Final Thoughts

Winding up the trip I can look back at quite a few different experiences here which have affected me both positively and negatively. I can say without question that I am glad I have had the chance to visit India, meet the people here, and get to see what life is like in the world’s largest democracy. I knew India would be different than other places I had travelled, but even still was surprised at how different it really was.

The course taught me a lot about the culture here, or at least in Kerala for that matter. I have been and continued to be amazed by the niceness of the Indian people, how friendly and agreeable they are without being pushy or overbearing, and how safe I always felt amongst the thousands of people that constantly surrounded me in India’s most densely populated state. I am leaving impressed with the commitment to grass roots development, women’s empowerment and community involvement, education, and rights for the working class and poor that exist here in Kerala, even if that doesn’t represent India as a whole overall.

The groups that we worked with here to learn about Ecotourism and Sustainable, affordable housing have shown me some guiding principles, and the work that they are doing here is quite impressive from a dedication and commitment standpoint. The importance of community involvement and buy in, innovative thinking and decentralized development as an alternative to bureaucratic mandates, is something that I will take away from my 3 weeks here in Kerala.

At the same time there have been some aspects that I have struggled with here as well. While we saw inspiring examples of what can be done here in India with innovative approaches, we also spent much of the time touring buildings and facilities that look nothing like the rest of the state. Every time we entered one of these areas, it felt like we were transported out of Kerala and into an alternative universe that looked nothing like the miles and miles of roadside developments we saw while riding in the bus. From this I still wonder how Kerala can truly promote sustainable development that can be scalable enough to really make an impact. The ideas and concepts we learned in this course were great starting points, but I think the next question is how that can be brought to the next level.

I also learned how much the concept of beauty and cleanliness can vary from culture to culture. Even though we discussed very much differences between India and the US, how perceptions of internal and external cleanliness differ between the two, I still found it hard to ignore the trash and debris that are so prevalent in India. Indians have an amazing ability to focus on internal harmony and cleanliness, and block out the external filth and noise. This is admirable in many ways, but as someone who spends his life attempting to take in the surroundings as much as possible in a holistic view, I found myself very affected by those same dirty surroundings that Indians are so capable of expunging from their minds. 

To a degree it’s simply a matter of differences in cultural mindset, but I also feel like there is room for improvement that could help better the lives of Indians in more than just aesthetic ways. Cleaner water, better sanitation and not having to walk through and around piles of burning trash all day are certainly things that can lead to a better quality of life for all around.

I recognize though that this is a difficult task in India for cultural, financial, and even simply spatial reasons. I also know that India is changing quickly, and is still in its infancy as a democracy and as an open economy, so the realities of life and expectations here are much different for a 60 year old than a 25 year old. The problem with only visiting a place once however is you only get to see a point in time, and not a line of progress. Change cannot be measured by a single visit, and so right now I can only take in the India that I see today. 

But this will fuel my desire to return to the country, and to visit more than just Kerala next time in order to see what the people, culture and issues are like in other parts of the country. I used to think 3 weeks was the minimum time required to see India, but that’s not even close. I think for a country so big and varied, you could easily spend 3 months here and only scratch the surface.

I probably won’t ever have 3 months available to truly get to know India that way, but I am glad to know Indians back in the US as well that I can use to continue my education about the country, and to help me understand the pros and cons of Kerala and the development model that we have studied for the past 3 weeks. 

Beyond that, I will savor the weeks full of experiences I had here, some positive and some negative, but all important in helping me form a picture of what it means to talk about India the country and Indians the people.

No Culture of No

I’ve written before about the people of India, and how nice, friendly and helpful they can be, and how much I’ve enjoyed being able to talk to and meet the people that make up this country of 1.2 billion. There is however, one thing about the people and culture here that I do struggle with, and I think it’s especially hard for me as a Type A personality studying business in the United States.

There is no culture of “no” in India. And by that I mean, there is a strong cultural aversion towards saying no to someone, and towards giving news or information that is considered bad or negative. It’s a phenomenon that I did not really understand before coming here, but now can’t help but notice at so many points in my interactions here. 

To me the most visible example was the schedule during our travels here, which was something I often became upset with throughout the course. Our schedule was constantly changing, stuff taking too long, things being dropped, and in general we rarely had any idea of what would or wouldn’t actually happen. But very little of this was communicated, and rather that telling us that something would be dropped from the schedule, or that we would be getting back later than originally announced, our Indian hosts (and Indian American professor leading the trip) would simply say nothing at all. Coming from a culture where bad news is expected to be delivered promptly and honestly so that adjustments can be made, this was an extremely difficult part of the culture to adjust to.

It was also evident in a couple instances with students in our program attempting to do laundry at the hotels we stayed at. Both students failed to receive a couple items out of the bunch they had sent to get laundered. It turns out it was because in one instance there was confusion over the submission form, and in the other there was a burn in the pants when trying to iron them. But in both of these cases, and from two separate hotels, the hotel staff made no mention of what happened or the missing items. They simply returned the rest of the laundry and hoped nothing would be noticed, the explanation only coming to light after they were pressed for information from the students.

A fellow classmate of mine back in business school at Iowa wrote to us regarding the culture of acceptance here, and how it can be quite detrimental to Indian society. He was originally speaking in regards to the issues of trash and litter in India, but meant it in a broader sense as well. Unfortunately I can see what he means, as the culture of not being able to directly tell someone “no” here, or “that’s a terrible idea”, or “I’m sorry but such and such has happened”, will not help move India forward.

In the business community, and especially within entrepreneurial circles, we are taught to celebrate failure. By doing so, we can learn from these mistakes and find ways to improve, eliminate or innovate around the things that we struggle with in our societies. Without that same attitude, India will still struggle to make larger leaps in cultural, technological and societal areas. 

I don’t know where it stands exactly within the context of a changing Indian culture. I know the youth of India have a more global viewpoint, and especially amongst those who have traveled abroad to study or work, they can see how important changing this aspect of Indian society should be. Perhaps it is already on the move, and I just don’t know enough to see the fruits of it thus far. 

And so I hope, not for my own reasons, but for the development of India, that a culture of challenges and innovation can foster here, and move India forward by championing good ideas and tossing out the bad ones. And I hope one day I can return to India and find someone here who will tell me, “please sir, kindly go to hell”.

Rethinking Slums

Slums are a major part of India, there’s simply no way around that. People residing in them make up a measurable part of the India population, they are visible around almost every city, and they are often used by other cultures as portrayals of life in India (see “Slumdog Millionaire”). But while in America there is a stigma around living in impoverished communities such as public housing, that same thing does not exist as much in India, and therefore that has changed the approach towards developing and improving the slums here, and resulted in some ideas and approaches that should be brought back to the US.

The two major things we have learned here regarding low cost affordable housing in India here have been 1) use architectural and design techniques to keep costs down and make buildings more environmentally friendly and 2) make sure you understand the needs of the people and consider them when designing the building and community. 

The first point is a good principal upon which to operate, but in practice what works in India is difficult to translate to the US on a point by point basis. The cultures, climates, materials, economies are so different that many of the things we have learned regarding this during the class simply won’t translate as well to the United States for one reason or another.

The second point however, is a very valid one, and in studying and touring the slum redevelopment project we were able to see how important this is. What this idea means is that just building new apartments for people living in the slums here isn’t enough to address their issues and improve their quality of life, because a nice building is not all they need. By listening to the people, the designers at Costford the group that we are partnering with for the course, were able to see how much community, transportation, job access, and a sense of ownership were important to the people to be helped by the redevelopment project.

Addressing these needs meant keeping the redeveloped slums in the same areas where people could still get to their jobs, and building communities where people could still have the same neighbors they have always had, and creating a system that lets them buy into the property and have a sense of ownership and pride about where they lived. It’s a new model, quite different from the one that has been emphasized in the United States for so long that merely seeks to provide fancy new buildings to our urban poor, often times located far away from centers of employment, and calling it a day after the residents have been moved in. 

Indians that live in the slums here, which really are makeshift housing encampments that have resulted due to India’s explosive urbanization and slow moving and bureaucratic housing and construction sector, don’t simply yearn to leave the slums because they look shabby and polluted. They are communities of people who want good jobs, access to education, and to maintain the community ties that they have developed, and who also want better services and a chance to move up in the world, but not by sacrificing everything they already have. 

I think we could learn a lot from this model of bottom up community development of affordable housing. If we really focus on listening and learning from those we are trying to help, we might just succeed more than we had originally be able to. And it’s not that what works in India, such as the specific examples given above, will work in the US, but that the idea of approaching it from a more responsive development perspective, and working to ensure that the needs of the community are met, will lay the groundwork for developments that are more successful in helping them achieve their goals.