India escaped brain drain

WASHINGTON: Despite the hullabaloo in the 1990s about brain drain from countries such as India and China, such large developing nations may have escaped the deleterious effect of talent flight compared to other small poor third world countries in Africa, South America and the Caribbean, a World Bank study has said.
In an extensive survey of data from 30 OECD countries such as the US, UK, Canada and Australia (rich nations under the head Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), the study estimates that 25% to 50% of college educated citizens of poor countries like Ghana, Mozambique, Kenya, Uganda and El Salvador lived abroad in an OECD country.This goes up to more than 80% for Haiti and Jamaica.
In contrast, large developing countries such as India, China, Brazil and Indonesia have lost less than 5% of their skilled citizens to OECD. Moreover, the recent return traffic is bringing back intellectual and financial resources to these countries.
The World Bank study, titled 'International Migration, Remittances and the Brain Drain,' warns however that "given the apparent demographic problems and aging populations (in OECD countries), the intensity of brain drain could continue to increase over the next decades.''