Whether India becomes a superpower or not Indians should become Superpeople

I had the opportunity to listen to gentleman from china on the above point! His view was that India is still a developing country mainly because of our willingness to allow everyone the freedom of speech. He felt that China and Singapore had risen in global status mainly because their people had agreed to forego their freedom to object to laws in a limited way in the larger interests of economic growth and dominance. Without getting into the pros and cons of this argument, I quote from a long essay written by Shri. Ramachandra Guha for Outlook magazine, titled "Will India Become a Superpower?"

" The challenges of the naxalites, the insidious presence of the Hindutwadis; the degradationof the once liberal and upright cantre; the increasing gap between the rich and poor; the trivialization of the media; the unsustainability, in an environmental sense, of present patterns of resource consumption; the instability and policy incoherence caused by muti-party coalation governments--these are the seven reasons why India will never be a superpower. To this, so to say, objective judgment of the historian, I will now add the sujective desires of a citizen - which is that India should not even attempt to become a superpower."
He goes on to say that we should judge ourselves not against the achievements real or imagined, of other countries, but in the light of our own norms and ideals.
But one thing the chinaman said, I founfd valid. He argued that more than infrastructure, India needs a change in the attitude of the people. For example, when Singapore decided to have a clean envvironment and city, they decided to first educate people and make them understand that spitting in public and littering are socially unacceptable. Thereafter, they built worldclass infrastructure that these educated people use carefully and with pride. Most people who have visited Singapore praise its cleanliness oft forgetting that while they were in Singapore they balled up their litter and pocketed it till they found a trash can;but, the minute they land in India, they start littering freely again!
Whether India becomes a superpower or not, Indians must become Super People!

Chinese Management

Attended the joint meeting of the Indian Society for Training and Development (ISTD) and National Institute of Personnel Management (NIPM) at the Maple Hall, Hotel Savera. The speaker was A Natarajan. He spoke on "Chinese Management."

Having headed the Chinese operations of the TVS group for more than three years he brought with him a lot of insights into Chinese work culture and behavioral patterns. If some one had come to learn about the secrets of Chinese productivity, the event would have been a sad disappointment. But as an opportunity to learn how the chinese psyche works, it was a great learning experience.

A Natarajan had a disarming and self-mocking delivery methodology that kept the narrative flow going strong in spite of its extremely autobiographical content. But on the whole what was shared was one perspective of Chinese society from the point of view of a typical conservative, quality concsious Indiam manufacturing-centric group!

The mild mannered speaker did react a bit nvehemently to the last question (Or was it the lost question!) which insinuated that TVS had gone to China only to take advantage of the cheap and exploitable Chinese labour force. A Natarajan strongly disagreed to this and went on to show that TVS was actually paying more than double in manpower cost to operate in China. The reasoning was strategic. They wanted to be nearer to their European customers, like GM and othrers, most of whom had an IPO (International Purchasing Office) or production facility in China.

Some new information I got from this speech:

• Most of the Chinese are single children! These single children are irresponsible and therefore genearlly attrition is high in China.





• The Chinese rarely lose their temper.





• The Chinese are sticklers on rules and regulations. If it is not told or written in their contract, it doesn't bind them.





• They are not intelligent and are poor in quality consciousness.





• They cannot multiskill. They are good only for routine mass production type of work. Difficult to retrain or redeploy.

A useful evening spent in understanding another country and its culture through the eyes of a man whose been there and done it!