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Neil Miller January 25, 2014 Filed Under: #GreyIsWhite, #IndiasNotIndia, #See1See100, Daily Living

Getting Advice on India

Getting Advice on India

On your way to an Indian wedding and not sure if you brought the right gift?

Don’t know how to make it up to your colleague that you missed his son’s first birthday party because you booked a last-minute pleasure holiday to Goa?

There is really only one great way to get the best advice on India.

Ask an Indian.

Then ask a different Indian.

Reading articles (like this one) online, purchasing books on India, taking cross-cultural training courses, joining online expat forums, and many other options can be helpful, mostly in that they make you aware of everything you don’t know and offer some nice principles and guidelines.

However, India is nearly always different in practice than in theory. [Read more…]

Neil Miller December 23, 2013 Filed Under: #GreyIsWhite, #PowerPlays, #See1See100, #ThinSkinned, Into India, Politics

Why India and the US are in a fight that won’t have a winner

us-embassy-india

The current issue of the Indian diplomat being arrested in the US gives one of the clearest pictures of a cultural clash that doesn’t have a good solution. 

The Basics:

Here are just a few of the skeleton facts in case you haven’t followed along:

An Indian diplomat, Devyani Khobragade, was arrested for visa fraud, essentially because her Indian domestic staff was paid far below the amount stipulated on her visa application.  Ms. Khobragade was handcuffed in public and subjected to a private strip-search by the US law authorities as per their norms.  A later development was that the domestic help’s husband and children were evacuated from India with the help of the US.

What India Thinks:

[Read more…]

Tagged With: devyani khobragade, diplomat row

Neil Miller November 6, 2013 Filed Under: #ChaosBeatsLogic, #GreyIsWhite, #TimeIsEternal, Transportation

How To Take 10 Hours to Drive to Bangalore from Chennai

There are no really bad ways and no really great ways to get from Chennai to Bangalore.  Bus, car, train, even plane – all have their benefits and drawbacks.  Faced with one client meeting at noon and another at 3pm and an open weekend ahead of me, I opted to leave in the morning and drive.

Any Indian will tell you with full certainty that it takes exactly 5 hours to drive to Bangalore.  However, I have never actually experienced this in my life and am still not sure it is physically possible.  (Though I now hear myself saying it to others as well.)

Here is my story.  I marked my mistakes with a * and good ideas with a ^.

My original plan was to leave at 6 am, giving myself a good extra hour to reach.  As I told my friends, they continually told me to prepone my departure time to avoid traffic, so I left at 5 am^.   [Read more…]

Neil Miller October 20, 2013 Filed Under: #ChaosBeatsLogic, #GreyIsWhite, #TimeIsEternal, Cultural Adaptation, Daily Living

Survival Skills

Alexander_troops_beg_to_return_home_from_India

I’m going to try to change things around here. 

OR

That’s just the way things are, what can I do?

If you are like most people, these two thoughts tug at you constantly while in India.  One minute you are inspired to make a difference and change something for the better.   The next, you give up because you realize nothing will ever change.  Then you start to see things move in a positive direction.  Then you are struck at how nothing has moved at all.

Two steps forward, two steps back.

At the office, you try to implement strict processes and timelines and yet they seem to inevitably break down and fizzle out over time.

You feel compelled to give some money to the child who comes up to your car, hoping to make a difference in her life, and then later find out she is a part of a gang which keeps her in poverty her entire life.

History is filled with people who have come to India with big dreams and huge change initiatives.  It is also filled with clumps of hair and screams of those who are tasked with implementing them.

Here’s a very brief and over-simplified view of a few key moments in Indian history that might help.

Alexander the Great – At the age of 30, Alexander had already conquered all of Greece, Persia, Babylon, and most of the known world at the time.  His last great dream was to extend his kingdom to what the Greeks considered “the end of the known world” which was northwest India.  After having defeated incredibly powerful armies, Alexander’s own army mutinied somewhere near Punjab and refused to go any further.  Alexander left an officer as a satrap there and soon died without having fully realized his dream of conquering the whole world.

Mughal Empire in India – The Mughals came into India in 1526 through Babur and held large influence in India until the mid 1700s.  They were the complete rulers of the day.   Along with establishing the first empire that spanned most of modern-day Indian and Pakistan, they brought in a new renaissance of architecture and mathematics that the native Indians accepted and used to their own advantage. However, one of the early aims of the Mughals and other Muslim rulers was to see large conversions to Islam.  Try as they might, this was one thing that never happened on a mass scale.  Indians held onto their own beliefs while still participating in the kingdom.

British Raj – In 1858, the rule of the British East India Company was transferred to the Crown of England and so began about 90 years of British rule in the subcontinent.  But the British had been there much earlier, seeking trade and spices and finding a fortune to be made.  Within a very short time, the British had conquered the largest parts of India and had subdued an entire subcontinent.  The British tried their best to convert India into a true bureaucracy, making “modern men” out of Indians, and converting them to Christianity, but that never happened to a large extent.  They remained who they were.

 

How does this relate to the fact that you are visiting the customs officer for the eighth time and trying to figure out if you have to/should give a bribe to the officer to get your stuff from the shipping container?  How does it help you choose between the two thoughts we started with?  What does India want from you? 

To take a page from history, she wants your talent, your brilliance, your insight.  She will take your money, your investments, your ideas, your questions and your doubts and will let them live and breathe and have space here.  You can add to the richness of life in India and augment people’s lives in ways you never knew possible.

The only thing she doesn’t want is for you to try to change her.  That’s where you will bust your head.  In 3,000 years, there have been extremely few cases where an outsider “changed” India as a country, and it is unlikely you are going to be one of those stories.  You can make her better and teach her new skills and help grow her understanding, but if a “culture change” is on your agenda, you are likely to live a short life here.

There is a time to give and a time to give in.

When you should give:

  • When you are dealing with an Indian (individual), not in a crowd
  • When you have a skill to teach like planning and pacing
  • When you see a specific need you can address (like taking care of your maid’s cataract surgery)
  • When you are working under an Indian’s authority and direction
  • When you are participating in an existing movement stated by Indians like asking for a receipt for your “ticket” instead of paying a bribe

When you should give in:

  • When you are dealing with India as a country
  • When a stranger cuts the queue in front of you
  • When someone cuts you off in traffic
  • When you are with the masses
  • When you feel the need to “start something new”, or “teach someone a lesson”.

 

This balance will be the key to your survival in India.  Give and give in.  Which one should you do today?

 

More on Daily Living

Photo Credit: Antonio Tempesta [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons 

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© Neil A. Miller, LearningIndia.in, and Madras Media Marketing LLC 2013-2015. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.