals with high education. Thus the US immigration policy has dictated the sort of 1st generation indians that are living in the US to a very large extent. Again the exception to this are indians who were able to come to US due to money (businessmen willing to move with a few million dollars) or due to already established family presence in US (via the family immigration route).
Given these two, it is but natural that the 2nd generation indian americans (Not sure if I'm using the term correctly - but I mean the children of indian immigrants) tend to focus on the largely on same or similar professions.
In my opinion this really does not have anything to do with fundamental differences, if any, in the school systems of India v/s US or in any sort of perceived predilection of indian (All Indians in general, not just those in US) parents to push their kids towards engineering, medicine or law.
Again the key to remember is that the slice of indians the US immigration policy chose to bring into US dictates what sort of indians are here in US today and consequently what sort of professions they have and prefer.
Without any study or research, I would venture a guess that it takes atleast a couple of generations for an immigrant family to assimilate into the country. It would be really interesting to know how the attitudes differ from 2nd generation american indians to 3rd generation american indians and so on.