Over the last four days, the world’s greatest newspaper ran a series of articles on India and the automobile. I haven’t yet had a chance to read them, but I will no doubt have something to say afterward. (Readers more familiar with Indian roads and culture — that’s you Nimmi and Deepti — should chime in, too.)
The four articles are:
Every quarter the president of my company reads off a list of all of the names of the new employees. We hired a lot of people worldwide over the last half year, and for the first time that I can remember Jack just read off first names. I must confess to mixed feelings; it’s fun listening to someone try to pronounce a white pages’ listing of names from different nationalities, but I like short meetings.
So as I followed along and looked over the pictures and full names of our new employees as they were displayed on the big screens at the front of the conference room, I was struck by something: We are an incredibly diverse company and are becoming diverse more rapidly than before.
I liked this. We hire the best and hardest working people that apply, as any company should. And the people we hire bring in their own experiences and points of view that are often decidedly different from native-born Americans — all of which makes the company stronger. In my seven years at the company, I’ve worked directly with people born in India, Ireland, Texas, Pakistan, The USSR, Poland, Canada, The UK, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Lebanon, Jordan, China, Hong Kong, Egypt, Israel, Vietnam, and South Africa in addition to the U.S. (I’m sure I’m leaving some out, too.)
Of course, some at the company have noted the large percentage of the new hires born abroad, especially Desis and folks from China and the CIS nations. Often it’s Nimmi thinking about her fellow NRIs.
Clearly this is a manifestation of brain drain. And since we don’t hire people unless they are capable of “working in the U.S.” (i.e., have an H1-B visa), our new employees usually live here already, often because they’ve just gotten degrees. The idea that people flock here to live under our wonderful democratic system certainly fills us with warm fuzzy feelings, but really it’s purely economic. We have things they need — high-paying jobs and superlative higher education — that are difficult or impossible to get in their native countries.
As much as I love my foreign-born friends and think no ill toward my resident alien coworkers, the phenomena has serious long-term implications for the U.S. economy. In much the same way that the negative effects of our trade deficit are offset by Chinese investment in our currency, the strength of our “innovation economy” (which is much championed by Thomas Friedman and most of my fellow globalization apologists) appears to rest on the intelligence of people who may one day go “home.” The Economist recently noted that brain drain might make those who remain smarter, but it certainly makes us smarter . . . but only temporarily.
One day, probably in my working-lifetime, the masses of humanity in Asia and Eastern Europe who went to top-tier schools but stayed in their country and started businesses will start wooing the emigrés back home. And the country will languish as it depends on me and the other liberal arts folks, and the service economy will falter, and how am I going to make my mortgage then?
Or at least, those were the thoughts that were running through my mind in the night after the company meeting when I first thought, “If these newly hired folks are the face of American doctoral programs, we’re in trouble.”
But is it? Yes!
| Field of Study | Master’s | Doctor’s |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 12 | 26.7 |
| Total science and engineering | 31.3 | 40.9 |
| Natural Sciences | 25.4 | 33.5 |
| Life Science | 18 | 27.5 |
| Physical Sciences | 31.1 | 35.6 |
| Mathematics | 26.7 | 48.5 |
| Computer Sciences and Engineering | 33.5 | 52.3 |
| Computer and Information Sciences | 37.5 | 44.8 |
| Engineering | 32.1 | 53.3 |
Source: U.S. Dept. of Education
And if you combine that with international students in sustainable international development, management, and economics graduate programs — students who are more or less determined to put their skills to use outside the U.S. right after graduation — the day that we face challenges due to our present lack of qualified applicants in science and technology is nigh.
Please help support the relief efforts in northern Pakistan and Kashmir. The earthquake there has left between 25,000 and 30,000 dead, about 40,000 more injured, and millions homeless.
Please consider donating money to the American Red Cross fund for earthquake relief or another relief organization closer to where funds are needed.
One hundred years ago the clearest way to identify the existance of a sizable middle class was via amusement parks. Today it’s the shopping mall — and they’re growing like crazy in India.
True, “organised retail industry accounts for just 3% of the country’s total retail sales,” leaving 97% of business as Mom & Pop establishments. Unlike the U.S., Indians don’t seem very brand-conscious yet; though in the holiday spot of Shimla and the shopping mall in Madras there was much more of it. The lack of brands can really, really throw an American for a loop.
The term “third world” puts my teeth on edge. And I’ve heard it in the news a lot recently. Can we stop using it?
I know that it’s a translation from the French, supposedly to designate “one third of the world” — even though it’s really more like two-thirds. Sure, “developing world” has it’s own set of biases (as does “underdeveloped”), but it seems more active, more hopeful. I suspect you have to be very in touch with the history of the French Revolution to see “third world” as aspirational rather than static.
Sepoy over at Chapati Mystery gives the subcontinental perspective — and links to many interesting articles — on the floods in New Orleans and Bombay. (Sepoy, a grad student in the U.S., has quite an interesting and readable blog, by the way.)
And I’ll add a link to On Point‘s segment today on Race, Poverty and Katrina and yesterday’s on America’s New Refugees.
A few weeks ago I almost posted this snippet from the BBC:
“Why does a week of heavy monsoon rain kill more than 400 people, cause damage estimated at nearly $700m, and completely paralyse life in a bustling metropolis?” ask Mumbai residents according to a bleak report by the BBC. Those numbers were early figures; the death toll actually tops 1,500 and the damage over a billion dollars.
After seeing the effects of huricane Katrina on New Orleans, it seems appropriate to challege stereotypes about developing countries.
Today while waiting to get my haircut, I read A.J. Jacobs article in Esquire magazine. Jacobs was inspired by Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat to outsource some of the drudgery of his daily life.
The article is at turns appalling — having someone in Bangalore chat up his parents, really! — and brilliantly funny. Here’s a little excerpt:
My team is good, cheap, and absurdly eager. They will do anything short of violating the Geneva Conventions. And with most of the tasks — online shopping, thank-you notes, research — my crew saves minutes or even hours of my day. . . . To me it seems the future of outsourcing is as limitless as … blah, blah, blah.
You know what? I’m kind of bored writing this piece. I’m going into the other room to enjoy some Entourage on HBO. So I’ve asked Honey [his assistant] to finish up writing this article for me.
Officials in India are trying to make much needed sanitation improvements. In one case the minister of rural development is urging chief ministers to prevent village elders without indoor plumbing from running for office. And in Delhi the government has been ordered to pay 2,000 rupees for each stray cow brought off the streets.
Hopefully this all has some positive effect.
A couple of years ago — okay, it was more like six — I told Lisa that “the Dow won’t break 10,000 for years.” A few months later it shattered 10,000 on its way to a peak of 11,908.50 in January 2000. My vindication was bittersweet when it sank back into the low 7,000s back in October 2002. Now that the Dow has recovered back into the 10s, I’m quite relieved. (I still maintain that we have a long time to wait for the Dow to reach 36,000.)
But look at the new guy on the block: The Bombay Stock Exchange, whose “sensitive index” (or Sensex) just surpassed 7,500 a week ago and closed over 7,750 today.
In terms of total market capitalization, the BSE has a very, very long way to go before there’s more money tied up in it than in the securities traded on the NYSE or the Nasdaq. But in terms of growth the value of stocks tracked by the Sensex is phenomenal. Of course, so is the volatility, and prior years weren’t always so good.
Last week I posted about a Times editorial on outsourcing. Today the commonwealth’s Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey came to The MathWorks to present us with a proclamation and thank us for being a good Massachusetts business.
(You can add her to the list of other American politicians I’ve seen in person — strangely, all Republicans: then Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, then Wyoming Congressman and now Wyoming Senator Craig Thomas, and then Vice President and now . . . J. Danforth Quayle.)
During her remarks, she made her own comments on outsourcing. She was careful to acknowledge the high cost of homeownership in Massachusetts as something that drives people away from relocating their families here — they have a plan for that, don’t you know — and (in typical small-government fashion) suggested that there was too much bureaucratic overhead contributing to slow new job growth. All rather tame and factual.
But then she said that companies like The MathWorks have realized that outsourcing is counterproductive for a very obvious reason: “Employees in Massachusetts can think better than people overseas or in the Midwest.” I caught myself from groaning aloud.
It’s true that brain-drain doesn’t happen in the commonwealth nearly as much as it does in Iowa and Wyoming and India. And as the Bay State’s principal cheerleader, it shouldn’t be surprising that she’s hyping Massachusetts. But perhaps she should read the writing on the wall . . . or at least the website:
Our customers are 1,000,000 of the world’s leading technical people, in over 100 countries, on all seven continents. These technical people work at the world’s most innovative technology companies, government research labs, financial institutions, and at more than 3,500 universities.
Massachusetts does attract a large number of well-educated researchers and engineers from around the country and the world, but we don’t have a lock on brainpower.
Ms. Healey did admit that we need to get better at teaching our students math and science. Of course, she also joked about how bad she is at mathematics and told the Natick city councilmen present not to expect much additional state aid in coming years.
Update, 19 January 2006: Gov. Romney proposed increasing the amount of state aid to cities and towns for education last night in his state of the state address.
Today’s New York Times contains an interesting editorial on outsourcing from the perspective of Suketu Mehta, an Indian-American. Basically she he says Americans need to study harder, work harder, and not expect other nations to let us coast on past successes. Learning Hindi might not be a bad idea either.
You can read the article for free (with registration) for a week.
I must confess that many of my thoughts about India are still rather inchoate and flexible, but after talking to friends and coworkers about India it’s time to get around to some of those questions I had before leaving.
A few weeks ago I anticipated thinking about developing nations. From the moment that we first weaved through the crowded Delhi streets I observed a world different in so many ways from the USA and yet surprisingly similar. I still can’t claim to be an expert on Indian society but certain things lead me to claim that India is a dynamic place that is eager to synthesize modernity (as understood in developed countries) and traditional Indian values. The result is more Indian than American and is much less schizophrenic than you might suppose.
When Americans talk to foreign visitors and immigrants, we tend to ask questions about the places they left. When Indians talked to us, they wanted to know only about India. What do you think of India? How do you like India? What do you think of Indian people? Perhaps Indians already think they know everything about us — after all they get “Friends” and “Fear Factor” and “Boston Public” and “General Hospital” — but I suspect that Indians are keenly interested in how people from so-called “developed” countries view India.
Indian nationalism is running strong. No doubt, this is partly a response to having having a nuclear rival next door in Pakistan, but India sees itself as a regional economic power and possibly a rival to the US, Europe, and China in the latter part of this century. Indians, I sensed, want respect at the same time that they acknowledge that they have an appreciable distance to go before having many of the things that are basic in the US.
When we first started planning our trip, Jay said that “India is a land of contrasts.” Extreme poverty and extreme wealth exist side by side. India is trying very hard to fix these problems, and I believe that their burgeoning wealth will allow them to do many things; but the will must be there, and I’m not sure it completely is. Perhaps it’s because of the caste system or because of colonialism or because of religion or because of lack of means — for whatever reason we found a sense that certain people were meant to be at the top and others were destined to have a harder life.
I’m not trying to minimize the impact of India’s massive population, nascent infrastructure, and lingering poverty. For sure, these limit them in achieving all of the things they want, such as full employment, clean water, universal housing, education, adequate healthcare, and reliable electricity. (And there was no question that Indians felt these were priorities. They aren’t a set of imported “Western” values.) With more than a billion people, India needs to add six million jobs a year to keep the same level of employment. The environment and public health can only suffer when the state of Uttar Pradesh has 177 million people in an area the size of Colorado.
Yet Indians are fairly optimistic and relentlessly capitalistic. They seem to want to solve problems in their own way, and I have no doubts they will. For example, India needs more energy resources to feed their growing economy and the desires of the world’s largest and fastest growing middle class, so they’re risking of the ire of the US to build a pipeline from Iran through Pakistan.
In this land of contrasts perhaps the hardest thing to reconcile is that poverty still exists when so many people are working (and working extremely hard). Unfortunately in India poverty seems to be something you are born into and can only escape with difficulty. We saw many children begging or picking through trash in the roadside dump for scrap metal or plastic instead of being in school. We met people who were working in retail but had never gone to a day of school. For these people help is going to have to come from above.
In the US, where poverty exists but not like this, we only succeeded in squelching it through government heavihandedness: forced education for all children (even if they were needed in the farm or factory) and lots of government spending on electricity, telephone, post, roads, housing, and make-work projects. I suspect that India’s state and federal governments will have to mandate social changes and pay for a lot of economic relief and infrastructure changes.
India is making a lot of money in taxes from its growing economy, but I think that in India as in the rest of the world, much of the money for development is going to have to come from donor nations. To me it seems unconscionable to expect the developing world to bootstrap or rely on private philanthropy because we want to save a few dollars each on taxes. The world “over there” looks a little different on TV than it does out the window of the train in Chandigarh as dirty children rummage through trash or beg for change. Development feels different when people talk about it at Brandeis’ Heller School for Social Policy and Managment than when beggars are looking at you and tugging on your clothes.
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