Opinion China scares,India inspires

On returning from China,a business associate of mine from Italy said he had heard of Chairman Mao’s strict regime but in Shanghai he saw skyscrapers—like in any other Western city. China,with its languages and cultural differences,is a total mystery to the West.

But the West hopes India will be China’s challenger. It’s comfortable with India because of its democracy and hospitality and it sees India at the forefront as a better alternative. But the question is whether India can take leadership of the world.

Those who have experienced India say Indians don’t like to take challenges. But it wasn’t always so. Let me recall how after the passing of the Government of India Act 1833,Lord Macaulay was appointed the first Law Member of the Governor-General’s Council to change things. He came to India in 1834 and found that it would be difficult for the British to gain control over this highly civilised independent country unless they demoralised the masses. In his ‘Minute on Indian Education’ (1835),he said,“It is impossible for us,with our limited means,to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons,Indian in blood and colour,but English in taste,in opinions,in morals,and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country,to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature,and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.”

So Macaulay was instrumental in creating the foundations of bilingual colonial India. He convinced the Governor-General to adopt English as the medium of instruction in higher education,from the sixth year of schooling onwards,rather than Sanskrit or Arabic in the institutions that the East India Company then supported. He destroyed around 7,32,000 Gurukuls (schools),tortured the teachers and burnt them alive. His final years in India were devoted to the creation of a Penal Code,as the leading member of the Law Commission. We can say he was really a visionary who broke the morale of Indians so that the British could control India with few people.

Can we in India now change ourselves after 165 years so that we can take on the world? Challenge means not losing a ready opportunity. I think we have everything to give a new direction to the world. What are the challenges? Take Indian companies for example. Why do we confine ourselves to boundaries that do not exist? If a retail store selling products for the home is called Home Town,why are competing retails called Home Life,Home Stop or @home? Look at shops abroad—they are called Habitat,Ikea,Conran—and they are all different while being in the same ready-to-fit furniture market.

Global growth starts with the capacity to manage business with local expertise. Indian business houses can achieve global sustainability if they can have high localisation through adopting local customs and hiring locals. Whatever the political resistance was in Europe for Arcelor Mittal,even today it is stirring up passions among ordinary citizens like taxi drivers who say you have to be Indian to work there. Thirty years ago Europeans hated Americans. They admired the US as they gave full support for the Allies to win the Second World War but at the same time they could not tolerate American business colonising Europe. Since then,American companies have worked hard towards locality customisation of their businesses. Brilliant examples are IBM and P&G,among others,that are considered global companies today,and have high local expertise.

Outsourcing,cost arbitrage,offshore development may be devaluing India’s value image and can be scary for Western masses,but not at the corporate level. We definitely cannot do away with these drivers that have created essential businesses and contributed to our economy. But they should be used in a tactical way rather than being promoted as ‘low cost India’ as the core. A simple example is the way Swatch managed its image inspite of being a low cost watch. It’s a globally renowned high aspirational watch brand that costs $30. Yet,its reputation is not that it is a low cost watch,rather it is known to be a latent fashion statement. We have to be very careful that the growing extreme right parties of the politicised Western countries do not use ‘low cost outsourcing India’ as a strong weapon to create antagonism against India. If high resentment grows among the Western masses,that their jobs are being hijacked by India,it can jeopardise our global image. We should not forget that Hitler’s Nazi politics started from this background of instigating people Jews who had money power.

So,India in general,does not frighten developed countries like China does. It is in the hands of the Indian business community to drive business globally while being sensitive to being local in every country they operate in. Don’t ask the world to behave like Indians. Let’s take the opportunity to drive different people in the world through their own culture by being flexible yet highly disciplined and with the mentality of taking on challenges,to reinforce that India inspires.

Shombit Sengupta is an international creative business strategy consultant to top management.

Reach him at http://www.shiningconsulting.com