India Chronicles - Episode II

It has been nearly three months since I landed back here and many things have changed. Firstly, I have gotten accustomed to some of the nuances of living here. Secondly, I have not yet killed my interior decorator for overshooting the timeline for completion of my apartment by about a month (& running), so, my patience towards incompetence and unprofessionalism has increased. Things are looking upward though in terms of the opportunity and challenges that lie ahead. In this Episode of my chronicles, I will be touching on some of the lesser known aspects of business and the interesting attributes of people and how they are the same all over the world.

Made in China/ Korea/ Japan:

China is dominating the market in almost all fragments of business these days. In the US, as we see, the consumer durables are virtually all made in china. If they were to sell the same goods here in India for the same price, no one would buy them. So, they are deeply discounted and sold in the Indian market to match the purchase power of the Indian consumer. That leads us to believe that the $4.50 nailcutter you buy at the cornerstore in your city is actually made for under $ 0.75 as it is sold for a little less than $1.0 here in the Indian markets !! A new Chinese brand of electronic equipments called Haier electronics has been launched here in India. Their stuff is priced about 10% less than the nearest Korean competitors. While the quality of the products is still under the radar, I am sure they will come out ahead with their TQM goals in place. Eventually, these products will hit the US markets and cause a lot of downward pressure on pricing for the in-house walmart brands etc. The Chinese manufacturing sector is steamrolling as the economy is expanding. As I travel, I see rolls of steel laden on massive 18 wheeleers headed straight for the port in Mumbai. Ironically, all that steel is headed for China for the immense infrastructure expansion that they are investing in !! Lesser amount of quality steel is locally consumed although infrastructure development here seems to be growing. In the Chemical sector, the chinese compete fiercely for price and quality. Although a majority of all raw material expenses are controlled by one Reliance petrochemicals & it's b**ch the Indian government, these cannot be sustain if the economy is to grow and imports are to grow correspondingly. The Korean product is also one to be observed. About 10-12 years ago when LG was first launched here in India, everyone was laughing at their quality and now LG and Samsung have captured the electronics markets. Large Japanese corporations like Sony no longer differ in their high quality and fail on their pricing, no wonder Sony just laid off 10,000 people. The Japanese giants are collapsing in their market share in asia and they are losing to the same people they virtually mentored. I have high respect for the Korean manufacturing sector that has put Japan to it's knees. In the US, we see the same trend with Hyundai and Kia gradually gaining ground.

Twist of fate:

People believe in Karma, fate and religious superstition a lot. Herein I want to cite some examples of the funniest top 10 superstitions that are most common and almost taken to be dogma: In David Letterman style
# 1: Do not proceed if a cat crosses the street (let someone else cross before you) (especially bad if the cat is black)
# 2: Do not shatter glass in the house (especially mirrors)
# 3: Do not crack knuckles in the home
# 4: Do not clip nails at night or on Saturdays
# 5: Do not start new projects without consultations with the local astrologers (they have the best set of dates to start new projects)
# 6: Do not walk under a banyan tree at night
# 7: Do not give money with the left hand
# 8: Do not enter a new home/ office with your left foot (these people should watch the movie 'my left foot')
# 9: Do not make excessive profit on the first sale of the day (for mom & pop retailers. These people land up making 'good day deals' early in the morning)
# 10: Do not forget to put a black dot on your kid's face. It absorbs all the evil radiation emanated by jealous and yet powerful people.
As a result of all these superstitions, I decided to do everything on the most inauspicisous days possible. My mother calls me a rogue, a rebel without a cause and wants me to COMPLY with POLICY. Now I know where that gene comes from.

Do whatever it takes to make it work:

In a poor country where resources are not in abundance the principle of functioning at the minimum subsitence level is observed to it's limit. Under these circumstances, aesthetics takes a back seat, possibly the last seat in the house. A common example is the drugs and packaging of commercially available OTC drugs. Virtually no effort is put in making the packaging glossy or attractive. At times, the drug colors are not altered and they are at times grey or black in color. Tablets dont show the gloss we see in a tylenol for instance and capsules dont radiate their red color as much either. That way, the extra expense of making it 'sexier' is saved. It is not always that this saving is passed onto the consumer, but, competition forces most to do so. ISO 900X certified companies have dirty premises and unclean shop floors. Almost none of the companies I have visited have put any effort in making it look good. Here is an extreme example of this attribute at work. I'd heard of a reputed local company that makes a highly corrosive brominde. Bromine stinks, corrodes and is a dangerous solvent to handle. So, in the ideal world, all equipment that handles liquid bromine needs to be glass lined or plastic lined. This manufacturer was known to export his bromine based intermediate. As I was passing by, I thought I would pay him a visit. To my surprise his plant consisted of everything from plastic pipes, straws, water hoses, 2 liter coke bottles and milk/ gasoline gallons plus carboys. The whole unit did not have a single standardized reaction vessel !!! Such is the ingenuity of making it work at any cost. An ISO consultant would faint if he/she were to visit this unit. I was hoping he did not have a website... phew and he didnt. Another very interesting example of how economics works in a poor nation is the one of milk delivery guys. Milk is delivered in plastic or tetrapak containers in the cities, but, in rural and suburban areas, it is carried straight from the dairy in large vessels on motorbikes and delivered straight into your home milk container using a measure. These delivery guys ride motorbikes for miles. Since there is adulteration in the fuel, these bikes tend to die sooner than later. To offset the cost of dying bikes, the dairy farm guys collaborated with a local engg firm and started a piston making business. Now, they would mix gasoline with about 40% kerosene and virtually anything under the sun that has any calorific value. Such kerosene is heavily subsidized by the government for home use. It is bought from the government run institutions at the subsidized price and put to commercial use. They run the piston block till it corrodes and dies. Then get a new one from the local (self owned) store at cost and replace it !! The business thus remains viable.

More phone antics:

I realized that people here have developed an interesting way of stating phone numbers. the phone number 9983334777 will be stated as " double nine- eight- triple three- four- triple seven". When numbers exceed three they often use phrases like "five sixes after that" to constitute five sixes in a number. I get annoyed with this double-trouble BS and ask people to just state the number. It is a net new skill to be quick to understand and write a number down when some one promptly tells you a number in this fashion.

Corruption:

Corruption is not alien to any society. Even the US is out of the Top 10 most least corrupt countries in the world. The problem occurs when gross inefficiency is tagged along with corruption. If you pay someone kickbacks to get something done, it is not certain that that will really happen in a timeframe you desire. The Chinese government doesnt tolerate inefficiency in its proceedings and people are often punished severely for being a roadblock in the way of progress. Here in India, there is hardly any punishment of any form and hence no real accountability. Bribery and corruption is a way of life. Most people believe that corruption is good for society that it actually acts as a lubricant in the economic machinery. What they dont understand is that it causes a great gap in the income differentials between classes of society. Take for example, a simple boiler inspector for our zone. The guy is so rabidly corrupt that even if you give him the gold standard, he will ask for platinum. These guys get transferred from location to location very quickly, so, the interpretation of policy for the next guy becomes an easy mode of creating a scenario of non-compliance. Thus the next guy makes it an issue with the sole intention of accepting bribes/ gifts in exchange for a certification. Such a boiler inspector should be making about $ 120 a month and that would be more than sufficient amount of money for him to lead a decent lifestyle and be paid well for his educational level and skillset. In our case, this guy makes close to $ 4,000 a month. This money is not passed on to any lower income group and it gets stuck in his throat. So, a class of society has been created that doesnt deserve what it makes. Corruption has been the root of disaster in this society. We are very close to the bottom of that list and virtually nothing is done to build any form of accountability. Learning from other countries, I guess, the levels of corruption go down as the pressure to be corrupt goes down as the living standard improves with employment.

So much for this Episode. I have content for another episode, but, will be releasing it next month.

India Chronicles Episode I

Almost a month has gone by since I have returned to the homeland. I have some interesting experiences and observations to share for the made in USA and migrated to the USA brains.

Landing home:

As most of you know this was the most memorable of my journeys. I was held back in Korea for a day due to the closure of Bombay's airport due to flooding. The day my plane landed on one of the two airstrips here, it was flooded about a quarter of the way through. The baggage claim belt had been cleaned off the garbage and the bodies of people that were washed into it…. Eww! Then I was stranded at my wife's place in central Bombay because the road to the suburb I live in was washed away. To give you an idea of the amount of rainfall Bombay experienced during that downpour here is an interesting statistic. Three days of rain accounted for the annual water requirement of the city and its suburbs!

The weather:

The weather here has been moderate since that downpour and I had begun to forget how humid Bombay is. When you hold a glass of chilled water in your hand, the condensed water on the outside of the glass is at times more than what is inside. There were a couple of sunny days when it felt like you were walking around in a steam bath. In short, not fun at all. So, all of you bay area folks complaining about humidity, rest your cases now.

The techmology (sic):

The fastest cable connection you can get here is about 256Kbps. While that's not all that bad, you need to have a good relationship with the local provider (agent) and possibly host the central modem/ router. That way, you can control when you get customer service from him. The local guy here is upgrading his network, so, speeds of 1 Mbps are in the near future.

Everybody here has a cell phone. From the cabbie, to the street vendor, to the CEO of a firm. Not just that, they all have fancy cell phones. You will be a pariah if you walk in with your latest Motorazor and flash it out of your pocket. Here you can see brands like O2, mobile video messenger. My O2 phone has a 2.2 MP digital camera, a digital video recorder, a digital voice recorder, windows media player for mp3 files, a mmc card reader, web browser, complete outlook remote synchronization, MS office, e-fax reader & creator, acrobat reader and bluetooth wireless. So, all of you that thought bluetooth was dead, wake up and smell the coffee. I could sit with my phone and do practically anything. Did I mention the games? My son will tell you. Pretty much everything here happens on SMS. Unsolicited credit applications can be taken over SMS and most of the votes for contests are also taken over SMS. I've learnt that most of asia lives on SMS these days.

Work:

Work is very different. These people have redefined the terms SLA and follow-up. I started with a systematic project plan for the expansion of one of the units and realized that every event has a very low probability of occurrence and a large confidence interval. SLA is defined more as a 'service lapse agreement', so, the lapse in service then transforms into amnesia when it comes to obeying the payment terms. I am gradually learning the ropes, who does what. Who is worth how much? Who is reliable, who isn't etc. I spend a lot of time traveling between locations, offices and manufacturing units. I have stopped wearing cologne, because by the time I am back, I usually smell of Dimethyl ether or allyl butyrate or one of the longer names. I have blended in well with my peeps and people don't think of me as the 'phoren' (foreign) returned. In the work culture, a unit or office opens when it opens that's it. The notice board outside that states office hours is basically stating suggested office hours only. There is little respect for time and timeliness. Everyone gives you a time range to meet " I will meet you between 10 and 11" is more common than, "I will meet you at 10:30". Transport is unreliable and so very often commute distances are measured in time and not physical distances. In such case, the people are reluctant to arrive in advance for an appointment, they choose to give you a time range in which they anticipate arrival. Another specific irritation is with phone numbers. Every company gives out a dozen phone numbers. Most of the land lines are dead when there is heavy rainfall or a wind storm passes by, so, they take a chance and hope one of the lines is active. Also, everyone quotes their cell phones and keeps changing them every month. I am thinking of employing a person just to track the changing phone numbers of people. To add to the chaos telephonce exchanges add digits and prefixes to phone numbers altering them further.Things are complicated and your phone book will be very obsolete if you dont update it on a weekly basis.

People:

The people have always been and perhaps will be very myopic in their thinking. Being brown skinned, they imply that you are religious, conservative, are already married or about to get married. Being a businessman, they presume, you have political connections, are corrupt and dishonest etc. They still strongly bear the notion that through software development, they will eradicate poverty. Socially, there has been little change in thinking. The divorce rate has climbed in recent years and that is an indication that working class women are no longer tolerating the bullshit meted out to them by chauvinist husbands. It is an indication of progress. But, as Austin powers say's 'That's about it'. There is little change in casteism or the Indian form of racism as it is referred to. The same values and virtues are passed on without critical thinking or evaluation. Modernization in thought is mostly through the media and exposure to the western style of living.

TV/ Music:

Incredibly boring. Any normal cable subscription has about 80 channels and most of them have some form of boring sitcom showing. On other channels there is a cricket game being shown live or one from the past, mostly one in which India has won (which is a rarity). We have HBO and a couple of other movie channels. All movies are edited to be PG-13, so, you don't have to worry about wrong influences affecting your children. Ironically, rap songs are also edited for lyrics when about 99% of the people wont understands the words or references even if the track is slowed down. Almost all of music released today is remixed!!! All the old tracks are remixed and a video with a skimpily clad woman with silicones is often seen dancing in the rain. If you were to mute the TV in watching one of these videos and played any other remix in the background, I am pretty sure, it will feel like the video is for that song.

Me:

I have taken up the rigorous sport of badminton. It is the local equivalent of squash and kills calories. Nothing fits me anymore as I am becoming leaner by the day. We are planning on moving into our apartment if it gets ready by the 15 ^th Sept. I will be posting pictures soon. I have not washed my clothes, cooked, cleaned, washed or driven my own car. I am an unofficial spoilt brat again. Needless to say although the people have their priorities all wrongly aligned with life, I enjoy being here.

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