'Brain drain', or the international migration of educated and skilled professionals (or 'knowledge workers') from relatively less developed to more developed countries has predominantly been viewed as a negative phenomenon. This unusual book takes a positive approach and explores how a developing nation losing its valuable human resources through brain drain can make the best of the situation. To this end, the author analyses the migration of knowledge workers from India to USA over three decades and locates this phenomenon within the context of a civil society seeking to reconcile its loss of human capital with an expanding diaspora. Focusing primarily on the 'second-generation effects' of brain drain, Binod Khadria proposes various ways in which to turn the exodus of talent to the home country's advantage. Maintaining that the 'poverty of education' and 'poverty of health' are two important reasons for the loss of the potential productivity of human capital in India, the book argues for strengthening the nation's capabilities in these areas in order to restore the productivity base of India's vastly growing manpower. The author then explores the channels of investment through which expatriate participation in money (through financial transfers), machines (through technology transfers) and manpower (through human capital transfers) can take place. Utilising a vast array of up-to-date data combined with informal interviews and apposite illustrations, this book will encourage fresh thinking on the phenomenon of brain drain. As such, it will attract the attention of scholars and policy advisers involved in development, international relations and law as well as of economists, sociologists, contemporary historians, geographers, demographers and educationists and all those generally interested in the multidisciplinary studies of human migration across countries.
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