The exotic side of India is prized as a tourist destination but its value as the location of offshore outsourcing partners depends on some measure of shared culture. In addition to shared scientific and engineering expertise, India’s widespread English-language culture has the advantage over other outsourcing geographies, such as Eastern Europe and China. But effective communication with one’s Indian business partners could probably get a boost from recognizing first that, in some measure, the United States and India are—to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw—two countries separated by a common language. And even where one’s India-based counterparts speak exquisite and perhaps even superior English, their customs, symbols, values, expectations and gestures can be remarkably different. Perhaps that’s obvious at a theoretical level, but the experience of the differences can be startling.

For example, Westerners are generally unprepared for the profusion of swastikas decorating not only temples and shrines but even advertisements. What would be an aggressive, disgusting graffito in the West is a sign of luck and goodwill in the Hindu tradition.

There are other, more benign differences that are striking in their own ways. I mentioned in an earlier post how vehicle horns are used for orientation rather than warning, and alluded to the reality that India has stray cows much in the fashion that America has stray cats. I had only to step off the plane and look up at the gate TV to be reminded that Indians have cricket, not baseball. And whereas in the United States every city has an MLK (Martin Luther King, Jr.) Boulevard, the Indian version is MG (Mahatma Gandhi) Road.

English speakers will be surprised at the ubiquity of their language on billboards and announcements in such an exotic place, even if occasionally amused by solecisms or novel idioms (e.g., “Nice Man” clothing shop or “Sure!” motorcycle dealer). The standard of English is a reflection of education, since one needn’t speak much of it to get along at a basic level. However, conversations in regional languages are peppered with English expressions that have found their way into the common idiom, and English has long been the lingua franca between regions, some of whose inhabitants are hostile to the putative national language, Hindi. Generally speaking, anyone who looks to profit from the tourist trade will speak English at least, if not also other European languages. A case in point is the beggar who knocked on my car window and said with impeccable pronunciation, “C’mon, sir, just one Rupee.”

A less benign difference relates to the status of women. Without a doubt, women are much better off and have far greater opportunity in India than elsewhere. However, India is certainly more of a man’s world than the U.S. or most European countries. An editorial in the Hindustan Times emphasized the importance to the eternal feminine principle, or something of the sort, and I wondered whether that might be consistent with a more rather than less macho society, as one could argue for the Latin countries of Europe who hold a higher place for Mary in Christian ritual and iconography. In this respect India would simply be like most countries of the world, but one thing that struck me was the discovery of a phenomenon called “dowry deaths,” which are the murders of brides by the groom’s family for reasons relating to expected dowries. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported 7,000 of these in 2003. As a consequence, to avoid what the WHO calls “female deselection,” in 1994 India outlawed the use of technology to determine the sex of unborn children.

While no strangers to contrasts of wealth and poverty, Westerners will likely be struck by the even greater contrasts in India both in terms of material well being and status. India grows richer by the day, but it remains a poor country with a GDP per capita of $3,300 (compared to $41,800 in the U.S.). The caste system is alive and well, even if on a theoretical level it is problematic to Indians whose education has been influenced by European ideals, and continues to influence social relations, such as whom one may or may not (or at least should or should not) marry.

But India is also among the most modern countries in many respects and arguably ahead in others, such as pluralism, good manners and an emphasis on study. The latter category is allied to India’s strong work ethic and its growing affirmation of meritocracy. The caste system is not so strong that it prevents genuine upward mobility, as demonstrated by a personal story told to me by an IT professional I met in India. He was born into an family of the second-lowest caste in Mumbai. “The worst poverty you see in that city,” he said to me, “that’s where I come from.” Despite the family’s extreme deprivation, his mother pushed him to study hard, which in many cases meant reading at night by the light of a street lamp. He eventually distinguished himself at one of India’s top universities and went on to a successful career in IT. He now makes more in an hour than his father was able to make in a month, and he explains not with vanity but with astonishment, that he will spend a total of nearly a quarter of a million dollars paying for his children’s education.

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