Kenneth Haywood has become a familiar name in India. He is the expat living in Navi Mumbai whose Wi-Fi connection was used by terrorists to send a threatening email. He is one of “the influx of expatriates living and working in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and elsewhere in booming India”, says an article on Rediff by Matthew Schneeberger (incidentally, another expat). You see them everywhere these days. And their numbers are set to increase as the financial meltdown in the West takes its toll of jobs.

The outcry against the whole world depriving the US of its legitimate jobs is increasing. Here’s a slightly risqué take on that attributed to Marc Faber, investment analyst and publisher of the monthly investment newsletter The Gloom Boom & Doom Report. (He may have said it, but various versions of it have been doing the rounds of the Net for several months.) “The Federal government is sending each of us a $600 rebate. If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, the money goes to China. If we spend it on gasoline, it goes to the Arabs. If we buy a computer it will go to India. If we purchase fruit and vegetables, it will go to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. If we purchase a good car, it will go to Germany. If we purchase useless crap, it will go to Taiwan. None of it will help the American economy. The only way to keep that money here at home is to spend it on prostitutes and beer, as these are the only products still produced in the US. I’ve been doing my part.”

This is obviously a joke. But there is an underlying truth that needs to be recognised. In financial and other markets, there is a power shift underway. The future belongs to Asia, particularly China, India and Japan.

The technology shift has already commenced and begun to be accepted. This is not so much in companies like Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys which are only now beginning to shed their robes of cyber cooliedom. It is in the research labs and cutting-edge knowledge centres that a new generation of thought leaders is being groomed. Many foreign companies came to India because scientific talent was cheaper. They have stayed on and enlarged their operations because it is better. Not all were early converts. But fools who came to scoff, remained to pray.

Today, more and more Americans are prepared to leave the safe environs of their own country (see box). (They don’t have terrorists as in India, it’s only their own school students running amok with guns.) They will go where the jobs are. And just as the average Indian in the US is much better qualified than the folks he has left behind and the people he has embraced, the expat will be a superior specimen of his countrymen.

The outcry against that influx has already started. But it is really beneficial for India. There is a brain regain, as IITians and others desert a mentally emaciated land that will wallow in the woes of Wall Street for many years to come. And expats — who, if nothing else, have a spirit of adventure and entrepreneurship — are flocking to India.

Who are we exporting? Labour to the Gulf. Nurses to the UK. Janitors to Canada. Electricians to Germany. Indians abroad have always been mentally classified as ignorant, indentured labour, until the techies of Silicon Valley gave them some respectability. In terms of migration, that image will only be strengthened.

If you want to go West young man, train to be a barber or a masseur. There are some professions, as Faber points out, that age doesn’t wither.

WORRY WARTS

The results of three surveys in the US

51 % are worried about finding a new job if they lose their current one.

45 % are troubled by the increasing cost to workers of employer-sponsored healthcare plans.

37 % fear losing their job due to poor economic conditions.

28 % are concerned about fewer job opportunities due to outsourcing.

(Source: US Employment Law Alliance)

80 % college graduates are prepared to relocate within the US.

70 % would be happy to relocate abroad.

(Source: Graduate Careers Company Experience Inc)

50 % workers want to return to the relative sanctuary of university.

(Source: Monster)