The Swades moment: Quiet Ghar Wapsi of India's best faculty

On some mornings at IIM Bangalore, Professor Malika walks into a classroom carrying ideas that have travelled almost as far as she has.

Her academic journey began at Panjab University, took her through the historic halls of the University of Cambridge, then to NYU Stern in New York. For years, the obvious career path lay overseas, where many Indian scholars built successful academic lives. Instead, she chose to return.

Not because opportunities abroad had diminished, but because she believed the most exciting questions about consumer behaviour were no longer being asked in the West.

“India is the most interesting consumer market in the world right now. Most management theories have been built using Western data and assumed to be universal. But those models do not always describe a country as culturally and economically diverse as India,” she says.

Malika's return is no longer unusual.

For this story, India Today Digital spoke to faculty members who returned after earning doctorates and conducting research at universities across the UK, the US and Australia, and who are now teaching at institutions ranging from the IIMs and IITs to private universities such as Ashoka University, O.P. Jindal Global University and FLAME University. Their journeys are different, but the question we asked each of them was the same. Why come back to India now?

Their answers point to a quiet but unmistakable shift underway in the Indian higher education space. Across India’s leading universities and management schools, internationally trained scholars are returning to teach, research and build institutions. Armed with global experience and international research networks, they are choosing Indian classrooms over careers overseas.

For decades, however, the story was very different. India's finest institutions nurtured generations of brilliant students, many of whom went on to build distinguished careers abroad. An IIT degree opened doors to Stanford or MIT, an IIM education became a passport to multinational boardrooms... every departure was celebrated as an individual triumph, even as it deepened India’s brain drain.

Today, that narrative is beginning to change. An academic ghar wapsi is underway — an intellectual version of Swades.

For Professor Meera Sooryavanshi, whose academic journey took her from the University of Wisconsin–Madison to New York University before she returned to teach at the Indian Institute of Technology (she is a retired faculty member), the decision was deeply personal.

"I never saw my PhD abroad as a one-way ticket. The goal was always to learn from the best, but eventually bring those ideas back to the place where they could make the greatest difference. India isn’t just home—it’s where many of the questions I want to answer actually exist.”

Call it reverse brain drain. Or, as many education leaders now prefer, brain circulation, a shift that could redefine India’s place in the world’s knowledge economy.

NEW FACES IN THE FACULTY LOUNGE

Few institutions capture this shift as vividly as IIM Bangalore.

Only three IIMs — Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Indore — have faculty strength exceeding 100. Among them, IIM Bangalore has quietly undergone one of its most significant demographic transformations. Nearly 30% of its roughly 150 faculty members are now below the age of 35, a sharp jump from the single-digit representation seen just a few years ago.

Many of these young professors earned their doctorates at universities abroad before choosing to return to India.

The change is about far more than age. It signals the arrival of a new generation of academics who bring with them international research experience, global collaborations and a different approach to teaching and scholarship. Alongside classroom instruction, they place equal emphasis on rigorous research, interdisciplinary thinking and publishing in leading international journals.

The shift also reflects a broader rethink in how India’s premier management institutes recruit talent.

Only a year ago, nearly one-third of faculty positions across the country’s leading IIMs remained vacant. Much of the shortage stemmed from recruitment models that traditionally favoured seniority over research potential.

That equation is now changing. Instead of waiting decades for candidates to accumulate experience, institutions are increasingly recruiting promising early-career scholars with strong research credentials and publication records. The result is a younger, more globally connected faculty that is gradually redefining academic life on Indian campuses.

The trend extends well beyond the IIM system.

Across India’s higher education landscape, universities are competing to attract internationally trained scholars. Jindal Global University, for instance, recently recruited 129 new faculty members, many with international academic experience, underscoring its push to build a globally connected institution.

Ashoka University has likewise developed one of India’s most internationally oriented faculties, with academics holding doctorates from Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, MIT and Princeton, reinforcing its emphasis on research excellence and global academic engagement.

FLAME University and the Indian School of Business (ISB) have also strengthened their internationally trained faculty, reflecting a broader movement across India’s leading institutions — one that is steadily bringing global scholarship back into Indian classrooms.

INDIA IS THE WORLD'S MOST INTERESTING CLASSROOM

For years, the flow of ideas in management education largely moved in one direction. Theories were developed in Western universities, tested across the world and eventually found their way into Indian classrooms. Indian researchers often adapted those frameworks to local contexts, but rarely did India shape the global conversation itself.

That balance is slowly beginning to shift.

The scholars returning to India are arriving with international training, global research networks and exposure to some of the world’s leading universities. Yet many say the questions that excite them most can now be explored only from here.

India’s vast consumer base, digital transformation, financial innovation and extraordinary social diversity are creating research opportunities that few other countries can match. Rather than simply validating theories developed elsewhere, Indian campuses are increasingly becoming places where entirely new ideas can take shape.

The change is subtle but significant. It marks a transition from being consumers of global scholarship to becoming contributors to it. The ambition is no longer just to understand India through existing academic frameworks, but to build frameworks that help the world better understand India — and, in doing so, reshape global scholarship itself.

As Malika puts it, "It is not that foreign training is better. It widens the questions people think worth asking. The solution isn't importing Western templates; it is a two-way exchange where Indian context sharpens global theory and global rigour strengthens Indian scholarship."

That may well be the most profound consequence of this quiet academic homecoming.

MORE THAN GLOBAL RANKINGS

It is tempting to see the influx of globally trained faculty as another chapter in Indian universities’ race up the global rankings. Research output, international collaborations and faculty diversity have, after all, become the currency of academic prestige.

But those leading these institutions insist the rankings are merely a by-product.

Professor Debashis Chatterjee, Director of IIM Kozhikode, points out that many international ranking systems define “international faculty” by nationality, not by where academics earned their degrees or built their careers. An Indian scholar returning after a PhD abroad, therefore, often adds little to that particular metric.

“The real objective,” he argues, “is stronger research, richer academic quality and deeper global engagement.”

And that, increasingly, is what returning scholars are bringing home. Along with international qualifications come global research networks, experience publishing in leading journals, exposure to competitive grants and familiarity with cutting-edge research methods. Those are assets that strengthen an institution regardless of where it appears on a league table.

The rankings may follow. But the larger ambition is to build universities whose ideas travel farther than their positions on any global list.

THE INDIA IMPACT

The impact of this academic homecoming is perhaps most visible where it matters most...in the classroom.

For Professor Malika, years at Cambridge and NYU Stern reinforced one principle above all else: rigour. Not just in research, but in the way students are encouraged to think. “I would rather have students think through problems as consumers themselves than memorise frameworks,” she told India Today Digital.

Professor Anirudh Dhawan, who earned his PhD in Finance from the University of Technology Sydney before joining IIM Bangalore, brings similar philosophy to his classroom.

His students don’t just learn financial concepts, they negotiate, simulate, debate and make decisions. Through role-playing exercises, Excel-based simulations and multi-week stock market trading projects, they experience the uncertainty and complexity that define the real world.

"International exposure often changes not what is taught, but how it is taught. Even introductory accounting, he argues, becomes richer when connected to broader ideas such as information asymmetry and agency problems that shape modern corporations," he told India Today Digital.

SO... WHY ARE SCHOLARS RETURNING?

The answer lies as much in India’s changing universities as in the country’s changing ambitions.

Research funding has improved. Industry partnerships have deepened. Universities are investing in doctoral programmes, interdisciplinary research centres and international collaborations. Increasingly, globally trained academics see India not as a place to return to despite its challenges, but because of its possibilities.

That shift is also finding policy backing.

A 2025 NITI Aayog report on internationalising higher education argues that India must actively attract globally trained faculty, encourage joint academic appointments and build internationally competitive universities if it hopes to emerge as a global education hub. It notes that earlier initiatives such as GIAN and VAJRA opened important doors but fell short because of procedural hurdles and administrative bottlenecks.

Today’s recruitment strategies across several leading institutions reflect that broader vision. Rather than relying on occasional visiting appointments, universities are investing in permanent research ecosystems built around internationally experienced faculty.

For Professor Dhawan, one of the biggest draws of IIM Bangalore was the opportunity to pursue high-quality research while teaching students who will go on to shape India’s corporate future.

"Indian academia itself is becoming more research-intensive. Even scholars trained entirely within India are increasingly publishing in top international journals, steadily narrowing the gap between the country’s leading institutions and the world’s best universities. This is the best place to be," he told India Today Digital.

For Professor Rishi Agarwal, another academic who returned to India after pursuing higher studies in the UK and now teaches at Ashoka University, the decision to come home was always about purpose.

"The best years of my academic training happened abroad, but I always wanted the best years of my academic career to be in India. There’s a different sense of purpose when you’re teaching students who will help shape your own country’s future."

OUR NEXT ACADEMIC BIG PICTURE?

Years ago, success for India’s brightest students was measured by how far they travelled from home. A foreign degree, an overseas faculty position or a research career abroad was seen as the natural culmination of academic excellence.

That equation is beginning to change.

The scholars returning today are not abandoning the world; they are bringing it back with them. They arrive carrying international collaborations, new research methods and ideas shaped across continents, but increasingly believe that some of the world’s most important questions can be answered from Indian campuses.

Whether this remains a trickle or becomes a defining movement will depend on how universities continue to invest in research, autonomy and talent. But one thing is already becoming clear... India’s next academic success story may no longer be measured by how many minds leave.

It may be measured by how many choose to return, and by the ideas they create once they do.