Trading Aid for Professionals: Is it Right?
In nineteen fifties after a few years of independence of India there was a rush of Western countries setting up first rate educational institutions for the best and brightest young mostly men in the country. There were new medical institutes and Engineering colleges and some Universities with established reputations were helped to further upgrade them. The result was the output of well-trained brilliant graduates ready for challenging jobs. Unfortunately, the country had no facilities to provide these. Consequently, a large number of these graduates emigrated to the Universities and the countries of their ex-professors. Western countries scored a huge return for their investment in education by receiving the cream of the crop for their own benefit. Although I have no claim to being the ‘crème de la crème’, I was one of these who left India after attending one of these institutions, never to return. I remember this loss of talent being lamented as the brain drain in India, although very little was done to reduce it. There was a sort of payoff. During the series of economic crises in India in the sixties the money sent by these emigrants reduced the balance of payment deficit. As the economy developed the brain drain reduced and is relatively down to a trickle now although in numbers it is still quite large, tens of thousands every year. On the benefit side, the emigrants have encouraged foreign investment which has helped bring about a mini-revolution. But no one can argue that this even remotely makes up for the huge loss of talent.

The New Yorker of last week had two articles by authors with Indian names. Universities in the West and the industrial and government research facilities are staffed with people of Indian (and other Asian) origin. Some of our best writers and journalists are second generation immigrants lost to the mother country. India is not mentioned in the biography of an award winning writer with Indian ancestry who has written eloquently about her parents’ culture. My own daughters are making an above average contribution to communities they live in and regard themselves, rightly, fully Canadian. Talking about this phenomenon with my wife it occurred to me that the Third World countries that gladly received the Western aid, didn’t just suffer the loss of better brains, they lost a part of desirable gene pool – the people with tradition of high achievement from generation to generation. Thus, their loss and Western gain was not short term, as the term brain drain implies, but long term. It is here to stay. The investment in Indian education fifty years ago continues to pay high dividends to the West and will do so for generations to come.

The negative impact of well-intentioned aid on recipients goes further than human resources. Commodity production has been encouraged resulting in collapse of product prices and common misery, equipment has been given which couldn’t be used. If the long term welfare of recipient countries is the goal of Western foreign aid we need to consider all aspects of the aid to developing countries. We have to consider the need a few years down the road, whether it is the college graduates, capacity to use and maintain facilities for the equipment, market for the product to be manufactured, impact on price of increasing production of a specific commodity etc.. In this respect, the efforts of some of our provinces to attract the medical and other professionals from these countries because of shortages here are counterproductive for the long term harmony on this planet and must be protested. If morality were the only issue Canada would have a quota system for immigrants from developing countries which is weighted by skill and education level to represent the population of the native country rather than our needs.

This comment is contrary to the belief that all humans are born equal and have equal rights. However, there is plenty of evidence that genes play an important part in life. It is time we took their impact into consideration in our policies related to the development in the Third World. Even if one did not believe in success genes, there is no issue about immorality of depriving poorer countries of their most productive human assets leave alone assisting them in developing products that can’t be used soon after facilities are in operation.