“ Come, Work and Serve in India ”

 Subject: 

From “Come, Work and Serve in India” to a 

> Mission: A Proposal for MART and the STAR Act 2026

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Respected Shri Piyush Goyalji,

I read with great interest your address to Indian science and technology research students in Berlin. You invited our scientists, engineers and researchers abroad to “come, work and serve in India,” and you rightly said that financial incentives alone won’t bring them home. The research environment and institutional support matter just as much.

I agree completely, and I would add one more ingredient that is often missing: someone in Government who owns the outcome.

Today, a scientist in Berlin or Boston who wants to return has to deal with many ministries, departments and institutions on their own, and goodwill gets lost along the way. I propose the following.

1. A separate Ministry for Acquisition and Retention of Talent (MART)

• It should report directly to the Prime Minister, so it has the authority to coordinate across ministries.
• Its Secretary could be deputed by ASSOCHAM, CII or FICCI, bringing private-sector urgency.
• The Secretary should carry clear annual Output Targets: the number of Indian scientists, researchers and engineers actually resettled in India each year.
• It should be staffed by Under-Secretary-level officials with at least 10 years in other ministries, who know where the bottlenecks are and whom to call.

2. A dedicated portal: www.MART.gov.in

Overseas Indian scientists, researchers and engineers can register a “Basic Intention” to return. They can choose to work as:

• Researchers in Government, private or academic research labs (with their area of expertise)
• Professional executives in PSUs or private-sector companies
• Teaching staff in educational institutions
• Founders of start-ups

3. One person accountable for each returnee: the MART AGENT

• Each registrant is assigned a MART officer as their personal AGENT, matched with the help of AI.
• The AGENT’s only job is to coordinate with every ministry and agency involved until that person’s return and resettlement is complete.
• For each case, a PERT chart is drawn up. Officers from all concerned ministries update it in real time.
• Each AGENT is judged on one number: successful returns resettled.

4. A legislative anchor: the STAR Act 2026 (Scientific Talent Acquisition and Retention)

Writing MART’s mandate, targets and inter-ministerial obligations into law would make this a national mission rather than a scheme.

A working prototype you can click through

To show how this would work in practice, I have built a clickable prototype of MART.gov.in:

https://claude.ai/artifact/CoMXtJiHwZ3ZHHjUKGXWqD#page-dcb81aee8d83

It has ten screens:

• For the returnee: registration of Basic Intention, assignment of an AGENT, and a live “My Mission” tracker.
• For the AGENT: a workbench of cases, where AI drafts follow-ups and nudges for the officer to approve.
• The PERT chart: a full chart for one returnee’s move, with its critical path.
• For ministries: a desk where officers post updates straight to the PERT chart.
• For the Secretary: a dashboard tracking progress against the Output Target and escalations.
• Design notes: the system architecture and the AI agent workflow.

In this design, AI does the reading, matching, planning and chasing. The human officer makes every decision.

Earlier work behind this proposal

I have argued for PERT-based tracking of government processes for years, in “Nothing Prettier than PERT…!” (4 Dec 2015) and “PERT for Digital Dashboard” (27 Feb 2018). These ideas also build on my Start-up India blogs of 2015:

• Back Factory of the World? (9 Sept)
• A New Economic Order? aka “Start Up Act 2015” (12 Sept)
• From Job Seekers to Job Creators (15 Sept)
• Start Up Eco System: USA vs India (1 Oct)
• Ten Million Entrepreneurs? (19 Oct)
• Get Out of the Way (1 Dec)
• Blueprint for a Start Up Nation (27 Dec)

They also draw on “Maadhyam: Gateway of (Business) India” (22 July 2021).

Sir, your Berlin call has opened a door. MART and the STAR Act would make sure every scientist who walks through it finds an officer waiting on the other side, with a plan and a deadline.

With warm regards,

Hemen Parekh
www.HemenParekh.ai | www.IndiaAGI.ai
Mumbai
29 October 2026