Singapore and India have agreed to start recognizing each other's educational qualifications in architecture, accounting and medicine. Not many Singapore-trained doctors may want to rough it out in Indian hospitals. From India's perspective, though, sending more of its professionals to the city-state is one of the juicier parts of the so-called comprehensive economic cooperation accord that will be signed June 29.

It certainly holds out more promise than duty-free trade, which from India's standpoint doesn't matter much because Singapore's import tariffs are already close to nil.

Both nations can gain if India shares its abundant human resources with its neighbor, which has an open and pragmatic policy on foreign workers.

A Harvard, Yale or Oxford University-educated doctor, whose qualification is recognized by Singapore to be as good as its own, has no compelling, career-enhancing reason to work in Singapore. Many Indian doctors, however, would gladly work in the city, which does not produce as many doctors as it needs, drawn by higher pay, better equipment and superior urban amenities for their families.

The Indian economy, already the world's largest recipient of remittances from overseas workers, will benefit from sending abroad more white-collar professionals who have high savings potential.

In the nine months through December 2004, India got about $16 billion from overseas in "private transfers," or 24 percent more than the export revenue from computer software, the country's best-known international business.

Even before negotiations began with India in 2003 for the economic cooperation agreement, Singapore knew what it would be asked to concede.

"I believe India will push us on recognition of Indian professionals and our facilitation of their employment in Singapore," said Foreign Minister George Yeo.

"We're prepared to do that," Yeo, who then oversaw the Trade and Industry Ministry, said in an interview in March 2003.

That openness on Singapore's part is not surprising. The city of 4.2 million people already has 90,000 expatriate Indians. The Indian MBA pool has contributed a lot to Singapore's financial services industry, which accounts for 11 percent of the island's $107 billion gross domestic product.

Take the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, and its class of 1993. Among that year's graduates, Vinod Aachi is managing director of the relative-value group, which straddles all aspects of the credit market, at Deutsche Bank.

Ashutosh Sinha, a managing director at Morgan Stanley, manages $9 billion in Asian equity investments outside of Japan; Manish Singhai has the same role at Alliance Capital Management, where he is the chief investment officer for the region.

Jai Rajpal heads Asian nondeliverable currency forward and options trading at the same bank. Vijay Sivaraman works for Citigroup's retail banking unit.

All five of them live in the up-market Orchard Road/Grange Road neighborhood of Singapore. Two other former classmates, currently in London, will soon be joining the group.

"Out of our class of 110, we have more than 15 in Singapore, many in the same industry, living in the same neighborhood," says Sinha at Morgan Stanley. "This is when 40 of us had started our careers in Bombay, where only a few now remain. It's incredible."

Singapore, which wants to become an Asian hub for medical tourism, will find India's pool of English-speaking doctors a cost-effective source with which to supplement its own small supply of physicians. The National University of Singapore admitted only 230 medical students in 2003.

In recent years, Singapore's government-run hospitals have recruited some Indian-trained doctors, usually those with specialized experience in areas like pediatric surgery. These physicians and surgeons are often overqualified for the contract jobs they are offered and underpaid relative to local professionals, according to an Indian-trained doctor in Singapore.

Formal acknowledgment of Indian medical qualifications would end the wage discount. Ditto for accountants, architects and professionals in 120 fields in which Singapore is going to make it easier for Indians to live and work in the city, according to a statement last week by Trade Minister Kamal Nath of India.

The contribution by overseas Chinese to China's economic growth has been an example for India, where policy makers are increasingly convinced that the country's 20-million-strong diaspora is worth more than the checks its members send home.

Some expatriates are returning to start their own companies; others are buying property in India, contributing to an asset-price boom that is making urban Indians feel richer than ever before.

Singapore could be a net gainer as Indian professionals in the United States and Europe seek a soft landing in the city for a few years before heading for the rough and tumble of their home country.

"When I look at the map of the world," Finance Minister P. Chidambaram of India said while presenting his budget in February, "I'm struck by the strategic location of Mumbai. It lies almost midway between London and Tokyo, two nerve centers of world finance."

Now that the Indian government has found Mumbai on the map, it will take at least a decade before it can sort out the city's urban mess and turn it into a financial center that can compete with Singapore and entice bankers to return home in large numbers.

Indian doctors, meanwhile, could start getting their passports ready.