First, a recap. I spent a week and a half with family in the UK, and it was FANTASTIC. I got to see my uncles and aunts, play with my cousins, meet new cousins I never knew existed, and spend time with my dear grandparents. It was everything I could have asked for.
Then this past Wednesday I flew into Boston and touched down on US soil for the first time in the past 6 months. what an AMAZING feeling to walk through the airport and see an ENORMOUS American flag stretched across the ceiling, and to realize in your heart, with much relief, "I’m back home." I met up with Duke, my roommate who flew in from DC so that we could see apartments together, and we took a shuttle down to our hotel [which is of course on the company dime]. Now Duke is starting at the office on Monday, although I have a little more time, so finding an apartment in the next 2 days was of the utmost importance. Checked in and went straightaway to our first destination, Ten Faxon [www.tenfaxon.com] to have a look around and whatnot. Liked what we saw, called it an evening, and went out for yummy sushi.
The next day we went to Munroe Place [www.munroeplace.com] to see what they had to offer. Finally, we met up with a young fella named Evan, who showed us around some places in South Boston. After seeing all these apartments, we realized that we both had settled on Ten Faxon a while ago, and so we went back with money orders in hand to initiate the application process. Got that taken care of, decided it had been a good day, and went out to The Four's for dinner and to watch the Orange Bowl. Kansas won. =( We were rooting for VT.
Friday we checked out of our hotel and went into town to meet up with a friend of mine, Bella. She let me leave my suitcases at her place, and then we hung out for the day. By 3:30 pm Duke and I found out that there were only a couple more steps to go before the lease would be ready, so we left to go to the bank, get the rest of our deposit money, and head down to Ten Faxon. Duke had a flight that night at 8 pm, so he had to be at the airport by 6:30, which meant he had to leave Ten Faxon by about 5:45 at the latest. By the time we got to the leasing office at 5:30, the last of the paperwork - the employment verifications - had JUST been faxed in, so Duke signed the lease and left straightaway to catch his flight. I stayed back, looked over the entire lease in detail, signed, and received the keys to the apartment and other stuff.
So basically, within two days and after a lot of hassle that I haven't even really talked about here, we had our apartment locked in. Now I can leave all my clothes and other stuff from India here in my apartment before I go back to Atlanta for the rest of the month.
Yay!
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Friday, December 14, 2007
India's cooling IT industry
The following is an article from The Economist [get the original story here]. What are your thoughts?
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Gravity's pull
Dec 13th 2007 | BANGALORE
From The Economist print edition
Is India's computer-services industry heading for a fall?
MOST foreigners visit Mysore to see its many palaces, testaments to bygone royal splendour. But the city, south of Bangalore, is also a good place to observe monuments to India's modern might. One of its suburbs contains a lush campus with a collection of futuristic buildings: the Global Education Centre, one of the world's largest corporate-training facilities, operated by Infosys, a leading Indian information-technology (IT) services firm.
Visiting the centre, you would think that for India's IT businesses, the sky is the limit. Rarely has an industry grown so rapidly for so long. It has boasted annual growth rates of nearly 30% in the past ten years, with revenues now nearing $50 billion, about 5.4% of India's GDP. But some in India are starting to worry that the industry is heading for a fall. At the very least, analysts say, the industry's leading firms—Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro, to name only the three largest—need to do more to adapt their business models as the industry matures.
The “IT” in India's IT industry has always been something of a misnomer. True, most of its more than 1.6m employees sit in front of computers, writing software for Western firms, remotely maintaining their computers and electronically handling some of their operations. But the business is mostly about people and processes. The very essence of India's IT firms is their ability to marshal huge local workforces to supply high-quality services.
One of their biggest innovations has been to borrow ideas from manufacturing and apply them to services, by building a sophisticated human supply-chain, for instance. They have also focused on certification and continuous improvement—a result of having to be, at least initially, better than their Western rivals in order to win business, says Girish Paranjpe, the boss of Wipro's consulting arm. Today more Indian than American firms meet the highest internationally recognised standards for software development.
All this has enabled Indian firms to take advantage of a rare, if not unique, set of market conditions. On the demand side, Western companies needed to cut costs, but their computer systems still required a lot of human labour. On the supply side, there was an army of well trained, English-speaking engineers demanding only a fraction of a Western salary. Fast fibre-optic links brought both sides together and a favourable exchange rate made this global connection even more attractive: customers paid in dollars, and employees were paid in rupees. The result was a “low-risk, high-margin business”, says Kiran Karnik, the outgoing president of Nasscom, the industry's trade group. To increase sales, firms could hire more people without caring too much about productivity, with the result that growth in revenue correlated closely with growth in headcount.
So why the concern? Indian IT faces a host of threats, says Sudin Apte of Forrester Research, a consultancy, who argues that the industry needs to reinvent itself. The most immediate difficulty is the rapid appreciation of the rupee against the dollar in recent months (see article). Since its low in mid-2006, it has gained 16%. This has made a liability out of what had been a big asset for Indian IT firms—making most of their sales in America. The strong rupee has also thrown other structural problems into relief. These fall into three categories.
What goes up...
First come the familiar problems. One is India's clogged and insufficient infrastructure: workers in Bangalore can spend four hours a day in traffic. Then there are the tax breaks that subsidise the industry, some of which expire in 2009. There is also a growing talent shortage. Indian engineering schools award around 200,000 diplomas each year, and produce around 250,000 graduates, but only half are employable by the IT industry. Employees have learnt to switch jobs for better pay, and salaries are going up by 10-15% a year. For senior staff, they will soon reach Western levels.
Second, competitors are starting to emerge. IT industries in other parts of the world, such as Central Europe, may never match India's in size, but they can still pick off valuable contracts. Meanwhile, foreign IT firms have been beefing up their Indian subsidiaries. In 2002 the six biggest—including Accenture, IBM and HP—had fewer than 10,000 employees in total in the country. Their combined Indian workforce now exceeds 150,000. This enables them to rival the Indian firms in scale and cost, while exploiting their stronger brands and international scope.
The third category concerns future threats. In the short term a slowdown in IT spending looms as America's economy weakens. In the longer term Indian firms must keep abreast of technological changes. Many of the services they now provide will eventually be automated; this is already starting to happen, for example, in software testing. Western firms, meanwhile, increasingly want Indian providers to do more than just keep systems running; they want help in developing new solutions to business problems—something few Indian firms are set up to do.
The question is whether the industry's business model can cope with these threats even as the potential for growth in its established markets declines. According to calculations by CLSA, a French-Asian investment bank, Indian IT firms will soon have a share of nearly 20% of their addressable market's value and almost 40% of its volume. They will also struggle to make their existing business more efficient: most fat has already been cut.
Many think that Indian IT firms need to move into new, higher-margin services and to cut the link between revenues and headcount, for instance by offering more consulting, developing more intellectual property and making acquisitions abroad. To be fair, the leading firms are already doing this. Infosys now generates nearly a quarter of its revenues from consulting, says its new boss, S. Gopalakrishnan; and Wipro recently paid $600m for Infocrossing, an American firm, the largest in a series of acquisitions by Indian firms.
But is the industry moving fast enough? Nasscom's Mr Karnik says no, but he thinks there is still time to change things. Partha Iyengar of Gartner, another consultancy, sees more urgency. He expects slower growth and lower margins if the big firms are not making most of their money in consulting and other high-margin areas within three or four years. This will be hard, he says: today's focus on people, processes and profits may keep many firms from reaching the next level. But, he says, India's IT firms have shown before that they can change if they really need to.
Even if the heavyweights stumble, smaller firms are ready to take up the baton. For example, MindTree Consulting was founded 1999 in anticipation of the very threats that have now materialised. However potent these threats prove, they have already demonstrated that for all the talk of the world being flat, economic gravity still applies.
---
Gravity's pull
Dec 13th 2007 | BANGALORE
From The Economist print edition
Is India's computer-services industry heading for a fall?
MOST foreigners visit Mysore to see its many palaces, testaments to bygone royal splendour. But the city, south of Bangalore, is also a good place to observe monuments to India's modern might. One of its suburbs contains a lush campus with a collection of futuristic buildings: the Global Education Centre, one of the world's largest corporate-training facilities, operated by Infosys, a leading Indian information-technology (IT) services firm.
Visiting the centre, you would think that for India's IT businesses, the sky is the limit. Rarely has an industry grown so rapidly for so long. It has boasted annual growth rates of nearly 30% in the past ten years, with revenues now nearing $50 billion, about 5.4% of India's GDP. But some in India are starting to worry that the industry is heading for a fall. At the very least, analysts say, the industry's leading firms—Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro, to name only the three largest—need to do more to adapt their business models as the industry matures.
The “IT” in India's IT industry has always been something of a misnomer. True, most of its more than 1.6m employees sit in front of computers, writing software for Western firms, remotely maintaining their computers and electronically handling some of their operations. But the business is mostly about people and processes. The very essence of India's IT firms is their ability to marshal huge local workforces to supply high-quality services.
One of their biggest innovations has been to borrow ideas from manufacturing and apply them to services, by building a sophisticated human supply-chain, for instance. They have also focused on certification and continuous improvement—a result of having to be, at least initially, better than their Western rivals in order to win business, says Girish Paranjpe, the boss of Wipro's consulting arm. Today more Indian than American firms meet the highest internationally recognised standards for software development.
All this has enabled Indian firms to take advantage of a rare, if not unique, set of market conditions. On the demand side, Western companies needed to cut costs, but their computer systems still required a lot of human labour. On the supply side, there was an army of well trained, English-speaking engineers demanding only a fraction of a Western salary. Fast fibre-optic links brought both sides together and a favourable exchange rate made this global connection even more attractive: customers paid in dollars, and employees were paid in rupees. The result was a “low-risk, high-margin business”, says Kiran Karnik, the outgoing president of Nasscom, the industry's trade group. To increase sales, firms could hire more people without caring too much about productivity, with the result that growth in revenue correlated closely with growth in headcount.
So why the concern? Indian IT faces a host of threats, says Sudin Apte of Forrester Research, a consultancy, who argues that the industry needs to reinvent itself. The most immediate difficulty is the rapid appreciation of the rupee against the dollar in recent months (see article). Since its low in mid-2006, it has gained 16%. This has made a liability out of what had been a big asset for Indian IT firms—making most of their sales in America. The strong rupee has also thrown other structural problems into relief. These fall into three categories.
What goes up...
First come the familiar problems. One is India's clogged and insufficient infrastructure: workers in Bangalore can spend four hours a day in traffic. Then there are the tax breaks that subsidise the industry, some of which expire in 2009. There is also a growing talent shortage. Indian engineering schools award around 200,000 diplomas each year, and produce around 250,000 graduates, but only half are employable by the IT industry. Employees have learnt to switch jobs for better pay, and salaries are going up by 10-15% a year. For senior staff, they will soon reach Western levels.
Second, competitors are starting to emerge. IT industries in other parts of the world, such as Central Europe, may never match India's in size, but they can still pick off valuable contracts. Meanwhile, foreign IT firms have been beefing up their Indian subsidiaries. In 2002 the six biggest—including Accenture, IBM and HP—had fewer than 10,000 employees in total in the country. Their combined Indian workforce now exceeds 150,000. This enables them to rival the Indian firms in scale and cost, while exploiting their stronger brands and international scope.
The third category concerns future threats. In the short term a slowdown in IT spending looms as America's economy weakens. In the longer term Indian firms must keep abreast of technological changes. Many of the services they now provide will eventually be automated; this is already starting to happen, for example, in software testing. Western firms, meanwhile, increasingly want Indian providers to do more than just keep systems running; they want help in developing new solutions to business problems—something few Indian firms are set up to do.
The question is whether the industry's business model can cope with these threats even as the potential for growth in its established markets declines. According to calculations by CLSA, a French-Asian investment bank, Indian IT firms will soon have a share of nearly 20% of their addressable market's value and almost 40% of its volume. They will also struggle to make their existing business more efficient: most fat has already been cut.
Many think that Indian IT firms need to move into new, higher-margin services and to cut the link between revenues and headcount, for instance by offering more consulting, developing more intellectual property and making acquisitions abroad. To be fair, the leading firms are already doing this. Infosys now generates nearly a quarter of its revenues from consulting, says its new boss, S. Gopalakrishnan; and Wipro recently paid $600m for Infocrossing, an American firm, the largest in a series of acquisitions by Indian firms.
But is the industry moving fast enough? Nasscom's Mr Karnik says no, but he thinks there is still time to change things. Partha Iyengar of Gartner, another consultancy, sees more urgency. He expects slower growth and lower margins if the big firms are not making most of their money in consulting and other high-margin areas within three or four years. This will be hard, he says: today's focus on people, processes and profits may keep many firms from reaching the next level. But, he says, India's IT firms have shown before that they can change if they really need to.
Even if the heavyweights stumble, smaller firms are ready to take up the baton. For example, MindTree Consulting was founded 1999 in anticipation of the very threats that have now materialised. However potent these threats prove, they have already demonstrated that for all the talk of the world being flat, economic gravity still applies.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Leaving India in 2 weeks!!
So I got fantastic news just 2 days ago - instead of leaving India sometime in mid-January, I am being released in just 2 weeks. Which means I can actually spend Christmas and New Year's with family in the UK. Which means I can be back in the US sooner, which is INCREDIBLE. I am so excited about this recent turn of events, and - as I’m sure you have gathered from my previous posts - I am more than ready to get out of India as soon as humanly possible.
Furthermore, details have been finalized, and I am definitely going to Boston and nowhere else [there have been a LOT of people moved around suddenly at the last minute with no advance notice]. I am one of the few lucky ones who are going to their first choice of US location, and I’m very ready to begin my new life in New England.
See you soon! =)
Furthermore, details have been finalized, and I am definitely going to Boston and nowhere else [there have been a LOT of people moved around suddenly at the last minute with no advance notice]. I am one of the few lucky ones who are going to their first choice of US location, and I’m very ready to begin my new life in New England.
See you soon! =)
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Preparing for reverse culture shock
Rizzo here from India. This week we're discussing culture shock, and how sometimes it's harder to adjust to one's home country upon returning, than it is when landing in a new country and experiencing a different culture for the first time.
To be completely honest, I'm quite terrified of returning to the States, and rightly so I feel. I remember having to adjust to the Indian way of life when I got here over four months ago. The two main obstacles we had to overcome were:
An example for each one. People here are always late to meetings, although it's better than what I expected it to be. If you're Indian and reading this, you've most likely heard of Desi Standard Time [DST] or Indian Standard Time [IST]. Neither of these are actual time zones, but they do summarize quite nicely the subcontinental approach to managing time, which is polychronistic in nature. A deadline is not a hard, set-in-stone point in time by which something must be accomplished [as is the case in the US], but a general time frame. The task or objective can be completed before, at, or shortly after that deadline. This took some getting used to at first.
As for polychronicity, let me tell you something about India that you should know if you ever come to the subcontinent. And if you've been to India and tried to stand in a line, you already understand what I'm about to say. Aside from the more progressive and metropolitan areas of the country [Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore], the idea of a "queue" simply does not exist. When we first got here, all we saw at the little food shops was total chaos. One guy behind the counter pulling out pastries, warming up dishes in the microwave, grabbing drinks out of the cooler, taking money, doling out change, serving prepared orders - all while dozens of people are barking orders at him and thrusting hundred-rupee bills in his face. And trying to be "civilized" about it [from our then-naïve American perspective] got us nowhere, as we would constantly be pushed, shoved and ignored out of the way. Slowly, though, we saw order in the chaos, and we could see that the one guy behind the counter could do what no pimply-faced, gangly teenager working the register at McDonald's could ever do - process multiple requests at the same time with a very high, if not nearly perfect, accuracy rate.
These are the two big things - polychronism and polychronicity. By contrast, US culture is monochronistic and monochronic. But there are a lot of smaller nuances in culture that will be hard to get used to. Another example: when we go out to dinner, we usually go to decent, sit-down-and-order-then-eat-then-pay-the-bill types of places. In other words, not street vendors [even after more than four months here, we're not touching that stuff. No way we want to get sicker than some of us already are]. And even when it's a group of 3 people, the waiters have no idea who ordered what. With maybe one or two exceptions, I haven't had a meal with friends where everyone got everything they ordered without the waiters asking, "Who had the butter chicken?" What's even better is when they'll put a dish down in front of who they think ordered it, and 19 times out of 20 they're wrong. Anyways, with these kinds of situations, although we've gotten a lot better about it, we tend to get quite upset and raise our voices. I know that speaking for myself, I've done exactly that a number of times. After all, when you pay good money for good food and solid service, you expect that.
Which brings me to my qualms about returning to the States. First off, fortunately, I don't think I have to worry about polychronism, because I've worked enough in business and gotten upset enough here about time management that I'm fairly sure I'll make the transition back to monochronism with no problems.
HOWEVER, when it comes to incompetent waiters at restaurants, I am concerned that I'll be at some place like Chili's [not necessarily high-end and classy, but at the same time a decent establishment] with my family and the waiter or waitress will mess up our orders, and instead of being civil about it I'll start yelling at him/her and make a scene - all without realizing it.
And as for polychronicity, I am quite sure that when I go to a fast-food restaurant and there's a long line, instead of waiting in line like one should in the States, I will pull out a 10 dollar bill, walk to the front of the line, wave the bill in that same pimply-faced, gangly teenager's face and bark my order at him - all while completely ignoring [and thus insulting] the fine fellow who was about to place his order right before I showed up out of nowhere and opened my big yap. That's bound to cause a fuss.
And all of the concerns I've just mentioned don't even take into account the fact that driving in India is akin to playing Chicken on I-75 in Atlanta going against rush hour traffic [in other words, driving straight at cars that are coming at you around 80 miles per hour]. It's not the fact that India's roads are like Britain's [read: BACKWARDS] and that sitting in the passenger seat here is like sitting behind the wheel back home. No. That's not what scares me. It's the WAY in which people drive that has me frightened about my own driving abilities. I've posted a video on YouTube to give you an idea of how crazy it is to be in the passenger seat on the road here, much less be behind the wheel, and my concern is that when I get back to the States I will have an equal disregard for lane markers and dividers, and that overtaking a large bus around a hairpin turn at 30 miles per hour won't sound as ridiculous as it did to me six months ago. Which means I basically have to ban myself from driving for at least a month or so until I get the hang of it again.
So as you can see, I have a lot of concerns about coming back to the States that I need to start preparing for and dealing with now.
Although, admittedly, they most certainly don't overshadow my excitement about returning home in 6 weeks.
To be completely honest, I'm quite terrified of returning to the States, and rightly so I feel. I remember having to adjust to the Indian way of life when I got here over four months ago. The two main obstacles we had to overcome were:
- the concept of cyclical time [polychronism] and
- the idea that attention can be focused on multiple people and multiple tasks at the same time with no loss in productivity or efficiency. It's not quite multitasking - it's actually more like multitasking on crack [polychronicity].
An example for each one. People here are always late to meetings, although it's better than what I expected it to be. If you're Indian and reading this, you've most likely heard of Desi Standard Time [DST] or Indian Standard Time [IST]. Neither of these are actual time zones, but they do summarize quite nicely the subcontinental approach to managing time, which is polychronistic in nature. A deadline is not a hard, set-in-stone point in time by which something must be accomplished [as is the case in the US], but a general time frame. The task or objective can be completed before, at, or shortly after that deadline. This took some getting used to at first.
As for polychronicity, let me tell you something about India that you should know if you ever come to the subcontinent. And if you've been to India and tried to stand in a line, you already understand what I'm about to say. Aside from the more progressive and metropolitan areas of the country [Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore], the idea of a "queue" simply does not exist. When we first got here, all we saw at the little food shops was total chaos. One guy behind the counter pulling out pastries, warming up dishes in the microwave, grabbing drinks out of the cooler, taking money, doling out change, serving prepared orders - all while dozens of people are barking orders at him and thrusting hundred-rupee bills in his face. And trying to be "civilized" about it [from our then-naïve American perspective] got us nowhere, as we would constantly be pushed, shoved and ignored out of the way. Slowly, though, we saw order in the chaos, and we could see that the one guy behind the counter could do what no pimply-faced, gangly teenager working the register at McDonald's could ever do - process multiple requests at the same time with a very high, if not nearly perfect, accuracy rate.
These are the two big things - polychronism and polychronicity. By contrast, US culture is monochronistic and monochronic. But there are a lot of smaller nuances in culture that will be hard to get used to. Another example: when we go out to dinner, we usually go to decent, sit-down-and-order-then-eat-then-pay-the-bill types of places. In other words, not street vendors [even after more than four months here, we're not touching that stuff. No way we want to get sicker than some of us already are]. And even when it's a group of 3 people, the waiters have no idea who ordered what. With maybe one or two exceptions, I haven't had a meal with friends where everyone got everything they ordered without the waiters asking, "Who had the butter chicken?" What's even better is when they'll put a dish down in front of who they think ordered it, and 19 times out of 20 they're wrong. Anyways, with these kinds of situations, although we've gotten a lot better about it, we tend to get quite upset and raise our voices. I know that speaking for myself, I've done exactly that a number of times. After all, when you pay good money for good food and solid service, you expect that.
Which brings me to my qualms about returning to the States. First off, fortunately, I don't think I have to worry about polychronism, because I've worked enough in business and gotten upset enough here about time management that I'm fairly sure I'll make the transition back to monochronism with no problems.
HOWEVER, when it comes to incompetent waiters at restaurants, I am concerned that I'll be at some place like Chili's [not necessarily high-end and classy, but at the same time a decent establishment] with my family and the waiter or waitress will mess up our orders, and instead of being civil about it I'll start yelling at him/her and make a scene - all without realizing it.
And as for polychronicity, I am quite sure that when I go to a fast-food restaurant and there's a long line, instead of waiting in line like one should in the States, I will pull out a 10 dollar bill, walk to the front of the line, wave the bill in that same pimply-faced, gangly teenager's face and bark my order at him - all while completely ignoring [and thus insulting] the fine fellow who was about to place his order right before I showed up out of nowhere and opened my big yap. That's bound to cause a fuss.
And all of the concerns I've just mentioned don't even take into account the fact that driving in India is akin to playing Chicken on I-75 in Atlanta going against rush hour traffic [in other words, driving straight at cars that are coming at you around 80 miles per hour]. It's not the fact that India's roads are like Britain's [read: BACKWARDS] and that sitting in the passenger seat here is like sitting behind the wheel back home. No. That's not what scares me. It's the WAY in which people drive that has me frightened about my own driving abilities. I've posted a video on YouTube to give you an idea of how crazy it is to be in the passenger seat on the road here, much less be behind the wheel, and my concern is that when I get back to the States I will have an equal disregard for lane markers and dividers, and that overtaking a large bus around a hairpin turn at 30 miles per hour won't sound as ridiculous as it did to me six months ago. Which means I basically have to ban myself from driving for at least a month or so until I get the hang of it again.
So as you can see, I have a lot of concerns about coming back to the States that I need to start preparing for and dealing with now.
Although, admittedly, they most certainly don't overshadow my excitement about returning home in 6 weeks.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Happy Thanksgiving from India!
Today is Saturday, November 24, and I celebrated Thanksgiving 2007 in India. Two days ago we commemorated our most wonderful of American holidays with turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn on the cob, and rack of lamb.
"Now Rizwan," you might be saying. "Just hang on a second there. How did you get all of those things in India? Surely you can't just get turkey of all things in the Motherland!"
Well, let me tell you about this little shindig we had Thursday night. First of all, the food was all prepared by one of the best chefs in Bangalore. Although the chef's attempt at pumpkin pie was less than sub-par, the rest of the food was superb. And as for the turkeys: imported from Delhi, and I’m sure that even then they were imported from overseas. The turkeys alone cost Rs 250 per kilogram, or approximately $13.75 per pound. They ordered 20 kilograms, which is a grand total of Rs 5000, or about $125. That’s quite a bit of money for just turkey, especially in India.
But the fact that we had this fantastic food in India is not even the best part. The kicker was that we had all of this for free. Our Human Resources department put the entire program together, which was really fantastic. [Considering how incompetent and useless the department has been over the past four months, this seemed to be a reconciliatory move on their part, and it was much appreciated.]
Certainly a memorable way to celebrate Turkey Day in India!
"Now Rizwan," you might be saying. "Just hang on a second there. How did you get all of those things in India? Surely you can't just get turkey of all things in the Motherland!"
Well, let me tell you about this little shindig we had Thursday night. First of all, the food was all prepared by one of the best chefs in Bangalore. Although the chef's attempt at pumpkin pie was less than sub-par, the rest of the food was superb. And as for the turkeys: imported from Delhi, and I’m sure that even then they were imported from overseas. The turkeys alone cost Rs 250 per kilogram, or approximately $13.75 per pound. They ordered 20 kilograms, which is a grand total of Rs 5000, or about $125. That’s quite a bit of money for just turkey, especially in India.
But the fact that we had this fantastic food in India is not even the best part. The kicker was that we had all of this for free. Our Human Resources department put the entire program together, which was really fantastic. [Considering how incompetent and useless the department has been over the past four months, this seemed to be a reconciliatory move on their part, and it was much appreciated.]
Certainly a memorable way to celebrate Turkey Day in India!
Sunday, November 18, 2007
India: how I'll miss thee.
I have two months to go before I leave India, hopefully for good, and I've been reflecting today on my time here so far. And all this time I should have been studying for that exam I have tomorrow. Oh well.
One thing is for sure: I will not miss this country. Everything, every place, and everyone has its ups and downs, its pros and cons. Today we're talking about India, the Motherland, the Bharat, Hindustan. The land of my ancestors, the land I never knew until 4 months ago, and the land to which I will most likely never return.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not writing this with a bitter tongue. There are a number of good things to say about India, and I'll mention those in just a bit. But to help you understand where I'm coming from and why I feel the way I do, allow me to quickly recap the past four months:
Better examples come from the clothing industry. Tailors abound in India, even in dinky little Mysore where I've been for the past 4 months. I found one tailor here in particular who has been tremendously helpful - very well-educated, actually used to work for my company himself for a short bit before he and his brother decided to open up their own clothing and tailoring shop. Now he's very successful and enjoys what he does.
But I digress. If you've ever been to Tommy Hilfiger in the summer months and come across their white linen pants, which retail for about USD 70, you are about to appreciate what I have to say. Remember that the Tommy pants are pre-made somewhere on the other side of the world, and the price you pay goes not towards the stitching but to the corporation. Sometimes it's worth it to do that, but sometimes you can get fantastic deals if you're in, say, a country like India. I've had FOUR pairs of such pants made - not off the rack but tailored to my body - at about USD 25 for each pair. And when I say tailored I do mean tailored. I mean the tailor takes about 7 different measurements around my lower half, then cuts the requisite amount of linen material, then tells me to come back in a few days when he will have them ready. And every one of them fits me exceptionally well. In fact as I type this post I'm wearing my black pair.
In short, clothing here is fantastic. So is any kind of travel, compared to the US. Flying from Bangalore to Delhi and back again [about a 3-hour flight each way] set me back Rs 8000, or approximately USD 200. Try finding that kind of deal in the States.
And if you think I'm having a financial blast here, imagine how my UK counterparts feel. The exchange rate for them is approximately Rs 80 to the British pound, so their quid stretches even further than the dollar!
However, even with all of these great things here, I know deep down that this is not home, nor will it ever be. No matter how much I love the fantastic deals and the cheap food and inexpensive travel, I will never get used to the extreme poverty, the terrible infrastructure [driving on even nicely paved roads here is akin to rollerblading on gravel] and the cultural nuances that truly make me appreciate how good we have it in the States. I will cherish this six-month experience for the rest of my life, but I don't think I could do it all over again if I was given the option.
Soon, in two months' time, I will be saying NAMASTE to India and HELLO to the US. Until then, I'm counting down.
One thing is for sure: I will not miss this country. Everything, every place, and everyone has its ups and downs, its pros and cons. Today we're talking about India, the Motherland, the Bharat, Hindustan. The land of my ancestors, the land I never knew until 4 months ago, and the land to which I will most likely never return.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not writing this with a bitter tongue. There are a number of good things to say about India, and I'll mention those in just a bit. But to help you understand where I'm coming from and why I feel the way I do, allow me to quickly recap the past four months:
- I am constantly harassed by 10-year-olds holding their baby siblings asking for money.
- There's nothing like seeing grown men, little children and sometimes the occasional woman all urinating or defecating in public. Really.
- Severe lack of communication, both within my company and without, makes for a very difficult and uncertain life.
- No order at all. The word "line" - which is very commonly known here as a "queue" [ahh, the remnants of British colonialism still manifest themselves in the most subtle of ways] - is absolutely ignored. Try to behave civilly when placing a food order and you will undoubtedly be shoved, pushed and ignored out of the way.
- India claims that officially, English is its business medium. All transactions must be conducted in the colonizers' native tongue [as I like to call it], and my company specifically mandates that at all times English will be spoken on campus and in all business dealings. Unfortunately, in order for this to truly work at the global level, the Indian education system [see my previous post], particularly with respect to how English is taught, needs a critical overhaul, because in its current state, the English spoken by native Indians around me is shoddy at best and abysmal at worst.
Better examples come from the clothing industry. Tailors abound in India, even in dinky little Mysore where I've been for the past 4 months. I found one tailor here in particular who has been tremendously helpful - very well-educated, actually used to work for my company himself for a short bit before he and his brother decided to open up their own clothing and tailoring shop. Now he's very successful and enjoys what he does.
But I digress. If you've ever been to Tommy Hilfiger in the summer months and come across their white linen pants, which retail for about USD 70, you are about to appreciate what I have to say. Remember that the Tommy pants are pre-made somewhere on the other side of the world, and the price you pay goes not towards the stitching but to the corporation. Sometimes it's worth it to do that, but sometimes you can get fantastic deals if you're in, say, a country like India. I've had FOUR pairs of such pants made - not off the rack but tailored to my body - at about USD 25 for each pair. And when I say tailored I do mean tailored. I mean the tailor takes about 7 different measurements around my lower half, then cuts the requisite amount of linen material, then tells me to come back in a few days when he will have them ready. And every one of them fits me exceptionally well. In fact as I type this post I'm wearing my black pair.
In short, clothing here is fantastic. So is any kind of travel, compared to the US. Flying from Bangalore to Delhi and back again [about a 3-hour flight each way] set me back Rs 8000, or approximately USD 200. Try finding that kind of deal in the States.
And if you think I'm having a financial blast here, imagine how my UK counterparts feel. The exchange rate for them is approximately Rs 80 to the British pound, so their quid stretches even further than the dollar!
However, even with all of these great things here, I know deep down that this is not home, nor will it ever be. No matter how much I love the fantastic deals and the cheap food and inexpensive travel, I will never get used to the extreme poverty, the terrible infrastructure [driving on even nicely paved roads here is akin to rollerblading on gravel] and the cultural nuances that truly make me appreciate how good we have it in the States. I will cherish this six-month experience for the rest of my life, but I don't think I could do it all over again if I was given the option.
Soon, in two months' time, I will be saying NAMASTE to India and HELLO to the US. Until then, I'm counting down.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Comments on the Indian education system.
This post is from our newest guest blogger, Rizwan. He will be posting regularly on Saturdays from now on... Enjoy!
---
I’ve become disillusioned with the manner in which classes are conducted here in India. Granted, I’ve never sat in on an engineering or computer science class at an Indian college or university, but it's safe to say that an instructor here at the company is a product of his/her intellectual and academic atmosphere.
My mates and I are sitting in class and an instructor is teaching us on subject ABC. Behind the instructor is a projected PowerPoint slide with 5 or 6 bullet-pointed sentences. Across the top of the slide is a big question: "Why ABC?" And each sentence on the slide is one facet to answering this question. Clearly then, the answers to the question are right there in front of us.
The instructor asks, "So why ABC?"
And then waits.
And waits some more.
He wants an answer!
Sir, I want to say. The answers are right there. We can see them.
But I remain silent.
The instructor continues waiting. No one answers - it seems an exercise in futility, as we would simply be reading the answers off the slide.
Enduring silence.
Finally the instructor speaks. Turning around to glance at the slide, he simply ticks off the answers on the slide, which were there in front of us the entire time.
The ludicrous and gratuitous simplicity of the situation begs the question: why does the instructor ask us such simple questions with very obvious answers? If he is testing our ability to think critically, then there is no need to do so with the answers right there in front of us.
This is the way in which classes are taught everyday at my company. And again, while I haven't been to an Indian university, the instructors at the front of the class and my Indian counterparts all around me - indeed, all of us - are products of their academic and intellectual environments. Therefore I feel it's safe to assume that this is how classes are taught at Indian universities as well. If you ask simple questions that require no thought or foresight at all to answer, then you are robbing your students of two things:
Sir, I want to say. You need to focus on the rest of your audience too. They’re just as important. Pay them some attention as well - it will enrich their learning experience.
When it comes to Indian methods of teaching, the word ineffective automatically comes to mind, but it doesn't do justice to the system. It barely scratches the surface.
Stifling.
Hmm. That's a little better.
Not conducive to the pursuit of knowledge.
I like that one best.
---
I’ve become disillusioned with the manner in which classes are conducted here in India. Granted, I’ve never sat in on an engineering or computer science class at an Indian college or university, but it's safe to say that an instructor here at the company is a product of his/her intellectual and academic atmosphere.
My mates and I are sitting in class and an instructor is teaching us on subject ABC. Behind the instructor is a projected PowerPoint slide with 5 or 6 bullet-pointed sentences. Across the top of the slide is a big question: "Why ABC?" And each sentence on the slide is one facet to answering this question. Clearly then, the answers to the question are right there in front of us.
The instructor asks, "So why ABC?"
And then waits.
And waits some more.
He wants an answer!
Sir, I want to say. The answers are right there. We can see them.
But I remain silent.
The instructor continues waiting. No one answers - it seems an exercise in futility, as we would simply be reading the answers off the slide.
Enduring silence.
Finally the instructor speaks. Turning around to glance at the slide, he simply ticks off the answers on the slide, which were there in front of us the entire time.
The ludicrous and gratuitous simplicity of the situation begs the question: why does the instructor ask us such simple questions with very obvious answers? If he is testing our ability to think critically, then there is no need to do so with the answers right there in front of us.
This is the way in which classes are taught everyday at my company. And again, while I haven't been to an Indian university, the instructors at the front of the class and my Indian counterparts all around me - indeed, all of us - are products of their academic and intellectual environments. Therefore I feel it's safe to assume that this is how classes are taught at Indian universities as well. If you ask simple questions that require no thought or foresight at all to answer, then you are robbing your students of two things:
- The spirit of inquiry and the thirst for knowledge, which have guided and advanced our species over the past 3000 years, and
- The ability to think critically, which as a software engineer working for a global IT services company is crucial to say the least.
Sir, I want to say. You need to focus on the rest of your audience too. They’re just as important. Pay them some attention as well - it will enrich their learning experience.
When it comes to Indian methods of teaching, the word ineffective automatically comes to mind, but it doesn't do justice to the system. It barely scratches the surface.
Stifling.
Hmm. That's a little better.
Not conducive to the pursuit of knowledge.
I like that one best.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
China and India are coming to get you!
Ok so they're not really coming for you, but here's an interesting post from the Wall Street Journal on the number of engineers they are producing. I agree that just because you produce more of something doesn't mean the quality is better. So why do people get two very different things so confused?
My initial thought is with people like Tom Friedman publishing The World is Flat and warning us about China and India's oncoming dominance, a certain sense of paranoia/fear gets paraded around. Yes, China and India are both rapidly developing countries with many people hungry for "success". I put "success" in quotations because that "success" they strive for is a definition of the word that the western world has created and spread. Thus I find it ironic they're striving for something we mostly have (if you agree with the common definition of success including lots of luxuries and an easier way of life) when its precisely the lack of luxuries that is giving them their current advantage. What I mean by this is that the western world becomes accustomed to luxuries and thus are not "hungry" for "success" like the many people in China and India. It's quite a vicious circle of consumption...
My next thought is wondering what role the private sector is going to play in the balancing of education/training between the western world and rapidly developing countries such as India and China. Take, for instance, this passage from the WSJ post:
In China, a program to expand college enrollment in the 1990s led to slipping standards, says Prof. Mao Shoulong of Renmin University. “Once you get in, it’s [too] easy to graduate,” he says. Many Chinese universities support themselves by charging tuition. Despite taking in as many students as fit in cramped dorm rooms, they can’t generate enough cash to pay for high-quality equipment, labs, and classrooms. The resulting scarcity of strong scientists and engineers coming from universities has led many companies to set up in-house training programs. Microsoft was the first high-profile company to set up such a program in China. Software-services company Infosys Technologies Ltd. has a 16-week training course that costs $5,000 per employee.”
Very interesting! And then there are programs such as the one provided by Infosys for US employees where they send the trainees to their 300+ acre HQ campus, train them for 6+ months, then set them free in various cities around the US. *Note: To read more about such an experience I point you to Rizwan's blog, a former CK employee and a good friend.
Somewhat on a tangent, I wonder specifically how this US to foreign country type of program pays off for a company when it's so obvious how the above mentioned programs such as Microsoft's (foreign country to US or improve skills in foreign country) pay off. In the latter case, it's that the company trains driven, often poor individuals, thus capitalizing on lack of resources/opportunity in said country, then "underpays" the individuals relative to performance in comparison to western world, expenses stay low, profit goes up... and the company has a loyal employee who is likely thankful for the opportunity the company that is often from the western world gave the individual.
More importantly, I'm amazed at the ability of companies to influence the balance of education/skills between the western world and the developing world. However, if you're a young adult like me in the western/developed/whatever you want to call it world, you shouldn't be afraid of the ongoing improvements in China, India, and the like - you should welcome it, because the improvements there improve the companies and way of life here, making us (in theory) all wealthier. Not to mention that certain jobs CAN'T be outsourced and if you're good enough, you're not going to get outsourced... so this phenomenon should only drive improvements in our productivity, the developing world's productivity, and thus the general quality of life should continue improving.
Addendum: But then I wonder about other things, to be written about in other posts. One of these worries is that even with the gap between the developed and developing countries narrowing, the gap (seemingly) between the have and have-nots within the developing countries seems to be widening. This could become a significant issue, if it is not one already...
My initial thought is with people like Tom Friedman publishing The World is Flat and warning us about China and India's oncoming dominance, a certain sense of paranoia/fear gets paraded around. Yes, China and India are both rapidly developing countries with many people hungry for "success". I put "success" in quotations because that "success" they strive for is a definition of the word that the western world has created and spread. Thus I find it ironic they're striving for something we mostly have (if you agree with the common definition of success including lots of luxuries and an easier way of life) when its precisely the lack of luxuries that is giving them their current advantage. What I mean by this is that the western world becomes accustomed to luxuries and thus are not "hungry" for "success" like the many people in China and India. It's quite a vicious circle of consumption...
My next thought is wondering what role the private sector is going to play in the balancing of education/training between the western world and rapidly developing countries such as India and China. Take, for instance, this passage from the WSJ post:
In China, a program to expand college enrollment in the 1990s led to slipping standards, says Prof. Mao Shoulong of Renmin University. “Once you get in, it’s [too] easy to graduate,” he says. Many Chinese universities support themselves by charging tuition. Despite taking in as many students as fit in cramped dorm rooms, they can’t generate enough cash to pay for high-quality equipment, labs, and classrooms. The resulting scarcity of strong scientists and engineers coming from universities has led many companies to set up in-house training programs. Microsoft was the first high-profile company to set up such a program in China. Software-services company Infosys Technologies Ltd. has a 16-week training course that costs $5,000 per employee.”
Very interesting! And then there are programs such as the one provided by Infosys for US employees where they send the trainees to their 300+ acre HQ campus, train them for 6+ months, then set them free in various cities around the US. *Note: To read more about such an experience I point you to Rizwan's blog, a former CK employee and a good friend.
Somewhat on a tangent, I wonder specifically how this US to foreign country type of program pays off for a company when it's so obvious how the above mentioned programs such as Microsoft's (foreign country to US or improve skills in foreign country) pay off. In the latter case, it's that the company trains driven, often poor individuals, thus capitalizing on lack of resources/opportunity in said country, then "underpays" the individuals relative to performance in comparison to western world, expenses stay low, profit goes up... and the company has a loyal employee who is likely thankful for the opportunity the company that is often from the western world gave the individual.
More importantly, I'm amazed at the ability of companies to influence the balance of education/skills between the western world and the developing world. However, if you're a young adult like me in the western/developed/whatever you want to call it world, you shouldn't be afraid of the ongoing improvements in China, India, and the like - you should welcome it, because the improvements there improve the companies and way of life here, making us (in theory) all wealthier. Not to mention that certain jobs CAN'T be outsourced and if you're good enough, you're not going to get outsourced... so this phenomenon should only drive improvements in our productivity, the developing world's productivity, and thus the general quality of life should continue improving.
Addendum: But then I wonder about other things, to be written about in other posts. One of these worries is that even with the gap between the developed and developing countries narrowing, the gap (seemingly) between the have and have-nots within the developing countries seems to be widening. This could become a significant issue, if it is not one already...
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