The real reason for India’s brain drain | Hacker News Reader

The real reason for India’s brain drain

guruprasad.net

32 pointsdenzil_correa47 comments

The author forgot to mention:

* Massive overpopulation, caused in part by over-aggressive family planning measures adopted by the same Indira Gandhi government. There is extreme scarcity of basic resources like food, water, electricity in India.

* Rampant Regionalism -- India is less like the USA (a collection of states) and more like the EU (a collection of countries with very distinct cultures). People find it hard to always have a strong sense of ties to the nation. Will, say, a Greek person feel sad about leaving "Europe"? Probably not. :P

* A political system plagued with dynastic politics and ruled by old people (the average age of a Minister in India is 65) who still retain outmoded adherences to their own specific brand of religions / regions / castes / whatnot.

And if you look at sites like http://workplace.stackexchange.com/ there's a lot of employment practices in india that are almost pre Victorian in their harshness.

I am not surprised that a lot of Indians want to move to the USA.

> Massive overpopulation, caused in part by over-aggressive family planning measures

Eh?? How does over-aggressive family planning lead to massive overpopulation?

> Rampant Regionalism -- India is less like the USA (a collection of states) and more like the EU (a collection of countries with very distinct cultures). People find it hard to always have a strong sense of ties to the nation.

Double eh?? Because India is a collection of distinct and heterogeneous states, unlike the homogeneous US, it suddenly becomes like the EU?

> Will, say, a Greek person feel sad about leaving "Europe"?

I don't know. But people don't emigrate because they're feeling sad or happy, but because they feel they may have better career prospects.

> A political system plagued with dynastic politics and ruled by old people (the average age of a Minister in India is 65) who still retain outmoded adherences to their own specific brand of religions / regions / castes / whatnot.

True, but pray how did you come to the conclusion that this was what caused people to emigrate?

Fact is talented people emigrated from India because they found better value for their skills in the US. That's pretty simple.

But if you're going to link Indian emigration to every ill that plagues India, from its political system to its "overpopulation" (which btw many others call a "demographic dividend") and "regionalism" (which others call "federalism"), then you'd better have some evidence or sources.

> How does over-aggressive family planning lead to massive overpopulation?

Sorry, I forgot to say how. The over-aggressive family planning measures (including forced sterilization in a handful of cases) during the Emergency in India (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization#India) led to Government family planning measures being widely distrusted in rural areas for the next few decades. This, combined with improved healthcare and low infant mortality, has led to roaring population growth.

> Double eh?? Because India is a collection of distinct and heterogeneous states, unlike the homogeneous US, it suddenly becomes like the EU?

Yes. India is much more like the EU than the US. This may put it into perspective, considering that a large number of HN readers come from the US/EU. It is an analogy, nothing more.

> But people don't emigrate because they're feeling sad or happy, but because they feel they may have better career prospects.

False dichotomy. People emigrate to improve happiness and quality of life. These are frequently related to better career prospects. India has pretty decent career prospects for software developers too. I would say just improved career prospects are not the whole reason for brain drain.

> True, but pray how did you come to the conclusion that this was what caused people to emigrate?

Personal experience (I am Indian, and have lived in several places in India and the US and am in a decent position to comment upon the quality of life), and the experiences of ~50-60 people I know fairly well who are in a similar situation.

> Fact is talented people emigrated from India because they found better value for their skills in the US. That's pretty simple.

This is true, but I think does not explain why, for example, there is not widespread immigration from, say, Canada to the US. I would say that people in Canada have a decent enough Government, and a lifestyle that is just comfortable enough to make moving to a new country not worth the pain. Of course, I could be totally mistaken about this, but it is just a view that you are free to disagree with.

> But if you're going to link Indian emigration to every ill that plagues India, from its political system to its "overpopulation" (which btw many others call a "demographic dividend") and "regionalism" (which others call "federalism"), then you'd better have some evidence or sources.

Perhaps as an émigré, I might be overzealous in ascribing all emigration to the ills that plague India. But calling overpopulation and regionalism something else does not exactly solve the problems arising from them. As for sources, I see you are a journalist for Forbes India and are probably able to access them much better than I can (although I am kinda surprised you did not seem to know about the stringent family planning measures during the Emergency, or maybe you just wanted me to elaborate).

>> [ed] The over-aggressive family planning measures (including forced sterilization in a handful of cases) during the Emergency in India led to Government family planning measures being widely distrusted in rural areas for the next few decades. This, combined with improved healthcare and low infant mortality, has led to roaring population growth.

I'm sorry, but there is absolutely no evidence for your claim. Here is a graph that shows India's fertility rate from 1960 to 2011.

Exactly where do you see it "roaring" between 1975-1977 in response to government-mandated family planning?

http://www.geocurrents.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/India...

P.S. My profession, or yours, has no relevance to this argument. Let's stick to the facts please.

Now you are grasping at (incorrect) straws. Firstly, roaring population growth != roaring fertility rate. Try and read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_progression and then look at the fertility rate again and model how population growth would look based on that rate (assuming a constant or decreasing death rate). Anyway, the graph of absolute population looks like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:India-demography.png, which is what I term "roaring population growth".

My contention is that the fertility rate would have dropped much faster if the stringent family planning incentives during the Emergency would not have been imposed. At no point am I claiming that they have led to an increase in the fertility rate. The fertility rate naturally should decrease as a population gets better education and healthcare; and it should have dropped much faster than that graph you posted.

Also note that the fertility rate is not the only thing that contributes to population growth. The death rate and its distribution among the population also affect the population of a nation during every decade.

Allow me to recap your evolving assertions:

a. >> "Massive overpopulation, caused in part by over-aggressive family planning measures"

b. >> over-aggressive family planning measures [...] led to Government family planning measures being widely distrusted in rural areas for the next few decades. This, combined with improved healthcare and low infant mortality, has led to roaring population growth.

c. >> the fertility rate would have dropped much faster if the stringent family planning incentives during the Emergency would not have been imposed

If you think a = b = c, I rest my case.

In all honesty, I do think they are at least broadly similar in their fundamentals, if not exactly equivalent.

Perhaps you want to believe that there is absolutely no unusual pattern in India's population growth that is causing people to leave, and the only reason for brain drain to the US are nebulously defined "better opportunities". In which case I am going to refrain from futher argument, and leave you with this cartogram of countries scaled to their population (density-equalized). http://www2.imperial.ac.uk/~mgastner/cartogram/population102...

No, these are not the "real" reasons. It's actually very simple and this applies to immigrants from many other countries such as Russia and Brazil as well which have same brain drain issue in development.

If you were a software engineer or a scientist working in US, you are making same amount of money in 1 month that a person with exact same background would make in roughly 5 months. Think about this for a while. You are working in a office in India, your colleague accepts an offer for a job in US and tell you that he is going to get your entire annual income in just about 2 months while doing exact same job as you are doing. How much incentive would you still have to continue working in India?

A lot of costs are also about five-fold in the US, apart from things like gas (which can be explained by the fact that decent public transport is almost nonexistent here).

After being captivated by a "company" named East India Company for 200 years the governance in 70's and 80'a in India makes perfect sense to me.

Remember post independence India was a broken nation. Not even a needle was manufactured in the country. India was in dire need of building massive infrastructure and strengthening its defense to deal with Pakistan and China.

Where do you think the money to do all this come from ? The priorities at that time was different.

Now, India is an independent nation capable to defend itself and have relatively a stable economy.

India is opening up its economy and focusing on creating more opportunities which are entrepreneur friendly (look at the growth of the -obvious- IT sector).

You can't simply say that a country has a lot of people and therefore represent a massive economy. India's economy, even today, is comparable to Mexico. Then you take that total output and divide it by the number of people you have, the actual surplus leftover from basic needs like food and shelter is tiny. The US on the other hand, has about 1/4 the population while its economic output is 16x. So each American represent 64x the wealth of the average Indian. If I was selling something, I would rather spend the effort to convince Americans to buy my goods while charging them a ton more than I can charge an Indian.

People have often made similar mistakes when assessing China. The same criticism in this paper can be applied to India as well: http://belfercenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/Chinas_Century.pdf

A marginal tax rate of 97.75% on the top tier does not mean that a person in that tier would pay 97.75% of their total earnings. It means that they would pay 97.75% of their earnings on income above a certain threshold. For example, if the marginal tax rate on income above a billion dollars was 97.75%, and you earned 2 billion, you'd "only" get to keep 27.5 million dollars of the billion you earned after the first billion.

I'm not saying that a 97.75% tax on any income tier is entirely reasonable, but I hope that if you had the choice between keeping 2.25% of a billion dollars vs. keeping 100% of ten thousand dollars, you'd make the right decision.

US having a comparatively bad welfare and extremely expensive education system, while being a good place for people who enjoyed this and therefor have amazing education isn't exactly news. And India going down in the last century and being the major victim of capitalism also isn't news.

Okay, this sounds quiet anti-capitalist socialism thing, but these are the fact. Every system has winners and losers and usually the enforcing party is the bug winner while the opposition (India was communist) was the loser. On the other hand educated people enjoying a great social system are the big winners, just because they were born there and people who don't enjoy are the big losers. It's not true in every case, but you can see this by the difference between people in India and people from India in the US. Just like you can see it by how much the richest/poorest people in the US earn (or GDP compared to various expenses and forms of income).

Okay, sorry that sounds really anti-US, but there are so many good things about the US and I really don't wanna sound like it, because I love to visit it and think about moving there. Just the US in the past decade or two didn't do as well as it could have been and while I am the least to judge I just really know from people living there that everyone wants to change something to better and you know the whole world has been looking up to and I think the US still is the most "motivating" country if you can say it that way. Or in other word it just has the most/best opportunities. I mean SF is like amazing, but I don't know. It's the whole country. Like, you are more motivated in the US and I know my friends (from both US and Europe) feel the same way.

In my opinion all this country stuff isn't really a good thing for the globalized world. I say that as someone who by what I said definitely could/should have brought it further, so I really hope this doesn't sound too much US bashing. We have that more than enough.

That's at least my person opinion when western countries have to deal with economic refugees.

India was never Communist. It was Socialist(it still is to a large degree). Big difference.

> India was never communist.

I'm not too sure about that. If you look at the actions, and not just merely words, Indian Government has always leaned towards communism. Emphasized social equality for all, focused very little on reward and innovation.

The basic tenet of communism: to create a money less class and communal ownership of property was never adopted.Neither in words nor actions.

The parent is right. India has always been a socialist/pseudo-socialist country. And while a few state governments (Kerala, West Bengal) have been communist, the central government has never been communist.

"Emphasizing social equality for all" isn't communism, you should know.

Kerala, West Bengal have communist ideology. They don't have a communist administration. Again, no money less class, no communal property ownership.

Sorry, you're plain wrong. Both states have had communist administrations for decades on and off.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_India_%28Ma...

But the latter part of your comment is still valid, in that these administrations haven't been "as communist" as in China or Russia.

What do you mean "as communist"? Indian Constitution has no place for communist way of economics. Calling oneself Communist Party of India does not automatically make them practicing communist economics.

"And India going down in the last century and being the major victim of capitalism also isn't news."

Umm... what?

Because of globalism, everything that wasn't bolted down was taken from India and China. But they both have strong sovereign policies that have kept them from being taken advantage of too much, and what's left is now very lean and powerful. You take the good with the bad.

http://blog.hiddenharmonies.org/2011/11/hans-rosling-soverei...

Now such policies are being attacked, like this article, because they are not friendly for foreign businesses, more than anything. Sure, it's not very friendly to entrepreneurs either, but it's up to India to decide how much freedom it wants to give to people who control significant percentage of its country's value. Maybe India would be better off investing profits in American businesses than investing in India through taxes? Or maybe business man would be more successful if they were very liquid in assets? That is for India to decide.

Tax over 100% was in Sweden as well. Astrid Lindgren's tax rate reached 102%/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrid_Lindgren#Politics

... and Sweden went down lots of places in the economic comparision charts a bit after the high tax economy was implemented.

103% tax rate? Now that is on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

in those Indira Gandhi days Govt assumed everyone under reported the income so tax slab had to be high, also agriculture was not taxed.

from 1991 lot of headway has been made, but still Interests rates are significantly higher than international rates.

real estate prices, rentals are very high, infrastructure is poor(you need to own a generator)

employee attrition rates, salary hike expectations are significantly higher.

if work visa's were easier more people would be migrating

it is tough to be a successful and profitable entrepreneur in India

I have been thinking about this a lot recently and here are a few theories I have struck upon:

Climate in Europe and most of Western Civilization during the industrial revolution

When the industrial revolution happened in Europe, the political climate was very intense, these countries were constantly at war with each other and any advantage, however miniscule, was seeked out at any length. War has been made unprofitable with the advent of nuclear weopons, therefore there no more competition from cultures to one-up each other after India gained Independence.

Nehru + Gandhis and Socialism

Nehru and the Gandhi family's socialist mentality ensured that India did not benefit from the Industrial boom after the World War II and ensured decades of inefficient central planning guided the Indian economy. Thankfully, this is changing since the 1991 liberalization, globalization and privatisation push.

Country founded by lawyers and not scientists

While countries like USA were founded by prominent scientists like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, India was founded by philosophers and lawyers. This means that crictical thinking and scientific enquiry is not prized. This is compounded by the fact that the education system is inherited from the British colonial perid which was designed to train law ranking officers from the population to govern the colony.

Diverse nature of India

More than 2000 etnic groups, all major religions, more than a score languages spoken means, it is hard to effect any change that can sweep throughout. How to effect change must be studied for each group and implemented.

Post-colonialism

People thinking that oppression is a way of life is problematic when Prisoner's Dilemma type of situations arise.

To end on a postive note, India is projected to have a very low dependency ratio in future and there is work underway to modernise the infrastructure. Many people are working on improving things and in my conversation with older people I think things have gotten better.

The current trend in India. The middle class here seems to be finding faults with the socialist setup everyday now. The common complaint is that the "opportunity cost" is still too high for the middle class folks. Funny, they should say that since the 60 Naxalite(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalite%E2%80%93Maoist_insurge...) affected districts seem to be saying the same thing and no one is paying attention.

Not sure if it explains everything though. The comparison may not be fair, but the tax rates in US ~ the 50s and 60s were fairly high too, and yet it led to post-WW2 boom:

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income over $400,000: 92% - 91%

Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 25%

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/eisenhower-obama-wealthiest-americans-...

Of note: $400k in 1953 dollars when Eisenhower was president is equvalent to around $3.5m today. Source: http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

We lobby Obama Administration to direct New Delhi regime to create an Independent Nation for India's 300 million Untouchable people as per US Congress Resolution 139.

Google "Independent Nation For 300 Million India's Untouchable People".

https://wh.gov/lZo4o

damn it man, you have started polluting HN too. Wasn't reddit enough for your hate mongering?

Leeches cannot live independently.

true, lower castes are leeches.

Caste system seeded hatred and rolled-out sadists/savages in India.

What makes you think your parents/your children/your women/your houses/your properties are safe from sections of society whom you've abused for thousands of years?

Google "jyoti singh pandey".

man, you are out of touch with the reality. Lower castes today don't face any discrimination, but they take advantage of unfair amount of reservation. In fact general castes are discriminated against today, lower castes are exploiting the system like leeches.

man, you are out of touch with the reality.

Caste system seeded hatred and rolled-out sadists/savages in India.

You're are naive if you think streets are safe for your women.It's only going to get worse in the future.

Google "jyoti singh pandey".

man, you are out of touch with the reality.

caste system was previous generation's plight.

In this generation lower castes are looting India with scams, and taking undue advantage of too much reservation. Lower castes are the most dishonest and corrupt people, and they have contributed next to zero throughout Indian history.

India is an Untouchable Nation where majority people are Untouchables (~300 million).

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/indias-200-million...

Is India Most Racist country in the world?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...

People in neighboring Bhutan(17), Sri Lanka(22), Pakistan(24) are happier than in India(35).

http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-world...

I am in one of those universities in India which are prone to Brain Drain. I feel a lot of people tend to go out of India for starting their careers etc since they feel it builds their status/prestige in India. But again, career prospects there are better too.

Why would the best and brightest of India who master English not leave? Indians who work in the US/UK reach their global maximum. I don't see how this is a net negative on India.

Gotta take the good with the bad. If you're saying Microsoft has 34% Indians...

"34% employees of the employees at Microsoft are Indians". Windows ME, Zune, Windows Vista, .NET, Webforms...

This is a fascinating article. I wonder if France will face the same type of issues with their ultra-wealthy taxes (75%+ over 2M).

Mirror: http://pastebin.com/dmgGbRhM

Reply on news.ycombinator.com