Desis - where do we stand vs. the rest

Over the last 2 odd years - ive spent inordinate amounts of time working with a completely diverse A-Pac team - an Aussie, a Thai, a New Zealander, an Indonesian, a Chinese, a Singaporean, a frenchman and a Filipino. While i run the risk of being completely unidimensional in my analysis of each of these races, ill go ahead anyway.. just dont quote me anywhere :p

Dont know about u guys, but before I came here - I thought of SEA as pretty much homogeneous set of people of asian descent.. and Ironically, I spent all of Friday morning getting the data to prove to management that each ASEAN market needed a different kind of marketing because they were different people!

Anyway - back to the topic: Remember, this is a comparision of the mid tertile of people rather than a comparision of the top people from each race (top people are the best - no matter where they come from )

What are we good at :

a) Ability to put fight - call it the boon of a competitive education system, or call it the bane of not having our priorities right - but Indians have the ability to really live with their foot on the pedal ..

b) Adapting to an environment: Most of us are adapters by nature - brings to mind that Undy ad which goes 'zindagi mein bahut kuch adjust karna padta hai', all of us are just children of a system that teaches us to take whatever is doled out to us - nett, we are survivors, clinging on to in an ever changing environment

c) Thinking ability : A controversial one.. but in my time at P&G, ive found that most Indians are good thinkers - not just math, but overall their ability to think through a situation and a problem. It could be just the crosssection of people in P&G but Indians do seem pretty strategic.. u know what i mean?

what sets us back:

a) Menial is bad, strategy is good: Coming from a culture where menial is bad (starting as early as the caste system) and thinkers are great, its no surprise that we look down at routine boring things, and prefer to do a 'strategy' project to 'implementation', prefer 'brand management' to 'sales'..

b) Operating with discipline: not so much on an absolute scale as on a comparative one vs other nationalities - Indians lag behind on this one by a long long way - repetitive detail oriented things are just not our cup of tea - u can either fight hard to imbibe it - or recognise (like i did) that there is no hope and i need to duck everytime something like this comes along..

c) A wide perspective: Given that 90% of us have never seen anyplace out of India and have never met non Indians, its but natural that we are untouched by the concept of global perspective.. whether it be Indo-Paki issues, or a west vs East story or even caring about the difference between Thailand/indo/mal/Vietnam - nett, as long as it doesnt affect me i dont have to know it!

d) A thirst for information: Again, this may be skewed due to the cross section ive met, but Indians usually arent actively trying to learn about new things/cultures.. Especially if you compare this with Aussies, you see that they are extremely well informed - whether it be local politics, international issues, laws and regulations and even health related stuff.. you really need to be in the midst of a transfat, good fat, bad fat kind of conversation to realise that these guys spend a lot of time really understanding things that affect their life..

e) Qualitative is Global: Probably the biggest, especially in a engg/MBA context, if you dont have numbers in the statement u made, you are obviously a fraud and 'global'.. If there is one thing id like to go back and change in our Indian MBA mentality, it would be this - It is the biggest bane of our education system - something that is the single most important factor that pushes our EQs all the way down to the futuristic ones we will use for robots..

I had a few more, but in fear of sounding like a indian basher, i shall stop here :)

Jai hind!