At a time when West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is trying out all possible strategies to stop braindrain and bring back talents to the state, engineers from West Bengal in Kerala, pursuing courses in product designing, said they were forced to stay outside owing to lack of opportunities in Bengal.
Abhishek Mitra, a resident of Garia in south Kolkata, and a mechanical engineer is studying product designing from Kerala's state-owned Kerala State Institute of Design (KSID). He is working on a project of developing a unique food storage system which he didn't want to elaborate on. Living and studying in Kerala, he missed his fish curry but also rued the fact that there was not enough opportunities for him in Bengal to ensure him a career on his return.
"For starters there is no institute in West Bengal where I could have learnt product designing. Now, while I am pursuing my passion at KSID I believe I will have to take up a job in cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, or Mumbai. I wish there were enough opportunities in Bengal so that I could have worked and stayed with my family," he said while talking to DNA on Wednesday.
Similar is the story of Aritra Mahapatra who, after completing automobile engineering wanted to take up product designing. "I opted for KSID because there was hardly any government institute offering this course. So I will not only have to stay away from home for these two and a half years which is the tenure of my course but will also have to look for a job outside the city. I have a 70-year-old father back home and I would rather stay with my family in Kolkata," Mahapatra said. He said, while in other states, a product designer can start his career with an annual salary of around Rs eight lakh per annum, in Kolkata there was almost no job opportunity in this field. "We will love it if the higher education department of Bengal did something about it so that talents from Bengal could hone their skills there and earn while they live with their families," Mahapatra added.