Rethinking development through dynamics of skilled human migration from India

Abstract

Globalization has contributed towards large-scale movement of human capital worldwide. As a result, there has been a rapid rise of people crossing the national border. This exodus was previously regarded as brain drain because the migrant never chose to return to their home country. Now, there has been a paradigm shift in the perception about skilled migrants leaving India from brain drain of the 1960s and 1970s to brain bank of the 1980s and 1990s and subsequently to brain gain in the twenty-first century. This has facilitated greater integration of global markets, but custom laws still govern movement of capital, goods and services across borders, while immigration laws govern cross-border movement of skilled and unskilled manpower. Government needed to contribute in terms of rethinking and redesigning development in the face of changing global scenario. It has been stated that the impact of brain drain on India should be examined in the light of globalization of human capital and resulting 'second-generation' possibilities for sustainable human development at home through expatriate investments particularly in education and health. Globalization of manpower has only just begun to take shape under Mode 4 of the General Agreement in Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organization-in terms of 'movement of natural persons' or 'presence of service providers', etc. to stay temporarily for purpose of work in a foreign country. In India, a large pool of skilled manpower continues to remain unemployed. Therefore, appropriate policy changes in international migration policies should be managed in such a way that they are beneficial to both origin and destination countries. Globalization has to some extent replaced manpower mobility in the form of trade and investment flows. Industrialized countries now export capital which uses scarce manpower. But fair movement of goods and services should also assist fair cross-border movement of people. This chapter focuses more on development from international manpower migration since return migration can be regarded as one of the important strategies for combating the problem of poverty, educated youth unemployment. This is an exploratory study and will try to highlight the positive effects of gainful migration.