CHAPTER 29

India
A Kaleidoscope of Diversity

Studying India is like looking into a kaleidoscope which is turning constantly.

India is complex. It is colorful. It offers multiple evolving patterns which are
contained within one framework.
—From a 10-part radio
documentary series, Passages to India,
produced by Julian Crandall Hollick, 1986–1989

The diversity in the Indian culture is not merely in its ethnic or racial
composition. It is in every walk of its life. Starting with the geographical
features, climatic conditions, and the vast regional and intraregional
differences one can go on to religion, customs, attitudes, practices, language,
food habits, dress, art, music, theatre and notice that no two regions are
alike in these matters.
—Sreenivasarao Subanna, writing in
allempires.com, an online history community, April 5, 2007

I
ndia is often described as one of the world’s most culturally and geographically
diverse nations. It is also a land of great contrasts where you can expect to see
Mercedes Benzes and BMWs vying for road space with ox carts and motorcycles,
especially in the major urban centers. High-rise residential complexes for the
moneyed upper classes rise like so many lotuses from the swamps. Slums develop

493
494 PART IX. INDIA, SHIVA, AND DIVERSITY

around these complexes and they exist to house domestic servants who take care of
the needs of the apartment dwellers. According to Forbes.com, Mumbai will soon see
the completion of the world’s first billion-dollar home, a 27-story skyscraper in the
downtown area with a cost nearing $2 billion for the family of one of the richest men
in the world, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance industries. Writing in a 2008 Harvard
Business Review post online, world-renowned executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith,
observes,“In the cities, I saw a longing for extreme opulence—countless ads with rich
people living lavish lives—next to the reality of extreme poverty—countless shanties
with poor people living harsh lives.”
In 2006, 60,000 fans of an aging but iconic regional movie star, Rajkumar, went on
a rampage in India’s hi-tech hub, Bangalore, after he died of a sudden heart attack.
They set fire to autos and buses and attacked Microsoft and other software firms,
bringing India’s fastest-growing city to a virtual standstill. The actor was seen as a
defender of a regional cultural identity, which was perceived as being increasingly
under siege. Some wondered whether the two Indias, representing prosperity and
poverty, were drifting apart.
Once famous for holy men in sackcloth and ashes who renounced the world, and
also known for its elephants and sacred cows, today India is equally as well known for
having one of the largest pools of educated scientists and engineers in the world and
it is a base for R&D for leading multinationals. This is a country where millions of
Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, and Buddhists have lived in relative harmony for
several decades. Thomas Friedman (2005), The New York Times columnist, pointed
out that the reason for this state of affairs is to be found in India’s multiethnic, plural-
istic, free-market democracy. In 2004, India experienced an election event unprece-
dented in human history: A nation of more than 1 billion people went to the polls in
large numbers and were willing to elect a party headed by a foreign-born (Italian)
Catholic political leader (Sonia Gandhi), who peacefully and firmly made way for a
Sikh (Manmohan Singh) to be sworn in as prime minister by a Muslim (President
Abdul Kalam). This took place in a country that is more than 80% Hindu.
The kaleidoscope is an appropriate metaphor for modern India. It presents an ever
changing set of colorful images not only to foreigners who flock to do business there
and the nonresident Indians who return every year for quick visits but also to the
people living in the country. This is the result of India’s unmatched diversity of
cultures and its dramatic transformation from a third-world country to an Asian
superpower in the 21st century.As Chhokar (2008) suggests,“What may be termed as
the culture of India today is the outcome of, or merely the current stage in, a process
of evolution of a continually living and changing culture” (p. 972). Thus, using the
kaleidoscope metaphor, we will explore the diversity that lies within India. The kalei-
doscopic areas we discuss include the variety of religious and culture celebrations, the
distinctive festivals and feasts held throughout the year; modern India’s call centers
and cell phones; and the changing game of cricket, which has recently imported cheer-
leaders from the United States.
 India: A Kaleidoscope of Diversity 495

The Kaleidoscope of
Religions and Cultural Celebrations
Religion and language separate the people of India far more than ethnic background
or geography. India is the birthplace of four major religions, Hinduism, Buddhism,
Jainism, and Sikhism. Although 81% of the Indian population is Hindu, sizable
numbers belong to other religious groups: Muslim (14%), Christian (3%), Sikh
(1.86%), Buddhist, Jain, and aboriginal animist. Hindus live throughout India, with
smaller concentrations at the southern, northeastern, and northwestern extremities.
The minority populations (the term is relative, as Muslims alone number more than
140 million, the third-largest concentration of Muslims after Indonesia and Pakistan)
actively resist being dissolved into a Hindu melting pot. Muslims are in the majority
in Kashmir, and Sikhs are concentrated in Punjab.
Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and Sikhism are all associated with specific languages
in which their original scripts were written: Sanskrit, Arabic, Latin, and Gurumukhi,
respectively. The first three are not spoken languages in India, and the fourth in a
modernized form is a state language of Punjab. In addition to Arabic, the Muslims
in India evolved a language of their own, Urdu, and a number of other regional
languages. There are at least 300 known languages in India, 24 of which have at least
1 million speakers each.
However, India has had a long tradition of embracing other religions throughout its
history. Christianity came to India as early as the middle of the first century CE. Jewish
people have lived in India for centuries and Islam came to India in the 13th century
and its influence lasted for several hundred years. Through extensive trading relation-
ships over the centuries, India has been able to absorb characteristics of foreign cul-
tures and also to share the best of her culture with other nations of the world in an
early version of globalization. Thus, not only has India witnessed the birth of several
world religions but has also absorbed and integrated other faiths. “India: The Dance
of Shiva”(Chapter 28) presents the tenets of Hinduism in great detail and in this chapter
we highlight some of the other great religions that were born in India.

Buddhism
Buddhism began in India with the life of Siddhartha Gautama, a prince from a
small kingdom in the foothills of the Himalayas who grew up in luxury but soon left
home in search of the meaning of existence. He finally found enlightenment under a
tree in the forests of Gaya (the modern state of Bihar in northern India) and achieved
the knowledge that he later expressed as the Four Noble Truths: all of life is suffering;
the cause of suffering is desire; the end of desire leads to the end of suffering; and the
means to end desire is a path of discipline and meditation. Gautama was now the
Buddha, or the awakened one, and he spent the remainder of his life traveling about
northeast India converting large numbers of disciples.
496 PART IX. INDIA, SHIVA, AND DIVERSITY

The great emperor Ashoka of the Maurya dynasty was largely responsible for
spreading Buddhism outside of India’s borders in the 3rd century BCE and dispatched
his own son, a monk, to spread Buddhism to Sri Lanka.Ashoka is said to have converted
to Buddhism after the battle of Kalinga where his men killed more than 100,000 people.
He was filled with great remorse and gave up war and violence.
Buddhism today has about 350 million adherents all over the world and is reputedly
the fourth-largest religion in the world, practiced mainly in Asia. The Dalai Lama, who
is considered to be a reincarnation of a great Buddhist master, is exiled from Tibet and
has been living in Dharamsala, India, since the Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1951.

Jainism
Jainism, another religion that was born in India, attained major status in the time
of Mahavira, who was born into a princely family in 599 BCE and abandoned his aris-
tocratic surroundings when he was 30 years of age in favor of a more ascetic life.
Jainism, which has nearly 4 million followers today, teaches that the way to liberation
is to live a life of nonviolence and renunciation. Jains believe that animals, plants, and
human beings have living souls and that each of these souls has equal value and
should be treated with respect. The three jewels or the guiding principles of Jainism
are right belief, right knowledge, and right conduct.
Jains are strict vegetarians and believe that they have to live in a way that minimizes
the use of the world’s resources. This strict practice of vegetarianism has created some
interesting problems with nonvegetarian tenants of high-rise apartment complexes in
Mumbai. Some critics have attached the label of apartheid to the intolerance of non-
vegetarian food in these upscale, Jain-dominated housing complexes, where prospec-
tive buyers have been grilled about their food habits, charged exorbitant prices, or
banned outright from owning property.

Sikhism
Sikhism, yet another religion that was born in India, is considered to be the
youngest of the world religions, founded about 500 years ago by Guru Nanak, who was
born in 1469. Nanak believed that we are all one, created by one Creator of all creation.
He taught his followers to align with no other religion and to respect all religions.
Today, Sikhism’s followers are in the millions (23 million at last count) and most of
them live in the Indian State of Punjab, with several hundred thousand more living in
North America, especially Canada.
They are highly visible because of their distinctive turbans, which caused some
of them in the United States to be mistaken for members of the Taliban after the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. In one inci-
dent in Mesa, Arizona, a peaceful Sikh gentleman, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was killed in
a hate crime, prompting the Sikh community to explain their religion to their
American counterparts.
 India: A Kaleidoscope of Diversity 497

Sikhs form 1.86% of India’s population but 8% of the Indian Army. By contrast,
Muslims are 14% of the population and 2% of the army. The Prime Minister of India
is Manmohan Singh, a Sikh who is the first person in that highest of offices to hold a
doctorate. He is widely respected for being the architect of the economic reforms of
the early 1990s, which set India on the path to economic prosperity. The ethnic back-
grounds of India’s presidents and prime ministers over the years highlight not only
the country’s amazing diversity but also the secular nature of its constitution.

Zoroastrianism (Parsis)
It is also important to mention the small community of Parsis, whose numbers
belie their extraordinary contribution to Indian industry. Members of the Parsi com-
munity, who originally migrated from Iran, are followers of one of the oldest reli-
gions in the world, Zoroastrianism. Many Parsis escaped persecution in Persia (Iran)
and settled down in India between the 6th and 7th centuries. Their numbers (a little
more than one hundred thousand) are dwindling because they guard their
culture and customs zealously. Most of them live in Mumbai, which is one of the most
cosmopolitan cities in the country.
The Parsis believe in the existence of one invisible God. They also believe that there
is a continuous war between the good forces (forces of light) and the evil forces (forces
of darkness). The good forces will win if people do good deeds, think positively, and
speak well. God is represented in their temples through fire, which symbolizes light.
Parsis were favored by the British because of their knowledge of English, as well as
their trading skills and facility with global trade.
The first steel plant in India was built by a Parsi, the industrialist J. R. D. Tata, over
a hundred years ago in Jamshedpur as a model workplace. Tata’s heirs are among the
wealthiest industrialists in India today and they manage the widely diversified Tata
conglomerate, which rivals industrial dynasties in other parts of the world. In 2008,
Tata Motors unveiled the world’s cheapest car, the Nano, and took control of iconic
brands like the Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motors. Other famous Parsis include
Zubin Mehta, the renowned conductor; Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the founder of India’s
nuclear program; Rohinton Mistry, the award-winning novelist who lives in Canada;
and Adi Godrej of the Godrej family, which controls another of India’s leading billion-
dollar conglomerates.
Despite all this diversity, as M. C. Chagla, a renowned former Indian jurist, diplomat,
and Cabinet minister observed, there is something to the idea of Indian-ness:

There is an Indianness and an Indian ethos, which has been brought about by the
commission and intercourse between the many races and the many communi-
ties that have lived in this land for centuries. There is a heritage which has
devolved on us from our Aryan forefathers. There is an Indian tradition which
overrides all the minor differences which may superficially seem to contradict
the unity. (quoted in Iyer, 2000)
498 PART IX. INDIA, SHIVA, AND DIVERSITY

Images of Festivals and Feasts

Every turn of the kaleidoscope reveals a different festival in all its myriad colors. These
festivals are celebrated in different parts of this vast country. Sometimes, it feels as if
there is a festival every day of the year. Religious raptures, possessions, and trances are
common during Indian seasonal festivals.This is a structured and,in some cases,highly
formalized phenomenon that enriches the consciousness of the individual and the
group. There are also the attendant dangers, however, that the mood can degenerate into
a hysterical mob psychology, which Indian history has witnessed many times. Festivals
allow the discharge of intense emotion, which is otherwise submerged in a network of
reciprocity and caste relations, but they also can be used to reestablish order.

Religious Festivals
The birthday of Lord Ganesh is one of the most popular festivals in India and often
involves 10 days of feasting, fund raising, and performances of music and dance, with
music blaring from loud speakers on every street corner, especially in the city of
Mumbai. The festival gained currency during the Independence Movement in India as
a way of uniting various castes and communities against British rule. Massive proces-
sions through the streets feature large and small clay idols of Lord Ganesh, and the
final goal is to immerse these idols in the sea. Millions of citizens patiently tolerate the
ensuing traffic jams for several days every year in August as the monsoon rains finally
taper off and the festival season begins in earnest.
Another festival that is celebrated throughout India is Deepawali or Diwali. It
celebrates the victory of Lord Rama over the 10-headed evil demon king, Ravana, and
his return from exile with his devoted wife and brother. Diwali ushers in spring cleaning,
and it includes decorating the home with lights ranging from beautiful earthen lamps
to colorful lanterns swaying in the breeze. The celebration also involves setting off all
kinds of firecrackers and visiting family and friends with plates of mouthwatering
sweet treats and gifts.
A festival that aptly captures the kaleidoscope metaphor is the festival of Holi,
which is celebrated all over India at the advent of spring. One of the most colorful
festivals in India, Holi involves people spraying each other joyously with colored water
or powder in all hues of the rainbow to celebrate the vibrant colors of spring. Markets
are filled with vats of yellow, blue, pink, green, and red powders several days before the
festival, and old and young get into the spirit of this colorful celebration.
Holi is also marked by India’s own version of Guy Fawkes Day (see Chapter 17,“The
Traditional British House”) with the lighting of bonfires across the country and burning
effigies of Holika to commemorate one of the many legends associated with the festival.
The legend holds that King Hiranyakashap was displeased with his son Prahalad, who
worshipped Lord Visnu and thus was not his father’s greatest admirer. The king
ordered his sister, Holika, to sit in a blazing fire with Prahalad on her lap. Although
 India: A Kaleidoscope of Diversity 499

Holika had been granted a boon that protected her from being burnt, that blessing did
not work when she entered the fire with her nephew in her lap and she burned to
death. Lord Vishnu, however, protected his young devotee, Prahalad, who survived.
Janamashtami or the birthday of Lord Krishna is celebrated with the popular
Dahi-Handi ceremony, which is the most visible aspect of the festival and has
become synonymous with it. In his childhood, a naughty Lord Krishna and his
friends raided the houses of their neighbors in search of milk and butter and merrily
helped themselves to the caskets, which had been hung from the ceilings to prevent
domestic animals from spoiling the precious contents. They accomplished this by
building human pyramids.
During the modern-day Dahi-Handi ceremony, a large earthenware pot is filled
with milk, curds, butter, and honeyed fruits and is suspended from a height between
20 and 40 feet. In cities like Mumbai, these pots are sometimes suspended between
tall buildings. Several young men work collaboratively to claim the prize. They build a
human pyramid by standing on each other’s shoulders until the pyramid is high
enough to enable the person at the top to reach the pot, break it, and take the contents.
Prize money, which is usually tied to the rope by which the pot is suspended, is shared
among those who participate in the pyramid building.
Muslims in India celebrate the various Eids (celebration or festival) and are
greeted by their non-Muslim fellow citizens in a display of religious unity that gener-
ally permeates festivals of all religions in this secular country. The main Eid is the
Eid-ul-Fitr, which marks the end of a period of fasting during Ramadan. Eid is cele-
brated with feasts and the exchanging of food and gifts with neighbors and family.
Many give food, clothing, blankets, and books to orphanages and the poor. This Eid is
also a time when religious and political leaders throughout the nation stress the need
to remain united across various religious beliefs.
Christians in India celebrate Easter and Christmas with their Christian counter-
parts all over the world. Many non-Christians get into the Christmas spirit and pay a
visit to Santa Claus in the department stores in the shopping districts of major cities
and decorate their homes with colorful lights. Some even attend midnight Mass with
their Christian neighbors and friends.
Buddha Purnima or the birthday of Buddha is the most sacred day in the
Buddhist calendar and is celebrated all over the world by the faithful. By a strange
three-fold coincidence, the day commemorates the birthday, the enlightenment, and
the attainment of Nirvana by Lord Buddha. Buddha Purnima is a holiday in most
Southeast Asian nations, especially India, Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and
Myanmar. The main Jain festival is Mahavir Jayanti, which is the birthday of
Mahavira. It is marked more by quiet reflection and prayer than any demonstration
of outward gaiety.
Nanak Jayanti or Guru Nanak’s birthday is widely celebrated by the Sikhs in
India. His birth anniversary is marked by prayer readings and processions, espe-
cially in Amritsar in Punjab State and Patna in the State of Bihar. The Sikhs also
500 PART IX. INDIA, SHIVA, AND DIVERSITY

celebrate Baisaki or Vaisaki with great gusto, for it marks the beginning of the new
harvest season. Much feasting and dancing ensues after prayers are offered at the
gurudwaras or Sikh temples.

Indian Cuisine
No discussion of festivals and feasts is complete without a mention of the variety
of Indian cuisines. India is widely considered to possess one of the most diverse
cuisines in the world and has more regional variations than the countries of Europe.
Food plays a very important role in Indian culture and is an integral part of weddings,
festivals, and day-to-day living. Wedding feasts in India are unlike any other in the
world, catering to hundreds of guests and influenced by regional tastes and practices.
Frequently a wedding celebration unfolds over several days of feasting and rejoicing.
A wedding feast in southern India (and other parts of the country) may be served on
banana leaves with guests sitting cross-legged on the floor while a small army of
servers doles out delicious items with the precision of an assembly line. The colorful
arrangement of food on each guest’s banana leaf changes with each pass by the
rapidly moving servers through the line, resembling a food kaleidoscope.
A modern Indian wedding feast is often a marvelous integration of international
and national cuisines. Thai, Mexican, Chinese, and Italian food stations are inter-
spersed with various regional Indian cuisines. Multiple courses include appetizers,
chutneys, dips, and desserts. Depending on the preferences and origins of the bride
and groom, both vegetarian and nonvegetarian dishes may be served. The changing
patterns on the plate remain a constant feature of these multicourse wedding feasts. If
the traditional wedding feast menus from the different regions of the country were
displayed on plates, they would look like a kaleidoscope of food, ever changing and
forming interesting combinations of rice, lentils, vegetable dishes, yogurt, sweets, and
sometimes meat, fish, and chicken.

Cell Phones, Call Centers,

and Curriculum
Among the many images that emerge with each turn of the kaleidoscope of modern
India is the cell phone, which has permeated every walk of life. Cell phones are simply
everywhere you go. Shashi Tharoor (2007), a U.N. undersecretary general for commu-
nication and public information and author of a new book, The Elephant, the Tiger,
and the Cell Phone, observes,“One of my favorite photographs of India shows a sadhu
right out of central casting—naked body, long matted hair and beard, ash-smeared
forehead—chatting away on a mobile phone” (p. 377).
The mobile phone revolution in India is nothing short of remarkable in a country
that had millions on waiting lists for landlines right up until the 1990s. When
 India: A Kaleidoscope of Diversity 501

Rajnandini Pillai left India in the late 1980s, it was a privilege to have a landline.
Returning to India in 2005 after a 9-year absence, she was struck by the proliferation
of cell phones as the primary means of communication, not only among young people
but also service providers like the electrician and the taxi driver. It was particularly
mortifying, as she was armed with a cell phone purchased in the United States, which
did not have international call access.
In 2006, India overtook China in the number of new telephone subscribers per
month and it is now the fastest-growing cell phone market in the world followed by
China and the United States. In 2008, the number of new telephone subscribers
reached 8.5 million per month. Low cell phone charges, competition in the telecom-
munications industry, and lifetime unlimited incoming calls for a low one-time fee
have made the cell phone accessible to people at the lower end of the economic hier-
archy. It is quite common to see street vendors (vegetable sellers), launderers, and tea
stall owners taking orders on the cell phone. In fact, observing his fellow countrymen
and their mobile phone craze, one Indian exclaimed half in exasperation,“They won’t
have food on the table but they will have their cell phone!”
In a December 2007 National Public Radio segment, Laura Sydell, who had spent
time in India, was amazed to find that cell phones were ubiquitous there. She reported
that according to The Economist’s intelligence unit, only about 6 million people had
access to broadband, but more than 200 million people owned cell phones.As a direct
consequence of this, most Indians use their cell phones for double duty: communica-
tion and entertainment. They call and text each other (as is common in most parts of
the world), and they also download Bollywood movies and Mp3 files, a popular pas-
time in this movie- and music-mad culture. It was not uncommon, according to
Sydell, for cell phone users to have huge flash memory cards to download movies; the
idea that it was not routine for U.S. Americans to have FM radio on their cell phones
was incomprehensible to most Indians. In recent years, a few film schools dedicated to
teaching the art of making movies for the mobile phone have sprung up, and one even
partnered with Nokia to hold a competition for such movies. Cell phone companies
today are using incentives to make major inroads into rural India where 70% of the
more than 1.1 billion people still live.

Call Center Employment

Yet another image associated with modern India is the call center. After India’s
independence from Britain in 1947, Hindi, a north Indian language, was proclaimed
the national language. Hindi was spoken at that time by about 25% of the people, but
it was the single most prevalent language in the country. The south had virtually no
Hindi speakers, and the southern people opposed starting the process of learning an
“alien” language. As a result of these objections, the original constitution recognized
no fewer than 15 official languages (3 more were added in 1992), and English was
designated an “additional official language” as a compromise. Today, Hindi is the
502 PART IX. INDIA, SHIVA, AND DIVERSITY

native tongue of about 30% of all Indians, but English is often the language of
national communication, spoken throughout the country.
This facility with spoken English has been partly responsible for the enormous
growth of call centers in India. Today, it is almost impossible to call the customer
service number for a major U.S. corporation and not be struck by the fact that you are
talking to someone from India. To keep up with demand from the United States and
the United Kingdom, accent training classes have mushroomed in the cities where
most of the call centers are located.
Despite these attempts at erasing the lilting Indian accent, most Westerners can
recount at least one or more experiences of dealing with customer support delivered
with an unmistakable Indian accent all those many miles away. Call centers are part
of the industry called Business Process Outsourcing (BPOs), which was created
when Western companies discovered the large pool of English-speaking educated
workers in India who could handle customer service at a fraction of the cost in the
United States or the United Kingdom. This has given India a competitive edge
among other Asian nations.
In the beginning, many young Indians wanted to work in call centers because of
the attractive salaries. Call center employees have tough schedules because they work
at night in India when it is daytime in the United States. They usually party together
and their jobs motivate them to learn American pop culture and pronunciation. Many
even adopt a dual identity (e.g., Susan or John by night and Savitri or Venkateshwar by
day). However, the job is stressful, and employee turnover is high. One call center
owner told Rajnandini Pillai that he had to constantly work at keeping the employees
motivated by changing his BPO service offerings so that the work was interesting and
challenging to them. To this end, although he had started out with a customer service
call center operation a few years ago, he had now evolved to a medical transcription
services business, having outsourced the initial operation to other English-speaking
countries such as the Philippines.
In 2005, Chetan Bhagat wrote a fictional account of call center life titled One Night
@ the Call Center: A Novel, which chronicled the mundane lives of several call center
workers.It became a best seller in India.The next area of growth in Indian BPO is legal
process outsourcing. Thousands of English-speaking lawyers in India are employed
by U.S. companies and law firms to do legal work at a small fraction of the cost of
using U.S. legal assistance (Lakshmi, 2008).
Call center employment has changed the dynamics between members of different
generations within the family. Young people are able to afford the same brand names
as their counterparts in the West, can splurge on high-end restaurants and night clubs,
and can enjoy a lifestyle that was beyond the reach of their parents. They are able to
move from job to job, motivated almost entirely by salary considerations, and it is
quite common for some to hold four jobs in the space of 2 years. Often, the BPO workers
are seen as avaricious and individualistic, an anomaly in a largely collectivistic society
that espouses the philosophy of work as an end in itself. After all, the essence of the
 India: A Kaleidoscope of Diversity 503

Bhagvad Gita, which is the most famous text of ancient India and exerts considerable
influence to this day, can be summed up as “your business is with the deed, and not
the result” (Chhokar, 2008, p. 978).
BPO jobs have often changed perceptions of the female child in the family. Instead
of considering her a burden for whom a massive dowry has to be amassed, in some
families parents rely on their daughters, smart upwardly mobile call center employees,
to help finance the education of their younger brothers. The growth in demand for
information technology (IT) services from India has provided bright young English-
speaking college-educated women some remarkable opportunities for career devel-
opment. However, India faces a potential shortage of 500,000 professional employees
in the IT sector in the next few years, according to the National Association of
Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), a trade group.
The highly competitive environment has forced the BPO companies to adopt many
elements of U.S. business culture. Managers constantly monitor the performance of
their employees, offering them rewards and perks for exceptional performance and
working hard to keep them motivated with company-paid dinners and contests.
Because many employees spend hours dealing with U.S. Americans and their credit
cards, they are reported to be quite comfortable with the idea of credit card debt
(Kalita, 2005). Cars, refrigerators, and vacations are paid off in equal monthly install-
ments (EMIs) deducted from every paycheck for years to come. This creates another
division between the older and younger generations because the former did not grow
up in an India where financing for education, housing, and consumer goods was freely
available. In the past, most parents admonished their children to spend within their
means and never get into debt. Today, it is a source of conflict between the older and
younger generations.

The Down Side

Parents of call center employees also complain that young people no longer
accompany them to religious functions and weddings and instead observe U.S. holidays
like Labor Day and Christmas (Kalita, 2005). In a rapidly changing India, young
people are making much more money than their parents, are less likely to follow
traditional dating practices, and want the same things as their Western counterparts.
In an interesting compromise, however, many IT professionals are finding a balance
between the traditional arranged marriage and the Western idea of marrying for love.
They go online to Indian matrimony Web sites, exchange e-mails and photographs, and
if they find that they have a lot in common with each other, they introduce the two sets
of parents, who seal the match.
As the kaleidoscope turns, so does the image of the call center employee. Today, the
reputation of a call center job has taken a nose dive and call center employees are often
perceived by their peers to have limited educational opportunities. A traditional call
center job with the long hours (usually at night) poses widely reported health risks
504 PART IX. INDIA, SHIVA, AND DIVERSITY

such as multiple personality and bipolar disorder and excessive stress. Often such jobs
subject the employee to verbal abuse from unhappy overseas customers, and they
involve tedious work. However, the maturing Indian economy is no longer only about
call centers handling back office operations for U.S. companies. It is more about R&D
centers springing up with a view to turning India into a global hub for companies like
Microsoft, GE, and Motorola.

Education Highs and Lows

India is becoming known as a country with a highly educated workforce and a very
strong scientific community. Indeed, large pools of educated workers and professionals
have been crucial to India’s ascent in both manufacturing and services. As a legacy of
the strategic vision of the first Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, India has a
vast pool of engineers and scientists. The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have
drawn high praise from Microsoft founder Bill Gates and other U.S.business leaders for
the whiz kids that they produce. These whiz kids then go on to contribute in a sub-
stantial way to companies like Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco systems.
“This is IIT Bombay. Put Harvard, MIT, and Princeton together, and you begin to
get an idea of the status of this school in India” observed Lesley Stahl, co-anchor on
CBS’s 60 Minutes, when she profiled the Institutes for a segment of the highly rated
U.S. television program. There are seven IITs in India and competition for admission
is fierce, as only a few thousand students are admitted each year. Entrance is deter-
mined by rankings in a nationwide examination.
Japan has recently discovered that it can learn a lot from the Indian model because
many Japanese see India as an ascendant education superpower. Japanese bookstores
are filled with titles like“Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills”and the“Unknown Secrets
of the Indians.” At the Little Angels English Academy and Kindergarten in Tokyo,
students are taught by South Asian teachers, and classroom posters depict animals out
of Indian stories (Fackler, 2008). This is not the first time that Asian powers have
turned to the Indian education model. Several centuries ago, India was home to one
of the world’s first universities, the famous Nalanda University, which was founded by
Buddhist monks in 427 CE and played host to more than 10,000 students of various
religious traditions. It was destroyed three times by invaders but rebuilt only twice.
Asian scholars who travelled to India to study at Nalanda have left vivid descrip-
tions of the university. In December 2006, India and a consortium of other nations
announced plans to rebuild the university as a postgraduate research university.
Turn the kaleidoscope again and a different picture of India’s education system
emerges. Underfunded schools, a massive bureaucracy, outdated teaching methods,
poorly compensated teachers, and financial pressures contribute to a public education
crisis of vast proportions. Private school education is often beyond the means of most
families. Government statistics indicate that about 25% of students make it past
eighth grade, and 15% get to high school.About 200 million start high school but only
 India: A Kaleidoscope of Diversity 505

about 7% graduate. The adult literacy rate is 61% compared to 99% in the United
States.Only one in five job seekers has had any vocational training,and about 14 million
people are added every year to the labor market. India needs to invest in education and
devise a strategy to find employment for these people. Otherwise, these challenges will
greatly inhibit India’s ability to compete as a global power.
With foreign investment and job opportunities exploding, India may have a short-
age of trained professionals because of the poor educational infrastructure.India grad-
uates about 900 engineering PhDs per year, which is simply not enough to meet the
growing staff requirements at Indian universities. Efforts are under way to increase the
number of private colleges and universities and ease rules for foreign universities that
may want to establish branches in India. Furthermore, leading Indian companies such
as Infosys have achieved nothing short of a miracle by relying not on India’s education
system but on their own resources to recruit, train, and develop their workforces.
A recent report co-authored by Vivek Wadhwa, a former Indian CEO and executive
in residence at Duke University, entitled “How the Disciple Became the Guru,” found
that Indian companies are picking up best practices from foreign companies out-
sourcing to India and perfecting those techniques (Wadhwa, de Vitton, & Gereffi,
2008). According to Wadhwa,“Indian industry has developed a surrogate educational
system that can take workers with weak educational backgrounds and then turn them
into world class R & D specialists.”

The Changing Image of Cricket

When we discussed our metaphors for India with a focus group of Indian professionals,
many suggested that the apt metaphor for India would be the game of cricket. The
unofficial national sport of India is cricket although the official sport is field hockey.
According to official cricket sources, in simple terms, cricket is a team sport involving
two teams of 11 players each. Although the game play and rules are very different, the
basic concept of cricket is quite similar to that of baseball. Teams bat in successive
innings and attempt to score runs, while the opposing team fields and attempts to
bring an end to the batting team’s inning.After each team has batted an equal number
of innings (either one or two, depending on conditions chosen before the game), the
team with the most runs wins. A formal game of cricket can last anywhere from an
afternoon to several days.
Test matches last for 5 days in an extended version of the one-day game. As in
many other sporting events such as World Cup football, test matches between rival
cricketing nations like India and Pakistan arouse a great deal of nationalistic fervor.
When test matches are played, work in government offices almost comes to a stand-
still, as employees listen to the broadcasts. In the past when the only means of obtain-
ing the scores was through a radio broadcast, it was quite common to see people
walking around with their ears practically glued to transistor radios, which looked like
506 PART IX. INDIA, SHIVA, AND DIVERSITY

curious appendages attached to one side of the head. Today, giant screens are set up at
street corners and text messages are sent on mobile phones. Work still comes to a
standstill during crucial international test matches.
In 2007, India clinched the inaugural Twenty20 cricket World Cup after a thrilling
five-run victory over archrival Pakistan in the final in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was
India’s first major triumph since winning the 60 overs-a-side World Cup in 1983. The
team was given a parade through the streets of Mumbai, which practically shut down the
city as thousands of fans lined the streets and the stadium to honor their cricket heroes.
Cricket was introduced to India by the British. Some accounts suggest that the first
game was played in 1721 by British sailors on shore leave. The Parsis were the first
Indians to play the game with the Europeans and participated in many tournaments.
Soon, the Hindus and Muslims fielded their own teams and played in the famous
Bombay Quadrangular tournaments. The game went through many different formats
and is now the most popular sport in India. Cricketers are almost on par with movie
stars in the degree of attention that their personal lives receive. Not surprisingly, many
of them date and marry Bollywood stars and some even graduate to starring in
Bollywood blockbusters.
The game can also be seen as slow moving and dull, however, by countries that do
not share the enthusiasm of the few cricketing nations. The Indian Premier League
was formed with the goal of changing these perceptions abroad and attracting a new
and youthful fan base at home with a mixture of sportsmanship and entertainment.
The Premier League version of the sport evolved into a 3-hour match play with a
shortened format in 2008, and teams chose colorful names—for example, the
Bangalore Royal Challengers and the Kolkata Knight Riders. Entertainment came in
the form of the Washington Redskin cheerleaders.
As Emily Wax (2008), writing in the Washington Post, put it,“It can all be seen as a
metaphor for India itself, which is growing younger, hipper and more willing to take
chances, awash in cash as its economy expands at 9 percent per year” (p. A01). Of
course, as is inevitable there was a stir across conservative, Hindu-dominated India
where traditional women usually wear saris or salwar kameezes, which cover most of
their bodies. Some TV pundits argued, however, that the dance sequences in
Bollywood films, featuring scantily clad gyrating women, were far worse than the
spectacle of the foreign cheerleaders in their go-go boots, yellow shorts, and bikini
tops. Cricket purists also criticized the shortened format of the hallowed game but by
all accounts, the new formats resulted in a financial success for the promoters. Sony
reportedly signed a $1 billion deal for exclusive rights to film and photograph Indian
Premier League games over the next 10 years (Wax, 2008).

Images of the Future

The dictionary has a technical definition of the kaleidoscope as a tube-shaped
optical instrument that is rotated to produce a succession of symmetrical designs by
 India: A Kaleidoscope of Diversity 507

means of mirrors reflecting the constantly changing patterns made by bits of colored
glass at one end of the tube. It also describes a constantly changing set of colors or a
series of changing phases or events. We have used the kaleidoscope as a metaphor to
describe the diversity that is integral to India and the dynamic elements of its
modern culture. It seems as if with every turn, one sees a pattern that is different and
one is never sure whether one is likely to see the same configuration again.
On the one hand, there is an economic boom that is unprecedented in the country’s
history. On the other, the crumbling infrastructure threatens to derail its economic
agenda. On the key access road to the famous electronics city in Bangalore (dubbed
India’s Silicon Valley), cars, motorcycles, taxis, rickshaws, dogs, and cows compete for
space and create a traffic jam that even seasoned Los Angeles commuters would
balk at. The same goes for Mumbai where negotiating the roads can seem like a
Darwinian challenge where only the fittest survive. Horns blare constantly and evoke
the same response as car alarms in New York City; they are routinely ignored.
Highways, airports, the power grid, and major bridges need to be upgraded before
they crumble. Spending on major infrastructure such as ports, power plants, and
highways is expected to top $60 billion annually over the next few years but there is
a tremendous shortage of skilled labor in a country of 1.1 billion people. This is
causing major delays and cost overruns in almost half the projects that are under
way (Bellman & Range, 2008).
Asia’s largest slum is on the route from Mumbai airport to downtown with its fine
hotels and gleaming corporate headquarters. Some experts have argued that India
should follow China, which launched a major infrastructure upgrade over a decade
ago that is paying dividends today. In the 1960s, India had a higher per capita gross
domestic product (GDP) than China. Today at $640, India’s GDP is less than half
of China’s ($1,470). Growth in modern India has taken place in a chaotic, often
unplanned, entrepreneurial, noisy, democratic way despite the bureaucratic obstacles
presented by the government. The global financial meltdown of 2008 is expected to
affect both India and China in the foreseeable future, belying the hope that the two
Asian economic powers would be able to sustain the world economy in the context of
a downturn in North America and Europe. For all the talk about decoupling, it
appears that the global economy is still very interdependent although Indian exports,
at 22% of the country’s GDP, are less vulnerable to a global recession than China’s
exports, at 37% of its GDP.
Another threat is the growing Naxalite movement (Maoist insurgents who
despise the landowning and business classes and seek to overthrow the state),
which is operating on the periphery of some major industrial states. Prime Minister
Singh has acknowledged that the Naxal groups are targeting all aspects of economic
activity and that we “cannot rest in peace until we have eliminated this virus.” The
movement has been in existence for more than 40 years but today members operate
in 30% of India, up from 9% in 2002. More than 1,400 Indians were killed in Naxal
violence in 2007 (Kripalani, 2008).
508 PART IX. INDIA, SHIVA, AND DIVERSITY

However, as Edward Luce (2008) contends in his book In Spite of the Gods: The Rise
of Modern India, although India’s challenges may be Herculean, it also has colossal
advantages. He goes on to describe how the Indian economy will benefit from a
demographic dividend in the coming years with the proportion of dependents to
workers falling from 60% of the population to 50%. India also has built-in institu-
tional advantages such an independent judiciary and a free media and has accom-
plished “a high growth rate without the tools of an autocratic state” (Luce, 2008,
p. 352). After independence, many predicted that India’s linguistic, religious, and
social divisions would cause it to fall apart. This has not happened because India has
had a stable democracy that capitalizes on its plurality and diversity. No one is certain
what India will look like in the coming decades but we are sure that the next time we
take a turn at the kaleidoscope, we will see a different set of images of this colorful,
vibrant, emerging Asian power of the 21st century.