BOOKS

Brain drain vs brain gain

C.T. KURIEN

The Migration of Knowledge Workers: Second-Generation Effects of India's Brain Drain by Binod Khadria; Sage Publications, New Delhi, 1999; pages 240, Rs.350.

THE movement of professionally trained people - knowledge workers as they have come to be known - from one country to another is not a new phenomenon. During the colonial period the flow was primarily from the metropolis to the colonies. In the new inter national order that has been emerging since the end of the Second World War - when many colonies became independent but described as "developing countries" - there has been a reversal of the flow. Now, knowledge workers migrate from the developing countr ies to the developed ones, from the poor countries to the rich ones, to be more honest. It is this flow that has widely come to be known as "brain drain".

The phenomenon is now quite familiar, but a few statistics may still be useful. A 1994 study estimated that out of the annual output of highly qualified young men and women in India, 7.3 per cent in engineering, 2.8 per cent in medicine and 2.1 per cent in the natural sciences move to other countries in search of better earnings and conditions of work than would be available in India. Another study found that roughly one-fourth of the B.Tech graduates who pass out of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are moving out of the country. It is well known too that in the area of computer science, those leaving the country as a proportion of those trained is even higher.

With globalisation, and the relatively freer mobility that is now becoming possible to highly skilled persons in practically all walks of life, brain drain could become even more pronounced. There is a natural explanation for this. Governments of develop ing countries attach a great deal of importance to higher education, especially in the sciences and in technology. Developed countries find in such trained people a ready-made recruitment pool. The poor spend on training, the rich make use of that traini ng - at relatively low cost!

That is the "first generation" aspect of brain drain. But is it possible to visualise a "second generation" effect of this phenomenon? Can the emigrants participate in certain selected but specific nation-building activities as opposed to the general ste reotypes, asks the author. Isn't it possible that in this age of globalisation there may be a significant return flow of resources that can replace and replenish what is being drained away? These are the questions that the author of the book sets out to explore. In short, can brain drain in the newly emerging global situation become "brain gain"? Is this already beginning to happen?

For his enquiry the author has chosen the brain movement between India and the United States. While the U.S. may be correctly described as a land where the vast majority of the population consists of immigrants and their descendants, free immigration was for long restricted to those from Europe. Even as late as the middle of the present century there were severe restrictions on immigration from Asia. Similarly, Indians traditionally emigrated to the United Kingdom and Canada (among the Western countries ). Only in the early 1970s did the number of persons emigrating to the U.S. begin to exceed the total of those going to the U.K. and Canada. However, by the early 1990s, the number of people migrating to the U.S. from India was almost twice as many as th ose going to the other two countries. Today, the Indian community in the U.S. (migrants plus Indians born in that country) forms a noticeable proportion of the Asian population there. What is more important is that among the immigrant communities, Indian s constitute a much higher proportion of the labour force (that is, those employed and those actively looking for employment). The data given in the book on this aspect is rather dated, but still important. According to the 1980 U.S. Census figures, 75 p er cent of Indian immigrants aged 16 and over were in the labour force - 95 per cent of them were employed, while 5 per cent were looking for jobs. This figure was significantly higher than that for all immigrants (56 per cent in the labour force) and no ticeably higher than the figure for total U.S. population (62 per cent in the labour force). More striking perhaps was the fact that in 1983, the share of professionally and technically qualified immigrants constituted 50 per cent of the total Indian imm igrants, placing Indian knowledge workers at the top of the list of those from all Asian countries, including Japan. Average earnings of Indians are also considerably higher than those of other Asian immigrant communities. One of the major weaknesses of the book is that while it is full of facts and figures, information on some of these significant aspects is very dated.

In terms of the questions that the author had set out to explore, the three final chapters of the book are the most important. The first of these, Chapter 5, contains a well-documented and revealing account of the benefits that India may have accrued by way of remittances from Indian communities in different parts of the world, technology transfers and services rendered directly by expatriate Indians. Remittances have been quite significant, especially in relation to the balance of payments problem. Bu t the final verdict the author arrives at are: (1) "...in terms of return of money... to India, globalisation of the Indian knowledge workers has not been quite gainful to the country" (p.150) when remittances are considered as returns on capital investe d for training; (2) "...the payments made by developing countries to developed countries on technology account would be in the vicinity of U.S. $10 billion per annum, cancelling at one stroke a major part of the total aid flow from the latter to the form er" (p.156); and (3) "...gains realised from the geo-economic presence of Indian knowledge workers in the U.S. neither necessarily nor sufficiently support the proposition of a successful globalisation of India's human capital through emigration of India n professional and qualified manpower, whether to the U.S. or to any other developed country" (p.162).

So much for the first generation aspects of brain drain. Evidence points to the fact that it is still a drain. What about the second generation possibility? The last two chapters deal with this question. Chapter 6 reports on interviews the author conduct ed with a few returnees in India, some non-resident Indians in the U.S., and a few select experts and academicians in both the countries. The exploration was aimed at studying whether Indian knowledge workers outside the country can help India, specifica lly in the areas of education and health care. There are, of course, examples, some of which qualify as "shining examples". Indian scholars who settled abroad have come back, often during their sabbaticals, to teach in India or to interact with researche rs here. Doctors too have made their services available to their parent country. More important, institutions have been founded and continue to be supported by Indians living abroad, including some of the prestigious hospitals in the country. In all, the author sees evidence of "some silver streaks ... even if no proper silver lining" (p.164). But, there are severe constraints. For one, only well-established senior professionals who have spent some 15 years in the countries to which they migrated can af ford to turn to social service. More important, globalisation severely discounts social service, and puts a high premium on value for money. Born optimists may find signs of some hope somewhere in situations like this. But realistically speaking, the pos sibility of the "brain drain" turning into "brain gain" for countries such as India is a matter for the future - a very distant future, indeed.