{"id":2612,"date":"2003-01-14T00:02:10","date_gmt":"2003-01-13T18:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alpha.ravikiran.com\/blog\/2003\/01\/14\/swaminomics-is-wrong-again\/"},"modified":"2003-01-14T00:02:10","modified_gmt":"2003-01-13T18:32:10","slug":"swaminomics-is-wrong-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/vintage\/200301\/swaminomics-is-wrong-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Swaminomics is wrong again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Swaminathan Aiyar<\/a> claims that brain drain is a bogus concept. His economics is sound, but I think he is attacking a strawman.
His argument is that we produce talented people cheaply and export them abroad. In return we get not just money in the form of remittances, but also technology – which could not have been developed in India. <\/p>\n

This is correct, of course. Given the circumstances <\/i> it is a good thing. It is similarly true that given the mess Kerala’s industries are in, the money-order economy is good for Kerala. India would be worse off if those people who are going abroad now didn’t go, just as Kerala would be worse off if all those people who went off to the Gulf stayed in Kerala. The point is not to force people to stay, but to change the circumstances that make Swami’s analysis sound economics.<\/p>\n

Swami is also making the case that it is actually good for India to be always behind in the technology curve? Such a case can<\/i> be made. Perhaps it is better that western countries take on the costs and risks of new technology, and w? adopt the safe, tested and cost effective technologies. I don’t agree. We aren’t just competing with the west. We are also competing with a lot of other third world countries. R&D and manufacturing tend to go together, and if we miss out on one, we will miss out on both. <\/p>\n

Another case can be made that India should go in for applied research, leaving basic research to the west. I think that there is a stronger argument for this.<\/p>\n

But these question certainly cannot be resolved by rehashing comparative-advantage arguments the way Swami Aiyar has done.
Update:<\/b> Swami Aiyar comes out with the second part where he makes the same points <\/a> I did<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Swaminathan Aiyar claims that brain drain is a bogus concept. His economics is sound, but I think he is attacking a strawman.His argument is that we produce talented people cheaply and export them abroad. In return we get not just money in the form of remittances, but also technology – which could not have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2612"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}