Book: SECESSION OF THE SUCCESSFUL: THE FLIGHT OUT OF NEW INDIA
Author: Sanjaya Baru
Published by: Viking
Price: Rs 799
During the years I lived in Singapore, I frequently encountered an oft-quoted pointer to the excellent state of the India-Singapore interface. This was that the city-state had the largest number of IIT and IIM graduates in any city outside India. This, along with a rapid increase in the number of Indian companies incorporated in Singapore, was cited as a demonstration of how Indian talent and Indian businesses were globalising and coming of age. That, at least, was the discourse that emanated from these very successful, highly qualified, and wealthy Indians. It was also a prominent feature in the government’s own talking points and external projections.
Alongside this discourse was an occasional dissenting voice contesting this interpretation. This was the contrarian view that far from a rapidly globalising India, this phenomenon actually represented a flight of talent and capital. This critique, usually sotto voce, usually came from an older generation of Indian emigrants, descendants of former plantation workers and indentured labourers, who had made Singapore their home not out of choice but because this was where their ancestors had belonged. Many had played significant roles in the transformation of Singapore into a first world city-state. They often asked why the Indian government celebrated the fact that the country’s most talented and wealthiest were leaving permanently even after the enormous investments made by the State in their education.
Sanjaya Baru’s latest book consciously situates itself in this very debate. His central argument is: “Global opportunity, domestic necessity, reasons of convenience and ease of living may be encouraging Indians to emigrate and even give up their citizenship. To welcome this as part of a strategy of extending ‘soft power’ and tapping into this network of knowledge is making a virtue out of a necessity.”
For a start, the scale of the phenomenon of Indian migration is staggering. Government estimates are that there are about 35 million ‘Indians’ living outside India — 20 million people of Indian origin and 15 million NRIs.
Baru develops his argument by first outlining the historical process by which this giant mass of migration came to be. Its earliest and first phase began in the mid-19th century in colonial conditions, essentially to supply cheap or indentured labour for plantations in other colonies. The second phase was similar to the first — semi-skilled workers moving to the Gulf to meet huge labour demands in the wake of the oil price boom from the 1970s. These phases are similar in terms of the social background of the migrants and the often-exploitative conditions they encountered.
The third phase, also from the 1970s, was of qualified professionals — Baru emphasises that this was elite migration principally to developed countries: doctors, engineers, management professionals, students and others. This became a flood with the growing demand for computer software professionals from the beginning of this century. The fourth and the latest phase, Baru argues, is of the super wealthy — still an incipient phenomenon but is already very significant since it includes, according to Baru, “the politically and socially powerful and influential elite”.
Central to Baru’s argument is the fact that phases three and four constitute a qualitatively different stratum. The first phase had on the whole a limited impact on the home economy. The second phase had a positive impact in terms of remittances, which transformed parts of the country and strengthened the overall economy. The third and the fourth phases, on the other hand, comprising ‘brain drain’ and ‘wealth drain’ which separate them from the earlier migrations, have, he argues, “negative consequences for the home economy and positive consequences for the host economy”.
There is an evident moral question that underwrites Baru’s clinical and well-argued analysis as he explores different facets of the third and the fourth phases of India’s migration history. His conclusion appears unexceptionable: “If India remains a low middle income developing economy, while Indians worldwide are doing so well, the ‘hard power’ of the latter’s wealth and status does not automatically translate into the ‘soft power’ of the former (i.e of India).” He admits that this massive elite migration is a social phenomenon and there is, therefore,“little point in holding individuals guilty”.
But the point of concern surely is, as Baru emphasises, “the growing nonchalance about such emigration”. There is also an additional point, which Baru is conscious of but does not really explore at any length — what are the consequences of such widespread elite migration or secession on our capacities to maintain independent policies and strategic autonomy? That could be the subject of another book but Baru’s treatment certainly makes you think about it. This is a timely and reasoned essay on an issue, which has long been the elephant in the room. Baru has raised important questions that need to be addressed.