India Calling: The "brain drain" becomes "brain circulation."

Thanks for the article because I was beginning to feel lonely.

I moved to the Philippines from Silicon Valley in 2003 (during dotcom bust) to check out high-tech scene back in my homeland.

Was supposed to stay only for a couple of years but turns out there are more than a few dreamy-eyed hackers (which I hooked up with) turning their backs on Microsoft, HP and the BPO industry. The bureaucracy is numbing and the corruption sucks but generally happens to businesses that don't want to pay taxes (personal, corp, custom, etc.).

I have since setup operations for Friendster and am working on my startup.

The PH gov has setup a special economic zone (5 year corp tax holiday) if your product serves a mostly (50%+) foreign customer (great for startups).

With so much local talent, a modified YC model would contribute greatly to innovation and more startups. If you're interested, ping me.

My day job (central Japan, if you were Japanese you'd have heard of it) figured we'd get the best of both worlds: bring cheap Indian engineers to Japan. Pay them cheap junior Japanese wages for a year while bringing them up to something approaching our quality standards for domestic labor. Return them to India so that they can spread what they learned among the rest of the engineers who cost 25% of engineers in central Japan.

Not sure if it will be successful or not but I can't say I mind, as I'm employed precisely because the company sees the rest of the world as being full of opportunities.

On a tangentially related note, my previous job (also in central Japan) involved working with another Indian. At the time we were both translators. After leaving that job he took a job at the rubber company. After two years of training they sent him back to India to be the assistant to the Japanese head of their Indian factory -- I think his actual title is VP, but his real job is right-hand-man. The company pays him every single yen of a Japanese manager's salary (except in rupees), and my friend, quote, lives like a king such as one does not hear about except in fairy tale books.

So yeah, there is something to be said for brain circulation. Which makes me wonder -- when I go back to America, do I count?

I would be more appreciative if he weren't a journalist by occupation (and an aspiring novelist by extension) Emerging markets (or ex-commonwealth) literature is now trending upwards and the recent Man Booker prize was awarded for an Indian expat's debut novel (The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga http://www.amazon.com/White-Tiger-Novel-Aravind-Adiga/dp/141... )

So it isn't really a brain circulation as much as one individual's canny career movie for someone whose profession is writing. And it did work, he got published in the NY Times!

If I were more uncharitable, I'd call this "artistic slumming" for a new experience fix.

yeah actually i had hoped to see some insight in the article, but didnt find anything new in there.

Again I wanted to see something like info on more favorable climate for entrepreneurs (which, is getting better).

Total Fluff

fluff piece