B5KA8T May 2008 Pushkar India Gathering of brahmin woman during a match making for their children s wedding

Source: BBC

Every year, Professor Dora Koop leaves her home in Montreal to teach a 10-day business school programme in India. Among her favourite pastimes there is observing something uniquely Indian: the dichotomy between new and old.

The campuses of major tech companies in Bangalore, for instance, appear more like corporate headquarters in California, Koop explained. There are modern buildings, Western-style clothing and a mix of locals and expats.

But there’s another side of India that’s rich with reminders of times past. One night, heading to a reception at a colleague’s home in a middle-class neighbourhood, she passed a man with a cart pulled by a bicycle; he was ironing shirts using an antiquated device that burnt coal to provide the steam.

Even with all its advancements, India remains a place with a vast disparity between the rich and poor, with one in five living in poverty, according to the World Bank. Meanwhile, the Wealth Report by Knight Frank claims the number of billionaires in the country has grown by 333% in the past decade.

In India, it’s like two different worlds all the time.

“It was a reminder that in India, it’s like two different worlds all the time,” recalled Koop, managing director of the International Masters in Practicing Management at McGill University in Montreal. “As a foreigner working in India, you just have to accept those two worlds and learn to live in them.”

This is especially true for foreign managers assigned to oversee employees in India for the first time. The country is a mix of cultures and customs and a staggering-to-outsiders list of holidays, from the kites of Makar Sankranti in January to the ground nuts of Gajjak in December. A good boss is expected to understand these cultural norms before earning the respect and support of subordinates.

Multiple Indias

It’s not just a matter of understanding India as a whole, said Shivang Dhruva, founder and director of FAD International, an art and design school with two campuses in India and another in Dubai. “India is a huge country, so things are very different from the north to south or east to west. You need to see India as not just one country but 20 separate cultures, with different languages and customs,” Dhruva said.

You need to see India as not just one country but 20 separate cultures, with different languages and customs.

Before starting a management assignment in India, Dhruva suggests foreigners spend two or three weeks there as a tourist to learn about Indian culture.

Delhi bustles with activity. (Credit: iStock)

Perhaps the biggest cultural difference for foreigners is the country’s once-rigid caste system of social stratification, Dhruva said. Few foreign managers understand the caste system, which once meant those born into a particular economic class were destined to stay there for life. And fewer still know that in recent decades the caste system is no longer as important in big cities, especially in corporate offices, where people from different castes can work together without discussing their position on the social scale.

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