The author writes that the conditions in India and China are "worse", which might have been true in 1999, but certainly not today! See http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/feb/20apac.htm Interestingly, academic jobs are on the rise as well with burgeoning of new grad schools/research institutes. The demand-supply curve in India is skewed in other direction. Finally, (this is an information gathered from a few senior professors, haven't found any web resource yet!), the success of grant proposals in India is of the order of 60-70%, much higher than that in the U.S.
Though, it's still a fact that academia is not looked as a 'lucrative' career option yet.
(Well, as a supplement to an earlier post, there are a bunch of hilarious webpages by Philip Greenspun. See http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/)