Brain drain : Cause, effects and solutions

By SHIKHAR SHRESTHA

The urge to go to the west has become compelling in Nepal in these recent years of modernisation and global transformation. Both the world wars and political upheavals like civil wars and revolutions spawned large migrations during the first half of this century. The migrations in the latter half stem from economic motivation. People like scientists and skilled persons have, from the very beginning, played a key role in international migrations. The conscious policy of encouraging immigration of high quality manpower from other regions and countries is related to the positive contribution made by the immigrants to their country of adoption, resulting in a net advantage to the latter. This phenomenon of gaining qualified and skilled manpower at cost to the country of origin is generally termed brain drain.

The United States of America has been among the biggest immigrant-receiving countries for a long time. In the nineteenth century there was a combined movement of man and money from the old world to the new, thereby transmitting economic development. Industrialising Europe was the major source of immigrants and the process of immigration brought both sides of the Atlantic together as a community of nations, as a single economy made up of independent regions. The migration resulted in mutually reinforcing economic growth.

After the First World War, the significance of international migration declined. By the 1920s and early 1930s, the open door policy was replaced by immigration laws imposing restrictions on entry. The United States became the biggest creditor nation, with the movement of capital not coupled with that of labour and free-trade. And free immigration was at a low ebb. Meanwhile, the US made significant gains in terms of immigrant scientists from Europe. The influx of scientists and inventors speeded up the process of technological development and innovation, which also proved to be a vehicle of economic development and stability.

To understand the contemporary phenomenon of brain drain, it will be useful to have a glimpse at international economic relations since the Second World War. The period was characterised by the resumption of economic growth in the west and enlargement of the socialist world, which did not exert pressure on the supplies of high quality manpower from Third World developing countries. The period also witnessed national resurgence among colonial people, which brought development to the fore as the foremost concern of the world while the US emerged as the leader of the market economies. The seventies witnessed many Third World countries embarking on an independent path of development and political reform. However, international economic disparities persisted and even became accentuated.

A period of scientific and technological revolution ensued. The emergence of research and development has become the leading industry, which demands the fast growth of highly educated scientific and technical manpower and trained personnel. Science and technology now form the crucial means of production. However, the increasing capital intensity tends to weaken the link between increasing investment and rising demand for labour.

The rapid growth of the industrial west resulted in acute shortage of highly qualified manpower with attendant widening of salary differentials among the US, Western Europe and Third World developing nations. The educational expansion in developing countries has outstripped their absorption capacity. This has led to increasing reliance on them by the developed world, especially the US, for qualified technical personnel and scientists to meet the shortage. This is in keeping with the long experience of using the Third World as a tool for development.

But instead of apportioning blame, it would certainly be more pragmatic for one to see the root cause of this brain drain phenomenon. Perhaps the most important reason for brain drain is the educational pattern which does not serve the needs of the home country. The others are unrecognised or unrewarded talent and lack of job opportunities for trained professionals. For example, the emoluments drawn by research workers are far less than those of a factory hand. Jobs in the corporate sector are financially more attractive and a large number of science graduates opt for non-technical jobs in the private sector and in banking institutions. The dedicated few take up research studentship. The more enterprising among them go for research or teaching assignments in the west.

This is the start of brain drain of the young. The lure of higher salaries in hard currency, good living and favourable conditions for settling down with family also prompt highly qualified Nepalese to look to the west for jobs.

Further, a close scrutiny will show that brain drain and poor faculty research facilities are both outcomes of the general path of development opted for by the developing countries, their techno-economic strategy of development which has a minimal role in change in social status, relations and institutions. However, the efforts and policies to reduce or stop brain drain will involve improvement of now destitute facilities. The import and adoption of western educational technology also work towards intellectual alienation of highly educated personnel from the home environment and culture. These uprooted and detribalised educated groups are eager to move out and the reverse technology comes as a blessing in disguise to the developed nations. Ending such a reverse flow will help generate appropriate, socially integrative and social relations-harmonising technology related to the life and experience of the people.

The specific objectives of anti-brain drain policies, within the framework of independent development, are to bring back to a limited extent, the lost talents and skills from abroad and reduce the outflow in the short run and finally end it, except where necessitated by genuine, multilateral international dependence.

There is also a dire need, on the part of the researchers, for social commitment. They must accept the superiority of social priorities over subjective research fields. The disproportionately high salary structure for private business and industrial executives acts as an incentive for scientists to ultimately migrate. To retain highly qualified manpower within the country, the salary structure has to be attractive. The anomaly in emoluments should be removed. Measures for vocational and academic guidance, realistic and detailed manpower planning and appropriate placement services are a must. The private sector, which is an important employer, should do well to shed its traditional attitude towards formal education and training in personnel policies.

On highs and lows

By SUBAS RISAL

Hey bro!! No cops around feel free and smoke  ganja." This came as a big surprise to me. A guy smoking ganja uttered those words when I was just about to throw away the butt of Khukuri, my favourite brand. He must have assumed that the cigarette I was smoking was a joint.

He was brimming with enthusiasm while smoking ganja in front of the crowd gathered for the concert on Shivaratri. His idea of flaunting himself as a big time ganja smoker was really shocking. He wanted to prove himself as a ganja freak in front of a crazy and delirious crowd. He wore a trident-shaped locket on a thick chain around his neck. Perhaps, he wanted to prove himself as a genuine devotee of lord Shiva.

All of a sudden he throws a question at me, "Do you take drugs other than ganja?" I was dumbfounded and couldn’t answer for a moment. I could not figure out what made him ask that question. May be he was on high smoking ganja or that khukuri made me look like an addict. But anyway, I pretended to be one and answered: "yes".

The answer ‘yes’ paved the way for a prolonged conversation. I was really stunned with the way he started the conversation. He without any hesitation said that taking drugs made him feel like a man. He claimed to be among the top-ten junkies in Kathmandu.

The guy’s voice slowly grew louder as his friends who were looking for him arrived and joined the conversation. They were of the same type. They felt the same way as their dear buddy. Then the ganja wrapped in a paper appeared from one of the pockets. One of the guys started taking out tobacco from Shikhar. They prepared joint in a jiffy. It was really amazing to see the joint prepared so quickly.

Since I was a sort of a guest, they offered me to light a joint (atithideva bhawa). I found myself in an awkward situation. Refusing meant breaching of confidence and accepting meant state of unconsciousness. I decided to go with the latter. I accepted their offer and inhaled a couple of puffs. They would have surely treated me like an undercover agent if I had refused.

Fortunately, desperate hand of one of the guys did not allow me to take the third puff. The guys who were already on high smoked joint again. One of them threw up and another just fell on to the ground.

I had to get away from the maddening crowd, as it was getting late. I took out another khukuri from the packet and began by journey home. One the way I was asking the same question again and again. What’s there to boast about taking drugs when everybody knows it does no good?

Beyond war of wits

By BASANTA LOHANI

As if what is happening is  not enough, a war of wits between the chief of the army and the politicians is adding another turn to the ugly twist and turns of our country’s pathetic state of affairs. When the main opposition party was walking out of the parliament for the second consecutive day on March 27 the Army chief was in Kathmandu’s watershed at Shivapuri reading out a calibrated text in the graduation ceremony of the Army’s command and staff college. The high pitched note of this rendering has created another uproar. A day earlier, the main opposition, in a rage of anger, had walked out from the house leading other parties to express the increased concern over the deteriorating law and order situation in the country. The anger, among other things, was apparently triggered by the Maoist’s petrol bomb attack at the residential premises of party’s chief whip at the lower house of the parliament.

The general’s terse but forceful remark against the politicians has now given a new focus for an anger charged politics where they are hitting hard crossing party lines and boycotting the parliamentary business. It is the ruling party’s members of parliament who have demanded the resignation of the Army chief. And, if the prime minister fails to secure it, they conclude, then it is he who should resign. The initial demand for a clarification from the prime minister about the conduct of his general has now extended to his own resignation. However, the prime minister, two days after the Army chief’s remarks, remained away for three days accompanying the king who flew to take stock of the situation of the four worst Maoist effected districts. What kind of clarification he will give in the house that he has promised, though unclear till this writing, it is widely speculated that he would frantically try to hammer out a solution to steam out the pressure that is much deeper than what is seen at the periphery in the boiling passion against the general. However, as it seems, it may not be so easy a ride this time because this issue has united other opposition parties too in the Koirala-Madhav combine that is maneuvering to change Deuba government as a starting point.

What prompted the general to raise a number of questions aimed at lambasting the politicians for their bad governance in bringing the country to such a pathetic state is not clear. However, it is, first, a rebuttal to Koirala’s outburst on March 5 when he claimed that it was the army that brought the emergency in the country as per its agenda, not the government that simply was compelled to follow it. For a fourth time prime minister ruling the country more than half the period of this twelve years, Koirala’s finding can not be brushed aside simply as an outburst of losing his premiership eight months ago. Again, considering Koirala’s utterances that are more often diametrically opposite, It makes us think how much water does it really hold?

The army chief’s remark that these politicians, because of their bad governance, have brought the country to this perilous state is as true as the daylight sun. Investigation has found a prime minister in knee deep corruption. Ministers have recently disclosed how corrupt they have become before moving out from cabinet with all their bag and baggage. The judges are found corrupt and the Bar Association had to threaten them for justice. The nation’s premier investigating agency on corruption has itself become a victim. The government gets into its business for stringent anti-corruption laws when the donors threaten because it has crossed the limit where they themselves have remained a party. It is a classic case of corruption trickling down not the benefits of growth. Our experience has been such that even when there was marginal growth, that only increased poverty It is because the burden of corruption, whoever has amassed, is ultimately shifted to the common people making their life miserable the way it is happening in our country. In eleven years from 1985/ 86 to 1995/96 annual per capita growth rate in gross domestic product of 2 percent has brought about an increase in poverty by 3. 2 percent. The period following is a pathetic case of an overall economic decline. Thus, inequality is increasing where the absolute poor are bleeding. And, this is positively related to insurgency or terrorism, which is spreading like cancer. The question, therefore, arises not that what he spoke was incorrect but, as a government employee, is he entitled to make such statements? If not, then why did he do so crossing the boundary set by military discipline? This is the crux.

The MPs, mostly from the ruling party, are out describing his statement as "well planned conspiracy with far reaching effect " with reasons to "suspect the motive of the prime minister." It is "testing water" they claim, for the "ominous days are looming large ahead, as the first step against democracy has been taken." This unison of the MPs in decrying has a clear undertone of apprehension that seems much stronger than the overflowing anger targeted against the general. It is true that the stream of undercurrent that drives a river is more important than what is seen fast flowing. Their apprehension, as clearly expressed as hidden inside a veil, is about the situation where the king may assert actively with the strength of the army and the failures of the decade. I believe this is not likely to happen which we moved past because the complexities have become too awesome. However, the general’s remark has triggered this fear among the practicing politicians who have now indeed run high.

This new democratic dispensation came as a sequel of the tripartite agreement that has now undergone structural changes. It is very much tripolar but the Maoists have emerged as the third force from outside the constitutional boundary, and are pursuing barbaric acts for exerting massive pressures. Within the constitution, the political parties inside the parliament have a much greater stake than those outside of it. The king, though a constitutional monarch, is again a political force because of the inherent institutional strength. So the situation in Nepal is a three-fold war: a war of wits, a war of nerves and a war against the terrorist in the most difficult mountain terrain. In a situation like this, every one is playing its game to outwit one another creating further dangerous instability.

Koirala’s broader democratic alliance that is now blended with Madhav Nepal’s constitutional amendment is as much to move inside Singh Durbar jointly as it is to bring army under Singh Durbar in an operational way. Sher Bahadur Deuba is caught in between the whirlpool of indecisiveness. His party has already directed him to start the process of constitutional amendment. The king once even went as far as talking for constituent assembly for whatever reasons he may have had in mind. The Maoists are intensifying coercion and violence for republic. After twelve years of democratic rule that has made the country weak after losing a significant indigenous strength, the politicians inside parliament, as opposed to those outside of it, are all out for a new power sharing arrangement between the king and the prime minister in an apparent effort to make him ineffectual.

It is true that the political forces in our country have not yet found a stable equilibrium. They are using or being used against one another for gaining a cutting edge against each other. Koirala’s approach through his lieutenant’s recent meeting with a top Maoist leader is just a glimpse of this kind of configuration. He has now ropes in his one time lieutenant who had left his camp. And, the way he is Khum Bahadur Khadga, he has the nefarious strength of changing the government. The country’s politics has gone much murkier. In a situation like this, it is not so much because of inadequacy in the power sharing arrangement that our constitution has established but more because of the greed of the champions of democracy, who have taken the country for a ride to loot and do anything to suit their fancy. Unless this is changed, even one thousand amendments in the constitution will not make things better. Instead, such tailor-made political activities will push the country to such a dangerous state where internal politics will turn into ‘command politics’ of the outside factors the way it is beginning. The dependency syndrome will further reduce the indigenous strength. We have already fallen in this trap. In a scenario like this, it is not known how the army chief’s well-prepared speech fits as a move, counter move or rebuttal. Political forces eventually move to the direction where the politics can crystallize. This comprises not just the political parties and the ambit of its influence but every individual irrespective of his awareness.