1197 



has in many cases transformed our reputation abroad, which was pre- 

 viously low in academic circles. This itself is prestigious." *^* 



Professor Dandekar took the opposite point of view: "Bhagwait 

 knows better," he replied in rebuttal, "and knows it too well that what- 

 ever the prestige of the individual Indian scientists abroad may be, it 

 is the scientists working in their own countries, often anonymously, in 

 poor conditions, improvising with native genius to overcome several 

 handicaps in resources and equipment, who are bringing effective pres- 

 tige to their countries in the world community." *^^ 



What Dandekar seems to be implying is that the greatest prestige 

 is institutional, not individual: prestige is to be gained not through 

 the individual who succeeds abroad but rather in the success of native 

 scientific institutions and the scientific community that he helps to 

 create and represents. Loss of this prestige-producing potentiality can 

 be a serious, but incalculable, blow to the LDCs. 



LOSS OF PROFESSIONAL MANPOW^ER IN\TESTMENT 



Assessment of investment costs is perhaps the most difficult task in 

 judging effects of brain drain on the LDCs. Emigration statistics can- 

 not tell the full story of costs: they provide a factual framework for 

 analysis, but they neither define migration as a problem nor explain 

 the effects on development. Migrating professionals have a value in 

 themselves. Whatever that value may be, it is added to the receiving 

 country, and correspondingly withdrawn from the sending country. 

 On the surface this is a simple, commonsense judgment. But that value 

 is not so easily determined. It varies widely in both time and place, es- 

 pecially in science and technology, with their unique transnational 

 characteristics. Accordingly, no agreed totals of economic costs and 

 prices have yet been fixed to migration, nor in view of its complexities 

 does it seem likely that this can ever be done.*®^ 



How is it possible to measure the "externalities" of the educated per- 

 son, that is, his total value as a human being to society ? Loss of new 

 knowledge or improved methods of production and management is a 

 matter upon which a priori reasoning, as Professor Johnson states, 

 "can throw no light," and thus provides no realistic means for measur- 

 ing loss.*^^ Students of brain drain, like Eeverend Gibbons, must gen- 

 eralize on economic and social costs in a diffuse and impressionistic 

 way — "In a modernizing society or economy, it scarcely is a propitious 

 beginning to have large percentages of the more trained minds move 

 abroad and to abandon the task of handing on the torch of learning to 

 their compatriots. The assumed net loss will be, under such circum- 

 stances, presumably greater than the dollar cost of having trained the 

 individuals who migrate." *^^ Or they attempt to put some quantitative 

 value on advanced education of the migrant professional, hoping in 



*<*< Quoted In, Dandekar, op. clt., p. 227. 

 *K Ibid., p. 227. 



*^ Gregory Henderson discusses this problem In UNITAR's, Emigration of Highly- 

 Skilled Manpower from the Developing Countries, 1970. pp. Ib-lc. 

 *" Johnson, op. clt., pp. 84-85. 

 *"» Hearings, House Government Operations Committee, Brain Drain, 1968. p. 8. 



