More from Bangalore

The Professional Development in International Business, hosted in Bangalore and Bombay by Florida International University, formally began this morning as the faculty participants—from around the world (most from the US, but there is a management professor from Budapest here, and two faculty from the University of the Virgin Islands)—arrived yesterday.  I knew two of them from previous FDIB trips, so it wasn’t like everyone in Bangalore was a foreigner to me!

A few months ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a series on India under the heading “Flawed Miracle.”  The theme it explored—the contrast between the highly developed, highly literate, and wealthy Indians, and the persistence of poverty and illiteracy– became graphically clear in our two site visits today.

The first was with the VP for Human Resources at IBM India, a very articulate Ph.D. in Economics (I think, continuing the British connection I mentioned yesterday, from a school in the UK).  He was quite learned, and confessed to us that he would probably have enjoyed teaching had the pay even remotely resembled the remuneration in the business world.  He talked about his own background, which began before 1990, the period of the license raj, when the Indian government, bereft of most resources, including its ability to feed the then 600 million Indians, regulated most of the economy  to husband its development, employing a socialism in the economy to complement its democracy in the hope as well of providing a “third way” between communism and capitalism that almost outlasted the Cold War that gave it birth—not to mention its usefulness!

At IBM India he manages to hire, train, and retain a world class engineering group despite the challenges of the Indian market.  He described the high attrition because of a shortage of educated folks (not college graduates, but college graduates with marketable skills; he estimates only about 25% of the engineers who graduated college know enough to use those skills, complaining that too many know only theory).  The challenges he outlined—attrition is 15% in manufacturing, 25% in IT, and 50% in back room operations.  In hiring, he says the younger generation is interested in 4 things—compensation (for a few hundred rupees, he said, people will change jobs—though the Economic Times warned yesterday that Business School graduates were being warned to downsize their expectations, especially at second tier institutions), career growth and opportunities, and “care”–the social dimension, which he says is more important in India than in most other countries because of the close family ties.  Parenthetically, he mentioned that his daughter called her mom—from LA, to get recipe information as she was cooking! Two elements he thought distinctive to India were that employees are frequently “no shows”—that is, they don’t show up to begin work despite a commitment to join a company, and sometimes just “abscond,” leave without notice, sometimes taking computers as a souvenir.   He said the big companies are now requiring letters from a previous employer (though in critically short areas, they poach talent from one another).  In a company like IBM, which values uniformity in procedures, he says that he will emphasize career growth and opportunity and compensation at the expense of “care” (no group cricket matches, for example).  We’re going to Infosys tomorrow and he suggested we’d see quite a different approach, but Infosys is an information company that is locally-based, not a western multicultural.

He spoke as well about Indian labor in general, and in particular the 2% of the population that has benefited from the miracle—especially the IT sector.

Our second business visit highlighted that “other” India, a nongovernment operation that was providing the social services government can’t entirely afford to do.  It was an organization set up by a Hari Krishna Hindu (yes, the Krishna movement survived the 1960s in San Francisco) who sought to do the good works that will earn him Nirvana.  He started a business, partnering with business sponsors and government, to provide hot meals to many of India’s needy school children.  In the miracle city of Bangalore, the company feeds over 200,000 Bangalore children—of the nearly 800,000 who would  go to school or have a meal without the program (variable government programs supply the rest). The organization feeds 1.5 million students around the country and would like to have enough money to feed nearly 5 million.  We saw the cauldrons which are big enough to make enough rice to feed 1,000  or make 10,000 chappati, to go on the trucks that deliver lunches….one can only wonder what about the families of the children getting the meals….Quite a distribution operation.

Speaking about food, we were hard pressed to squeeze in a lunch, so we sandwiched in a lunch visit to McDonalds, which despite its emphasis on operational efficiency and standardization, is a great case study in globalocalization; the Oakbrook chain, which has centralized its manual into an 800 page “thou shalt”, faced a situation in India where the Hindu majority (60 percent or more) eats no beef, and the Muslim minority eats no pork. That being the case, I had to eat at a McDonalds to see what the company  would serve.  Not surprisingly, the choices were either fish or chicken—with a few Indian dishes.  I chose an interesting (to me, anyway) spicy paneer wrap, not available in the U.S., with a thumbs up cola (a local brand Coke purchased).  The wrap was tasty, consisting of chicken, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, and a crunchy batter—nothing moved, so I think it was ok—every ingredient was wholesome, which makes me wonder what the nutritional information was…. I atoned for my food gaffe by our welcome visit to a north Indian restaurant that featured naan—the bread– and tandoor dishes.

As I’ve mentioned many times in my blog, food is indeed cultural, and I really ought to have an international food fair for my international business class.  I wonder who else would welcome chicken feet?