Firstly, anyone who has had experience with off-shoring to India is probably convinced that the whole country is just minutes from falling apart through shoddy engineering.

That makes the first part of the article very relevant, because an important part of realising that there is a problem is to realise that Indian Engineering used to be very good.

Then the article hints at what I think are the two main reasons:

(1) Immigration (2) Cheating in the education system/lack of effort

I actually see this in the west as well, the attitude that the whole point of university is simply to get some piece of paper that is a de facto licence to print money.

Westerners today interacting with the off-shore engineers will usually come away shocked by how lazy the Indian programmers seem. They have no pro-activity, no problem solving ability.

But is that an accurate picture of Indian culture? Could they have modernised their agriculture, fought 3+ major wars, launched satellites into space and developed a nuclear program if they were all like the off-shore programmers? They'd have starved to death and/or been wiped out by their own incompetence if that was the case.

Clearly, the Indian Engineers of 2011 are a 'different breed' than their counter-parts in the 60s and 70s.

Something must have happened.

If you accept that premise, that things have gone downhill in a big way, then it begs the question "why?". Now the author may not have all the answers - but he has some interesting points.

To dismiss him as "plain wrong" is unworthy of hacker news, and disrespectful of the effort it takes to create this kind of big-picture historical overviews that challenge entrenched views.

Do you really want hacker news to become yet another Digg or reddit?

Personally, I find that a brief examination of American history provides some support for the view that brain drain for a country is a bad thing, and immigration of smart and motivated people to your country is a good thing. America got big and strong by two things: (a) enormous mineral wealth, (b) opening its borders to immigrants. Having avoided most of the draining effect of the European wars in the 1800s and 1900s helped, and also served to promote the view of America as a safe haven.

If you forget that immigration isn't just about "dumb people who are browner than me" and also includes "the intellectual elite of countries like Austria fleeing wars and persecution" then you start thinking that immigration is all about "they took aor jaorbs!", and close down your borders, impose quotas... and the stagnation begins.