Role of Western values in contemporary Indian society

Role of Western values in contemporary Indian society

A talk delivered at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute
of Management on October 02, 2002 by
Narayana N. R. Murthy
Chairman of the Board, Infosys Technologies Limited, Bangalore, India

Ladies and gentlemen:

It is a pleasure to be here at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management. Lal Bahadur Shastri was a man of strong values and he epitomized simple living. He was a freedom fighter and innovative administrator who contributed to nation building in full measure. It is indeed a matter of pride for me to be chosen for the Lal Bahadur Shastri Award for Public Administration and Management Sciences. I thank the jury for this honor.

When I got the invitation to speak here, I decided to speak on an important topic on which I have pondered for years - the role of Western values in contemporary Indian society. Coming from a company that is built on strong values, the topic is close to my heart. Moreover, an organization is representative of society, and some of the lessons that I have learnt are applicable in the national context. In fact, values drive progress and define quality of life in society.

The word community joins two Latin words com (together) and unus (one). A community, then, is both one and many. It is a unified multitude and not a mere group of people. As it is said in the Vedas: Man can live individually, but can survive only collectively. Hence, the challenge is to form a progressive community by balancing the interests of the individual and that of the society. To meet this, we need to develop a value system where people accept modest sacrifices for the common good.

What is a value system? It is the protocol for behavior that enhances the trust, confidence and commitment of members of the community. It goes beyond the domain of legality - it is about decent and desirable behavior. Further, it includes putting the community interests ahead of your own. Thus, our collective survival and progress is predicated on sound values. There are two pillars of the cultural value system - loyalty to family and loyalty to community. One should not be in isolation to the other, because, successful societies are those which combine both harmoniously. It is in this context that I will discuss the role of Western values in contemporary Indian society.

Some of you here might say that most of what I am going to discuss are actually Indian values in old ages, and not Western values. I live in the present, not in the bygone era. Therefore, I have seen these values practiced primarily in the West and not in India. Hence, the title of the topic. I am happy as long as we practice these values - whether we call it Western or old Indian values.

As an Indian, I am proud to be part of a culture, which has deep-rooted family values. We have tremendous loyalty to the family. For instance, parents make enormous sacrifices for their children. They support them until they can stand on their own feet. On the other side, children consider it their duty to take care of aged parents. We believe: Mathru devo bhava - mother is God, and pithru devo bhava - father is God. Further, brothers and sisters sacrifice for each other. In fact, the eldest brother or sister is respected by all the other siblings. As for marriage, it is held to be a sacred union -husband and wife are bonded, most often, for life. In joint families, the entire family works towards the welfare of the family. There is so much love and affection in our family life. This is the essence of Indian values and one of our key strengths. Our families act as a critical support mechanism for us. In fact, the credit to the success of Infosys goes, as much to the founders as to their families, for supporting them through the tough times.

Unfortunately, our attitude towards family life is not reflected in our attitude towards community behavior. From littering the streets to corruption to breaking of contractual obligations, we are apathetic to the common good. In the West - the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand - individuals understand that they have to be responsible towards their community. The primary difference between the West and us is that, there, people have a much better societal orientation. They care more for the society than we do. Further, they generally sacrifice more for the society than us. Quality of life is enhanced because of this. This is where we need to learn from the West.

I will talk about some of the lessons that we, Indians, can learn from the
West.

In the West, there is respect for the public good. For instance, parks free of litter, clean streets, public toilets free of graffiti - all these are instances of care for the public good. On the contrary, in India, we keep our houses clean and water our gardens everyday - but, when we go to a park, we do not think twice before littering the place.

Corruption, as we see in India, is another example of putting the interest of oneself, and at best that of one's family, above that of the society. Society is relatively corruption free in the West. For instance, it is very difficult to bribe a police officer into avoiding a speeding ticket. This is because of the individual’s responsible behavior towards the community as a whole. On the contrary, in India, corruption, tax evasion, cheating and bribery have eaten into our vitals. For instance, contractors bribe officials, and construct low-quality roads and bridges. The result is that society loses in the form of substandard defence equipment and infrastructure, and low-quality recruitment, just to name a few impediments. Unfortunately, this behavior is condoned by almost everyone.

Apathy in solving community matters has held us back from making progress, which is otherwise within our reach. We see serious problems around us but do not try to solve them. We behave as if the problems do not exist or is somebody else’s. On the other hand, in the West, people solve societal problems proactively.

There are several examples of our apathetic attitude. For instance, all of us are aware of the problem of drought in India. More than 40 years ago, Dr. K. L. Rao - an irrigation expert, suggested creation of a water grid connecting all the rivers in North and South India, to solve this problem. Unfortunately, nothing has been done about this. The story of power shortage in Bangalore is another instance. In 1983, it was decided to build a thermal power plant to meet Bangalore's power requirements. Unfortunately, we have still not started it. Further, the Milan subway in Bombay is in a deplorable state for the last 40 years, and no action has been taken. To quote another example, considering the constant travel required in the software industry; five years ago, I had suggested a 240-page passport. This would eliminate frequent visits to the passport office. In fact, we are ready to pay for it. However, I am yet to hear from the Ministry of External Affairs on this. We, Indians, would do well to remember Thomas Hunter's words: Idleness travels very slowly, and poverty soon overtakes it.

What could be the reason for all this? We were ruled by foreigners for over thousand years. Thus, we have always believed that public issues belonged to some foreign ruler and that we have no role in solving them. Moreover, we have lost the will to proactively solve our own problems. Thus, we have got used to just executing someone else's orders. Borrowing Aristotle's words: We are what we repeatedly do. Thus, having done this over the years, the decision-makers in our society are not trained for solving problems. Our decision-makers look to somebody else to take decisions. Unfortunately, there is nobody to look up to, and this is the tragedy.

Our intellectual arrogance has also not helped our society. I have traveled extensively, and in my experience, have not come across another society where people are as contemptuous of better societies as we are, with as little progress as we have achieved.

Remember that arrogance breeds hypocrisy. No other society gloats so much about the past as we do, with as little current accomplishment. Friends, this is not a new phenomenon, but at least a thousand years old. For instance, Al Barouni, the famous Arabic logician and traveler of the 10th century, who spent about 30 years in India from 997 AD to around 1027 AD, referred to this trait of Indians. According to him, during his visit, most Indian pundits considered it below their dignity even to hold arguments with him. In fact, on a few occasions when a pundit was willing to listen to him, and found his arguments to be very sound, he invariably asked Barouni: which Indian pundit taught these smart things!

The most important attribute of a progressive society is respect for others who have accomplished more than they themselves have, and learn from them. Contrary to this, our leaders make us believe that other societies do not know anything! At the same time, everyday, in the newspapers, you will find numerous claims from our leaders that ours is the greatest nation. These people would do well to remember Thomas Carlyle's words: The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none. If we have to progress, we have to change this attitude, listen to people who have performed better than us, learn from them and perform better than them. Infosys is a good example of such an attitude. We
continue to rationalize our failures. No other society has mastered this art as well as we have. Obviously, this is an excuse to justify our incompetence, corruption, and apathy. This attitude has to change. As Sir Josiah Stamp has said: It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.

Another interesting attribute, which we Indians can learn from the West, is their accountability. Irrespective of your position, in the West, you are held accountable for what you do. However, in India, the more important you are, the less answerable you are. For instance, a senior politician once declared that he forgot to file his tax returns for 10 consecutive years and he got away with it. To quote another instance, there are over 100 loss making public sector units (central) in India. Nevertheless, I have not seen action taken for bad performance against top managers in these organizations.

Dignity of labor is an integral part of the Western value system. In the West, each person is proud about his or her labor that raises honest sweat. On the other hand, in India, we tend to overlook the significance of those who are not in professional jobs. We have a mindset that reveres only supposedly intellectual work. For instance, I have seen many engineers, fresh from college, who only want to do cutting-edge work and not work that is of relevance to business and the country. However, be it an organization or society, there are different people performing different roles. For success, all these people are required to discharge their duties. This includes everyone from the CEO
to the person who serves tea - every role is important. Hence, we need a mindset that reveres everyone who puts in honest work. Indians become intimate even without being friendly. They ask favors of strangers without any hesitation. For instance, the other day, while I was traveling from Bangalore to Mantralaya, I met a fellow traveler on the train. Hardly 5 minutes into the conversation, he requested me to speak to his MD about removing him from the bottom 10% list in his company, earmarked for disciplinary action. I was reminded of what Rudyard Kipling once said: A westerner can be friendly without being intimate while an easterner tends to be intimate without being friendly.

Yet another lesson to be learnt from the West, is about their professionalism in dealings. The common good being more important than personal equations, people do not let personal relations interfere with their professional dealings. For instance, they don't hesitate to chastise a colleague, even if he is a personal friend, for incompetent work. In India, I have seen that we tend to view even work interactions from a personal perspective. Further, we are the most thin-skinned society in the world - we see insults where none is meant. This may be because we were not free for most of the last thousand years. Further, we seem to extend this lack of professionalism to our sense of punctuality. We do not seem to respect the other person's time. The Indian Standard Time somehow seems to be always running late.Moreover, deadlines are typically not met. How many public projects are completed on time? The disheartening aspect is that we have accepted this as the norm rather than the exception.

In the West, they show professionalism by embracing meritocracy. Meritocracy by definition means that we cannot let personal prejudices affect our evaluation of an individual's performance. As we increasingly start to benchmark ourselves with global standards, we have to embrace meritocracy. In the West, right from a very young age, parents teach their children to be independent in thinking. Thus, they grow up to be strong, confident individuals. In India, we still suffer from feudal thinking. I have seen people, who are otherwise bright, refusing to show independence and preferring to be told what to do by their boss. We need to overcome this attitude if we have to succeed globally.

The Western value system teaches respect to contractual obligation. In the West, contractual obligations are seldom dishonored. This is important - enforceability of legal rights and contracts is the most important factor in the enhancement of credibility of our people and nation. In India, we consider our marriage vows as sacred. We are willing to sacrifice in order to respect our marriage vows. However, we do not extend this to the public domain. For instance, India had an unfavorable contract with Enron. Instead of punishing the people responsible for negotiating this, we reneged on the contract - this
was much before we came to know about the illegal activities at Enron. To quote another instance, I had given recommendations to several students for the national scholarship for higher studies in US universities. Most of them did not return to India even though contractually they were obliged to spend five years after their degree in India. In fact, according to a professor at a reputed US university, the maximum default rate for student loans is among Indians - all of these students pass out in flying colors and land lucrative jobs, yet they refuse to pay back their loans. Thus, their action has made it difficult for the students after them, from India, to obtain loans. We have to change this attitude.

Further, we Indians do not display intellectual honesty. For example, our political leaders use mobile phones to tell journalists on the other side that they do not believe in technology! If we want our youngsters to progress, such hypocrisy must be stopped.

We are all aware of our rights as citizens. Nevertheless, we often fail to acknowledge the duty that accompanies every right. To borrow Dwight Eisenhower's words: People that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both. Our duty is towards the community as a whole, as much as it is towards our families. We have to remember that fundamental social problems grow out of a lack of commitment to the common good. To quote Henry Beecher: Culture is that which helps us to work for the betterment of all. Hence, friends, I do believe that we can make our society even better by assimilating these Western values into our own culture - we will be stronger for it.

Most of our behavior comes from greed, lack of self-confidence, lack of confidence in the nation, and lack of respect for the society. To borrow Gandhi's words: There is enough in this world for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed. Let us work towards a society where we would do unto others what we would have others do unto us. Let us all be responsible citizens who make our country a great place to live. In the words of Churchill: Responsibility is the price of greatness. We have to extend our family values beyond the boundaries of our home.

Finally, let us work towards maximum welfare of the maximum people - Samasta janaanaam sukhino bhavantu. Thus, let us - people of this generation, conduct ourselves as great citizens rather than just good people so that we can serve as good examples for our younger generation.

Thank you.

A Diwali primer on the pursuit of wealth and happiness

A Diwali primer on the pursuit of wealth and happiness*
Saturday October 21, 2006
Jaithirth Rao http://www.indianexpress.com/story/15032.html


The myth perpetrated by Max Mueller and other orientalists that we are a spiritual people as opposed to those in the materialist West has in turn been internalised by us. While the West is supposed to focus on the twin pillars of consumption and investment, we are doomed to retreat into forests wearing rough clothes of tree-bark and constantly engaging in wild-eyed penance. We actually seriously believe this tosh! Diwali or Deepavali is the
best argument to negate this point of view.

This festival is about multiple celebrations, all in the very real material economic world, not in some soporific maya-laden universe. We worship Lakshmi, a goddess mind you, not just a patriarchal ascetic male god! A goddess of prosperity, plenty, wealth and the celebration thereof, a goddess embedded in the earth itself, of this planet, representing the
bounties of the material world. The pursuit of artha, or economic well-being, is a very legitimate one for the denizen of this peninsula. The only injunction is that such pursuit of artha must go hand in hand with the pursuit of dharma, or righteous conduct. A modern interpretation of this would be to suggest that a business should pursue profits by selling high quality goods and services to its customers, not by selling shoddy or adulterated products. That would constitute the right combination of artha and dharma. A more contemporary view would be to suggest that the pursuit of market capitalization must not be at the cost of good corporate governance!

In fact they need to be intertwined. It is fascinating to note that one of the indulgences encouraged during Diwali is gambling. Our ancients knew that gambling is an authentic human need deeply etched into our unconscious. Nala and Yudhishtira may be considered foolish for indulging in excess, but not for the act of gambling itself. Both these characters have a Camus-like approach to the problem of the human predicament. Is living itself not a gamble? Are we not all gamblers each time we ride a bus or take a flight or merely step out? Playing cards late into the night also helps us understand that wealth is a means to an end and that wealth is not necessarily granted to the most deserving. There is an element of the throwing of the dice of fate in any explanation of the crossings of lines of profit and loss. A more fundamental question is whether in fact this dichotomy between the spiritual and the material is valid at all. It was Vivekananda who debunked the idea of selling spiritual solace to the starving poor.

We should apply the same logic to those who aspire for wealth. Earn it with dignity, spend it with a large heart, and don't feel guilty about having it or wanting to have it. Such a balanced approach is what Lakshmi and Krishna would urge on their devotees, not a choice between hedonist excesses or ascetic extremes. In this context I would like to examine the phenomenon of Diwali baksheesh, an important custom that helps bind neighbors together and serves a crucial function of voluntary wealth distribution in an atmosphere of good cheer. We give it to the postman because it is our dharma and because if we don't, our letters may get delivered to the apartment downstairs! We simultaneously ensure good service for ourselves, acknowledge the fact that our socialistic state pays postmen insufficiently and that it is right and proper to distribute largesse when we ourselves are in a mood to celebrate.


We give baksheesh to liftmen (a growing profession as we add ugly, tall buildings to our cityscapes with frenzy), to watchmen (who can barely protect themselves, let alone protect us), to dhobis (who may ruin our clothes more often if we ignore them), to domestic servants (who may otherwise revolt in the face of our consumerist indulgences, thus buying both social insurance and social goodwill). The puritanical British of 19th-century evangelical persuasion left us with a crazy foreign notion that baksheesh was about bribery, corruption and the innate moral chicanery of their "native" subjects. It is
high time we liberated ourselves from these racist, colonialist, imperialist, politically incorrect notions. Baksheesh, especially during the festive season, is the alchemical lubricant that holds our society together. And we as recipients (our employers call it 'bonus') or as givers are twice blessed for baksheesh has all the attributes of the quality of mercy that the Bard talked about. It blesseth both the giver and the receiver!

Noisy crackers are objected to by crackpot environmentalists who see pollution everywhere and deny that life on this planet is about joy and its pursuit. Varuna tells Bhrigu in the Taittriya Upanishad that the core of being human is not about the fact that we eat or that we breathe or that we think, but that we have the capacity for ananda. And what can give more ananda than a series of burning flower-pots followed by a series of red crackers going off and assaulting the ears. Karl Marx or Noam Chomsky will doubtless remain unimpressed. But P.G. Wodehouse and Walt Disney (infinitely more important and intelligent personages than Marx or Chomsky) would have agreed emphatically with Varuna and urged us to "go for it". When crackers accidentally burn down country houses, it tells you what country houses are really meant for!

Ananda needs to be pursued individually and collectively. Ananda is to be underpinned by prosperity that Lakshmi blesses us with. Ananda is to be shared and distributed especially to those who live around us and who have the capacity to help or harm us. Ananda in festive times should be characterized by staking our hopes on a roll of the die. Ananda propels us towards lights, especially in our power-cut-ridden, grimy, socialist cities. Ananda must be noisy, rejecting at least at this time the hushed tones of patronising kill-joys. Let us learn to celebrate with wholehearted vim and gusto our wonderful traditions of gambling, baksheesh, lights and deafening noise!

America ventures into India

America ventures into India
by Andrea Orr
Updated 06:29 PM EST, Oct-12-2006
The Deal.com


'India's Silicon Valley' is the common label for that country's burgeoning high-tech industry, but American venture capitalists often forget that investing in Bangalore is not the same as investing in San Jose, Calif.

During the Investing in India conference hosted by International Business Forum in San Francisco this week, venture capitalists described India as a market full of promising young Internet and wireless technologies that often lacks the physical infrastructure and the management expertise needed to turn a good concept into a sound business.

As a culture that has traditionally put a high premium on education but focused primarily on educating engineers, India now finds itself with a severe shortage of business-minded middle managers, they said.

Sumant Mandal, managing director of Clearstone Venture Partners, described it as a 'scarcity of middle management,' while Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Ajit Nazre said that Indian startups often had the wherewithal to write the code to make an Internet service work, but not the skills to package that service and sell it to consumers.

'A big problem for consumer-focused Internet companies is that they don't have good product managers,' Nazre said.

While U.S. investors needed to be mindful of this shortcoming, Nazre said it also presents an opportunity.

'Training is an area where a lot of investment can go,' he said. 'A company like Infosys [Technologies Ltd.] hires 25,000 people in a year and has to ask how does it train all of those people.

'That is just one company in one sector,' Nazre adds. 'Multiply that by all the companies in all the different industries that are hiring.'

The panelists pointed to several common mistakes made by U.S. venture capitalists, including: installing Western managers instead of nurturing those within the country; failing to educate Indian managers in the Western style of corporate democracy; and presuming young Indian managers can be gotten cheaply.

Mandal said salaries for talented middle managers in India are rising quickly and workers increasingly are expecting stock-option packages.

Despite the temptations of importing U.S. executives with M.B.As to India, VCs with experience in the country described that strategy as problematic, even if the person in question is an Indian citizen returning after a few years abroad. The business culture within India is evolving so rapidly, said Mandal, that he often preferred hiring novice workers within the country, who showed potential, to importing more experienced managers.

Foreign VCs too often view India's investment opportunities as analogous to those in Silicon Valley and overlook the diversity of opportunities in all industries, which include physical infrastructure, real estate, retail, textiles and automobiles, the panelists said.

Data from the Delhi research group Evalueserve Inc. shows that private equity investing in information technology has fallen as a percentage of overall deals — to 23.18% in the first half of 2006, from 49.1% in 2003 and 65.5% in 2000. The biggest increase was in the manufacturing sector, which comprised 10.3% of all investments in the first half of this year, up from just 1.8% in 2003.

Canaan Partners, which was an early investor in the U.S. online dating service Match.com LP eight years ago, recently sought a similar investment in India and discovered major differences in the culture as well as the physical infrastructure.

Canaan found the equivalent to an online dating site in India was an online matrimonial site, a high-tech version to the matchmakers who have long arranged marriages in the country.

But after it invested in the BharatMatrimony.com Pvt. Ltd. earlier this year, it realized that it had to do more just to get the average Indian in front of a computer terminal.

'The infrastructure is very simple,' said Deepak Kamra, a general partner at Canaan. 'A room with three cubicles with computer terminals.

'We realized that as much as the Indian people need education and wireless access, they need love and marriage first,' he added.