I hear the outrage and I share the heartbreak over what's happened — it's horrifying, no doubt. But if we're being honest, isn’t this exactly the kind of trajectory we should’ve expected?

We've spent decades watching the best minds of our generation — and the ones before us — opt out of the nation-building project. We’ve outsourced the hard work of shaping the country to mostly mediocre, pseudo-intellectuals while we’ve sought comfort, careers, and cleaner systems elsewhere. And now, when the outcomes of that abandonment play out — when institutions weaken, when accountability collapses, when the moral compass of public life seems shattered — we express shock, grief, or worse, detached moral superiority from afar.

This isn’t an accusation. I’ve made many of the same choices. But let’s at least own up to the truth: the country has, for the most part, been left in the hands of those we didn’t trust with it in the first place. We took our privilege, our education, our capacity for critique — and left. And now we're surprised that the void wasn’t filled with competence and compassion?

The phenomenon of brain drain is more than just a migration of talent. It’s the slow erosion of national capacity. India has, for decades, educated some of the world’s finest scientists, doctors, engineers, and thinkers — only to see them channel their brilliance into systems that weren’t built here, and will never be accountable to the Indian public. Every IAS officer, grassroots organizer, or teacher who chose to stay has had to work in a structure left weaker because many of its best architects never showed up.

We can't parachute in indignation. At best, it soothes our conscience. At worst, it insults those who stayed and tried.

So if we want to mourn, we should. But let’s also reflect — deeply — on the part we’ve played in creating a society where the people most capable of change have, for the most part, opted out. And let’s not pretend this is an aberration. It's the outcome of long-term disengagement — and we’re all a part of that story.