Way back in the 1960-80 decades there was frequent lament about India’s “brain drain” when graduates of the country’s heavily subsidised government-owned IITs, IIMs, IISc and AIIMS who paid a pittance for high quality education, were gladly snapped up by Western universities, corporates, and public health services. But that lament was obfuscated by self-serving establishment economists advancing the argument that the brain drain is compensated by crumbs sent back by emigres as “remittances” to starving relatives back home. It was also ingeniously advanced that eventually the brain drain would transform into brain gain when emigrants returned to India.

Meanwhile in neigbouring China, a Thousand Talents Plan (TTP) was introduced in 2008 to reverse the brain-drain of Chinese scientists overseas, and to attract high-level foreign professionals. In 2010, TTP was absorbed into a larger National Talent Development Plan comprising over 200 talent-recruitment programmes. Evidently, this policy/programme has paid off. Currently, China whose GDP of $300 billion (ppp) was on a par with India’s in 1978, has transformed into the world’s leading research innovations hub clocking an annual GDP of $20 trillion (cf. India’s $4.5 trillion), and a global tech and financial super-power.

Despite this live example next door, the Indian establishment’s response to the continuous flight of capital and talent from India remains insouciant. According to a lead editorial in The Times of India (25/11) “migration of the superrich is as natural as that of skilled people” and nothing to worry about. Moreover, it says that “the increasing mobility of people must be celebrated”. The cavalier editorial is silent about the iniquity of an amoral middle class whose education is still subsidised by a desperately poor citizenry, upping and outing to readily serve in Western economies and our erstwhile imperial masters. Pathetic.