For a 28-year-old who started off at $300 a month for a company in Jamshedpur, it was a dream come true to have secured a job in the US at $52,000 a year. And she was not disappointed when she landed at Pittsburgh to join her American employers.

But one year down the line, Aishita Pramanik has packed her bags and taken the flight back to India.

Pramanik’s case, as reported on the Website of Rocky Mountain News , is not an isolated one. After having landed a dream job abroad, an increasing number of Indians are willing to call it quits and make their way home. Call it job insecurity or homesickness, for Indian pros, whether they be in the West or the Orient or the Middle East, the idea of returning to India is increasingly getting popular.

For Pramanik, it was a combination of many things. She was happy when her company in Kolkata shifted her to the US. She found her new job challenging. “I could actually work on new platforms, new technologies, and develop software. My job also entailed client interaction,” the Website quoted her as saying. After her initial two-month contract expired, she got an extension and was happy to accept it. The money was good and she was saving $2,500 a month. Plus her job was taking her places. Pittsburgh, Kingston, Farmington Hills, Denver… She had good times. She was able to hang out with other Indians and the feeling of loneliness was not there.

But, what made her change her mind in the space of just one year? News from home was not good. Her family was going through tough times, Denver didn’t have as many Indians and her fiancé, who had been working for IBM in Switzerland, was to return home by the end of February this year. The Colorado cold was not helping either and suddenly she was missing home. Eventually, she managed to convince her employers to shift her back to Kolkata and she was back home in February.

The Internet and message boards are replete with Indians abroad looking for opportunities in apna Bharat

Kumar, sitting in the US, has put up a message in the discussion forum on return2india : “I am looking to return to India.  I am currently in the USA (a permanent resident of USA) and am looking for a job in India.  How difficult is it to get a job in the telecom / IT sector?”

Yes, the element of nostalgia is definitely there. An interesting article in nriol attributes this urge to return home to a strange disease: “The symptoms are a fixture of restlessness, anxiety, hope and nostalgia. The virus is a deep inner need to get back home. Like Shakespeare said, ‘The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.’”

But homesickness and nostalgia alone are not driving Indians back home. The increasing focus of IT companies on India – the offshoring that goes with it – has made many an Indian pro give up his great American dream for greener pastures at home.

And it pros like Debasish Sen are posting on the Net their intentions of returning home to start a company on their own.

Nasscom estimates put the number of Indians returning home from the US of A over the last three years at around 35,000. And most of them have found jobs in India.

According to the eetimes , engineers and recruiters cite a raft of reasons for the reverse migration, from rising living standards in India to a sense among some engineers that it's time to give back something to the communities that educated them. Mostly, though, it's because India is now seen as a centre for innovation.

The same article also mentions how a Bangalore start-up, Insilica Semiconductors India, was deluged by 150 applications from Indians when it set up a booth at a job fair in the US.

Not only US citizens, even Green Card holders are looking at opportunities in India. BusinessWorld cites the example example of an IIT graduate, Deepak Sabharwal, who returned to India after doing his M.Tech in the US.

Starting off in Cadence, he later joined a Delhi-based firm which then sent him to the US. Five years later he was back in India looking after the same company’s India operations.

And this is what Agarwal has to say: "It used to be a struggle to get good work (in India). The US companies would transfer components of the products and get bugs fixed. Someone abroad always decided what to do. Now this has changed. Complete products are being developed here."

On the flip side, H1-B holders are increasingly finding it difficult to get re-employment in the US. Offshoring has resulted in jobs for general application development drying up.

Then of course there are those who are caught in that grey area called uncertainty. Would coming back to India really work out? Can India give them the same lifetstyle they have been enjoying thousands of miles away from home? Check Anita Viswanathan’s message in nriol: “If you go back because of some misplaced sense of sentimentality (dreaming of the life you left 10+ years ago), you will be in for a rude awakening. The India we left has been immortalised in our memories, but life today is very different from what we want to believe. I should know - I was there for 8 months last year. Of course I was aghast at the pollution, crowds, traffic, etc, but I must admit that at the end of a week I was glad to be back and at the end of a month did not want to leave! I am back in the US now but unlike a lot of folks - I WILL go home.”

And for those not ready to take in a culture shock after a long sojourn in the West, there are alternatives. Priya’s suggestion – again in the nriol – to someone who had put up a message regarding the pros and cons of moving back to India is this: “I have a suggestion for the author. If he hasn't already moved back, and wants to be out of, but close to India, he could consider Singapore. Of course, there are drawbacks here too – small place, very stressful academically even for small kids, but materially everything that is available in the US is here too – albeit , a little more expensive. Also safe, crime free.”

Culture shock or not, one thing is for sure: for Indians abroad all roads are leading back to India. Did anyone say, “East or West, India is the best?”