Most newspapers splashed the news that an Indian - Shantanu Narayen - will take charge as CEO of Adobe, one of the world's fastest growing software companies.

Given that India is always happy to embrace the diaspora - especially star performers within it - such saturation treatment is only to be expected.

The issue is whether this really is a reason to celebrate India or Indian-ness, as most of the coverage suggested.

Narayen's credentials are certainly impressive. He's a blue-blooded techie originally from India - as opposed to an American born and brought up in the US who happens to be ethnically Indian like, say, Bobby Jindal or Sunita Williams . So Indians have good cause to be proud of him.

The executive profile supplied by Adobe, of which Narayen is currently chief operating officer, shows that he has performed many complex feats of excellence for Adobe and cut his teeth in Silicon Graphics, Apple as well as in an entrepreneurial role.

It is a small fact at the end - reported in few Indian papers - that is at once interesting and thought-provoking. Narayen holds a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Osmania University, Hyderabad. Thereafter, he went to Bowling Green State University in Ohio for a Master's in computer science before rapidly climbing up the Silicon Valley ladder.

Now, this information can be read in two ways. One, Indians are innately bright and shine wherever they go (the in-vogue view).

Two, like thousands of others, a decent student from the Indian education system - and Osmania is one of India's better-reputed universities - found his metier in the West.

It's the old brain drain story, the one that gloomily raised its head every time someone from the state-funded IITs, IIMs or universities rose to prominence and success in the West. But this outlook is a legacy of the dark days of the licence raj when India's stock in the world was at low ebb.

Today, for most Indian readers, the news about Narayen is of a piece with the general feel-good euphoria that permeates middle class India. It is a sign of the times that such events are now viewed with boisterous triumph. India is shining globally, the current wisdom suggests, and global Indians are shining with it.

This view is justified, but only up to a point. The flip side of the elation is the niggling sense of loss - and not just of the wasted expenditure from the state exchequer that so generously (and unnecessarily) subsidises higher Indian education.

Our diasporic stars are a constant reminder of the distance India and Indian corporations need to cover in terms of maximising homegrown talent.

People like Narayen, Nooyi of Pepsi, Sarin of Vodafone, Rajat Gupta of McKinsey and hundreds of other Indians in senior prestigious positions in global corporations demonstrate that the balance of opportunity is still skewed in favour of the developed world.

These Indian stalwarts all obtained their higher education in India but were able to leverage it only in the West.

Sarin, who now heads the world's largest telecom company, is an IIT graduate who rose in the telecom business in the US, Europe and Australasia.

Pepsi chief Indra Nooyi, who was voted by Fortune magazine as the world's fourth most powerful women, is a graduate of the Madras Christian College and IIM Kolkata. She did work in India for a short stint but it was in the US that she progressed swiftly after she completed her Master's in management from Yale.

Rajat Gupta is also an IIT topper but a Harvard Business School alumnus. Like the others, his work experience is entirely western.

Readers will point out that this is yesterday's problem, since all of the above, like many other Indians coming into senior positions in global corporations graduated around the seventies and early eighties - one of the worst periods for the modern Indian economy.

Today, the brain drain is reversing and any number of talented executives and technocrats are flocking to India to take charge of Indian corporations or hold significant positions within them.

The pharmaceutical and automobile industries are ample proof of this. The point, however, is that these are returnees, not executives who have cut their teeth on Indian work experience.

The question of nurturing and retaining homegrown talent within Indian corporations ultimately boils down to how rapidly Indian corporations can globalise.

On current reckoning, the pace of change is pretty rapid. But India Inc would really have arrived when one of its chief executives is ranked among the world's most powerful.