Category Archives: India

Democracy For Sale

When it comes to interviewing for jobs in India you never really know what you’re going to get (which is probably the same the world over but I’ve never interviewed anyone in England so am in no position to say!). Often candidates haven’t been taught how to handle an interview, say the wrong thing, don’t say enough, say too much, don’t let the interviewer speak, cut the interviewer off in the middle of a question or worse they have read a “how to ace your interview” guide on ehow.com and come up with answers like “my biggest weakness is that I’m a workaholic.”

My company is currently doing interview rounds as we look to expand our team and as usual the process has thrown up a number of anecdotes. My favourite one so far went like this…

A young man enters the office. He’s from a small village in rural Tamil Nadu and visibly apprehensive, nervous and uncomfortable in the surroundings. His answers are short and he’s got no conviction in what he says. Determined to bring the young man out of his shell the interviewer tries a number of light conversation topics like films, food and family until she hits on one topic where his face lights up light a 1000 watt bulb. “actually it’s my life’s dream to be an MP for my village” he tells her, then continuing, “I will bring development and jobs, make electricity come and make sure everyone has healthcare. Then I will campaign for Tamil rights in Sri Lanka and bring the Sri Lankan government to justice.”

Suitably impressed with the eloquence and passion with which the young man has described his ambitions the interviewer asks him how he plans to get elected. The young man brushed the question aside and said “I will join whichever party gives me the most money then I will pay everyone in my village to vote for me.”

And that is south Indian politics

I’ll Have A Boot Please

I was sitting in a bar in Delhi the other day where they brew their own German style beer on the premises and after 4 years of Kingfisher it’s like liquid gold in a bottle. The beer wasn’t the only thing unique about this bar though because I noticed one of the waiters carrying this boot of beer to one of the tables. I couldn’t let it go by without taking a quick snap of it – it’s not something you see each day!

Creative Packaging From Indigo

Indigo is a budget airline that operates in India in much the same vein as EasyJet or BMIBaby. The budget airline sector in India is pretty crowded and with rising fuel costs forcing up the prices getting customers is harder than ever. Indigo have a unique style that permeates every part of their business, it’s the little things that separate them from all the other carriers. On the flight just before we landed the hostess requested everyone to turn off electronic devices, but part of the speech also included a note about making sure you save your work before you shut down your laptop. Very small, but it sticks in your mind. Airplane food also gets a tough time from many frequent travellers but Indigo has made a big effort to bring something unique to the food as well. The picture below is the box the sandwich comes in. It’s in the style of a matchbox because the sandwich contains a lot of chilly. Simple, smart and stands out enough for someone like me to mention it on my blog. A great marketing effort by Indigo!

The Plastic Road Campaign

America 2.0

Read this interesting article from the New York Times today, it seems to make a lot of sense. India appears to be embracing consumerism as if its life depended on it with newer, bigger, flashier malls being thrown up all over every city in the land and branded stores all over the place.

Just like in America and England, the newly created aspirational middle classes are fueling their addiction to Apple, Levi, Gucci, BMW, Sony, Starbucks and foreign holidays via credit cards and bank loans. Citibank had a stall in the food court of my office building the other day with a banner that read: Why put your dreams on hold? Get a Citibank personal loan and have your dream today!

The bank that I use, Standard Chartered, is also on a mission to get people to take out loans to fuel the middle class addiction; the image below is from their Indian website – basically they are saying “You deserve to go on your dream holiday for 6 days so don’t worry about spending the next 5 years paying it all back with interest“.

Anyway, this journalist puts in a far more eloquent way than I can so have a read.

How India Became America – NYTimes.comhttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/how-india-became-america.htmlANOTHER brick has come down in the great wall separating India from the rest of the world. Recently, both Starbucks and Amazon announced that they would be entering the Indian…

Extreme Danger – Useful to Know

Bit of a science lesson for you today, chaps.

Chennai is a coastal city in the tropics which means that most of the time it feels like your whole body is wading through pea soup and you have to push the air out of the way. The air is literally saturated with water and right now it is worse than ever. Today it was 32°C outside which might seem quite nice but the air humidity was 94%. Humidity is a measure of how much moisture is in a body of air and when it gets to 100% it means the air is completely saturated and can’t hold any more water – your sweat will simply pool on your skin as it has no where to go.

The human body keeps cool by sweating and then evaporating the moisture from your skin which works pretty well if it’s 32°C outside and the air is fairly dry, say 60% humidity or less. Above 60% humidity is where the problems start because less sweat is able to evaporate in to the already saturated air so 32°C with 60% humidity actually feels like 37°C because you’re not able to evaporate enough sweat to cool down.

As I said earlier, today in Chennai it was 32°C with 94% humidity which (apart from feeling like wading through water) makes it feel like a rather balmy 51°C. The American Government weather site has some reassuring information for temperatures and humidity like this: Extreme risk of death, do not go outside.

Useful to know!

Everything and Nothing Changes

4 Years In India

I’ve been in India for exactly 4 years today! It’s a bit of a milestone, didn’t think I’d be here for this long, which is what a lot of foreigners who come here end up saying. Infact I’ve been talking to a few expats who used to live here and they are saying they miss the place and would want to come back sometime.

We went out to an arts and crafts fair yesterday and it’s very revealing to see how many more foreigners are coming here, everywhere we looked there were westerners, families, businessmen, groups of friends etc. I’ve read that more and more people are looking to get opportunities in places outside America and Europe and given the pace at which India is growing it’s not surprising so many expats are ending up here.

A Lizard’s Tale

How Did John Terry End Up On A Packet Of Cigarettes?

Not sure if it’s been widely reported back in England but it’s making the national news here in India. Apparently someone from the Indian Directorate of Visual Publicity decided to use John Terry’s image as part of a health warning on the packet of cigarettes here. Obviously this wasn’t authorized and Terry has taken legal action against ITC, the manufacturers of the cigarettes. Judging by the comments in the link below it seems many people in India don’t understand what the fuss is about.

From my own experience I have found there to be a certain copy and paste culture in India where people will copy the content from a website and pass it off as their own not realizing the legal or ethical problems with it. A case in point is that I do all the writing for my company website and marketing literature and I’ve lost count how many other Indian IT companies here have simply copied and pasted my content, in some cases forgetting to even remove the company name! An SEO candidate came for an interview once and was very proud of the book he had “written” on SEO and used it to show off his skills. A quick search on Google showed that it was a PDF anyone could download for free. I know copying and pasting happens everywhere but the feeling I get is that it’s more endemic here because there are no implications should you be found out.

In the case of John Terry, I’m sure the designer simply did a Google images search, found this image from the Internet and didn’t see any problem with using it – after all, it is slightly blurred, right?! I’m actually kinda curious as to why they used this image instead of an Indian man, it’s not like John Terry is particularly famous here – although he is now!

Terry plans legal action over Indian anti-smoking picturehttp://in.news.yahoo.com/terry-plans-legal-action-over-indian-anti-smoking-132156074–soccer.htmlRepresentatives of John Terry are taking legal advice after an image resembling the England football captain appeared on cigarette packs in India.