Opinion Those Who Left

Oxford University Press

Pages: 325

Rs 695

A banal tale from when this reviewer had completed his Master’s — everyone in his class,economics,JNU,everyone from Delhi School of Economics,everyone from everywhere it seemed,although a few were exceptions,were applying to study abroad. This is so banal because the same story applied to many graduate/ post-graduate classes before this reviewer’s and to all those which came after. But did any of us think this banal story may have an extraordinary dimension? That skilled,relatively socially privileged Indians going abroad and staying there may have made it easier for the socially disempowered Indians to enter the Indian political establishment and stay there?

The argument that international economic migration from India was a factor in domestic political empowerment is among the most fascinating arguments of this very good book. The social elites’ exit option,as Devesh Kapur calls it,made social non-elites’ entry options in politics easier. Had a lot of well-educated,rich,upper middle class,middle class boys and girls stayed home,would socially disadvantaged groups have found it tougher to get political space? Educated Indians who have stayed at home and who often complain about lack of “quality” in politics should find this a provocative premise.

Kapur’s thesis,actually quite a few distinct theses,has many more dimensions,of course. He investigates not just skilled migration but also unskilled migration. His data work on the Indian diaspora is superb. Even readers who don’t have professional interest in how social scientists go about building the empirical foundations of their work should find it easy to understand and admire Kapur’s data-hunting and data-interpretation skills.

The author,as you would expect,spends considerable time on the brain drain/brain gain issue and the insights are valuable for public policy. Obviously,when you look at Bangalore,you think of the positive effects of the diaspora. But look at our health care centres. They are terrible maybe because with so many doctors emigrating,and the natural tendency of the better quality of the stay-at-homes being to specialise,there aren’t enough,decent,quality primary health physicians. On the other hand,the competition for the necessarily few exit options may also raise general skill levels among student populations. All of these are interesting arguments and policymakers must pay attention to these. The quality of teachers in higher education,or the lack of quality,may have deep links with emigration volumes.

I found Kapur’s discussions on the foreign investment/remittances/ NRIs question somewhat underwhelming by the standards of the rest of the book. Not a whole lot new or intellectually stimulating there. That India’s flourishing diamond industry — apart from more obvious examples — is in part a result of positive spillover from emigration is more or less well-understood. Even so,the sections on these issues are still probably the best analysis/data interpretation available on the subject.

A wonderfully insightful last section in the last chapter,“Spatially Unbound Nations”,should not be missed. This deals with how international migration has shaped notions of citizenship. And within that discussion is a sub-discussion on internal migration,movement of Indians within the country,and the political tensions they can generate. Kapur quotes B.R. Ambedkar and Indira Gandhi. Speaking at different times,both of them supported the notion of common citizenship but both took note of “local concerns” and “sons of the soil” arguments. Kapur notes that courts,which have had to deal with the legal fallout of many of these tensions,haven’t provided a coherent argument either,given that there’s “rank political opportunism” in such cases. Surely,this failure over time of the political/judicial class must be partly responsible for what’s happening in Maharashtra now,for example?

Many more such questions,equally important and interesting,suggest themselves after the reader finishes Kapur’s book (don’t ignore the appendices; they give an excellent idea of how to do good data work). And the ability to provoke such questions is the book’s biggest virtue.

Devesh Kapur’s book should produce at least a couple of more excellent political economic studies.