India, diversity and lessons from OB...

Its been 3 weeks of classes and many of the students are starting to really open up. Speaking of the term "student", this place takes this term to a whole new level. There are some pretty impressive people going around as students here. These are people with SERIOUS achievements under their belts. Its a whole new paradigm and the bar is so very high.

I just had an interaction with one of these "students" that epitomizes this. This is an individual who has spent a significant part of his life travelling around the world and has some amazing insights to share. So we got talking...and turns out, he has spent some time in Bangalore, India as well (but of course!). Having lived there for the last three years myself, we got talking.

Now as is customary in such exchanges, one does have to hear the culture-shock related incidents. Bad roads, lots of people, inefficient bureaucracy, corrupt cops...you get the picture. Except in this case, it wasn't so for the plain white-man-bitching reasons. This was a guy who was genuinely frustrated at how these things were preventing India from reaching its true potential. No seriously, if YOU, the reader of this blog, are tempted to roll your eyes and move on to another blog, hold on...and hear our discussion out.

What plagues India today? Lofty question...this one. Especially coming from me...I don't even pretend to understand the all the socio-politic-economic complications behind this question. Still, lets pretend I am a 10-year old looking at this issue purely from my perspective. Population? Pollution? Poverty? Corruption? Can I apply an 80:20 here? Perhaps doing so would be naive...but allow me.

We can't do anything about our poverty. As my micro-economics professor says, this is effectively a "sunk-cost". Population, we live with...lets call this the "fixed cost". Pollution is a bi-product. So, what can we change? You get the picture...Corruption might not be the worst place to start. Of course, nothing new or ground-breaking in what I profess here. But how? This was the subject of my conversation with my classmate.

We have today an excellent Prime Minister. A man whose credentials and capability is unquestioned. But I do not envy his position. He spends his time working with a coalition of cast-based parties, religious interest groups, communists...you name it. The flip-side of democracy, they call it! Well, its a pretty significant flip-side, wouldn't you say? Whats the other side like? Or is blaming democracy just an excuse. India's political landscape today bears a striking resemblance to pre-WWII Germany. Several parties, most without a tangible ideal, and NONE with any real hold. So, they either struggle along with a coalition OR put up no fight at all when an entity such as the Third Reich comes along. Now, presumably, nothing like that is brewing in India, but aren't there lessons to be learned here, my classmate enquired?

Any Indian will counter this point, as I did, that the diversity in India is such that a voice is needed for each. Hence, society's diversity is reflected in its government. That is fine...but here's a point: should this diversity come together only in an entity as high as the country's parliament? Something is WRONG here. And there may be arguments against this: remember I am trying not to over-intellectualize the issue.

We need to push this amalgamation process to a lower level...sort out the differences innate within diversity down at the state and maybe even district level. Perhaps the honchos who run the show at our top house would be focused on what they really need to be that way...just perhaps.

More thoughts to follow on this and of course, a trivial blog entry will barely begin to touch the surface. But let me just end with an intriguing fact my OB (Organizational Behavior) prof shared with us, which makes for an interesting analogy with India's demography: For all the talk of the benefits of diversity, the AVERAGE world-wide performance of homogenous teams around the world is significantly better that that of heterogeneous teams! This is not a conjecture or opinion: it is a fact. But here's hope: the very best teams in the world ARE diverse and heterogenous in nature...its all about sorting one's differences out, respecting one another and looking beyond...and it CAN BE DONE!