The US vs. the rest as a beacon for talent

President Obama has been trying to get Americans concerned about the possibility that the United States could lose out to India and China in education and research if it doesn’t focus on the issue. These are big countries getting stronger, he contends, and wonders if his countrymen are up to the task of continuing to match the emerging powers academically for much longer.

In some sense Obama, like the frenzied coach of an American college football team yelling at his quaterbacks, is telling Americans to rush and overwhelm. Should he or Americans be concerned?

I think not. The US has wrung all that it could from decades of fossil-fueled growth. Much of science still resides in the US and much of humanities too. The best American universities own the world; the virtuous knowledge circle they have created for themselves means that in the foreseeable future, any cutting edge research will be done there. The best of Indian and Chinese researchers will continue to head West and the US specifically. As of now, the number of Indian and Chinese students seeking admission to US universities is several times larger than those applying elsewhere.

For the Chinese, especially, all this feels like a double whammy – their best talent heading West and their money keeping the US afloat. We Hindus call it good Karma, for the US is truly blessed. True, China and India will continue to grow at a frenetic pace but the quality of life in India and probably to a lesser extent China will take a long time to match that of the best in the US, where life is also a lot less complicated and arbitrary.

Fortunately we in China and India who are getting stronger economically, also do not stand to lose. For a lot more talent is likely to be retained in our countries than ever before. We are even witnessing a fair trickle of the better talent turning homewards – but it is nowhere in danger of becoming a flood. Some of the countries of East Asia, like South Korea, are close to matching the US in comfort levels and infrastructure and therefore much more attractive to return to. China has also become proactive – its universities employ outstanding faculty from around the world in much larger numbers than India does – it includes quite a few from India and that too on 10-year-long contracts.

So what lessons do we Indians have to learn? I would suggest that we begin with revamping that obstructionist ministry called the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). It places every kind of hurdle imaginable in the way of visiting faculty. Banish the dream of giving 10-year-long work opportunities to foreigners to work in our universities as China does. The gang of obstructionist bureaucrats will hold up something as a simple as a “No Obligation to Return to India” or NORI certificate for individuals for months on end, often losing what is sent to them, compelling applicants go through the long and torturous process all over again.

The MHRD makes everything difficult for existing universities and institutions to function. Worse, its officials lord it over higher education in the least productive manner. It has at various times targeted the elite institutes of management and technology like the IIMs and IITs and can play havoc with whatever good they do without knowing where to look for hidden rot and set it right. If India is to open its education sector to the world, I am sure our complacent academics will get sharper too. But for that to happen, the MHRD in its present form has to be scrapped.

Of course we are not alone in our obstructionist ways for we have excellent company in Europe which walls out everyone outside the EU most of the time. Sure, Europe has had its day in the sun and it is now in rapid decline. If its population continues to dwindle at current rates, Europe will be an acutely geriatric state in the next couple of decades. It is a prisoner of its memories and of the bureaucrats in Brussels; the latter’s efforts to preserve Europe may end up making their continent look increasingly like a museum and less like a place humans inhabit. Sadly from that continent too the best are leaving – you guessed right, to the US, the biggest and most powerful vacuum cleaner in history that is sucking in talent from everywhere in the world.

Dr. Uday Balakrishnan, is a Visiting Fellow at the Central European University in Budapest.

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