A woman from South Korea recently reminded me of how lucky I was to spend many years of my working life in India, after she lost her job for requesting eight days of leave. This happened in her country, and she shared the news on social media to highlight the difficult work environment she functioned in. She mentioned low pay, long hours, and constant supervision, all of which only served to fill me with gratitude for how I had spent my formative years.
As anyone familiar with corporate life in India can confirm, Indian bosses are arguably among the best in the world. The quality they all share in abundance – which makes them such great human beings – is their infinite capacity for empathy. They know what kindness means and treat every member of their organisations as human beings with feelings and lives of their own. It’s why Indians who move abroad also gravitate towards companies run by other Indians, because they know that it is only in those firms that they can find honesty, transparency, and fairness.
This may be disputed by some cynics, of course, because I suppose there may be graduates with an MBA who place profit over people, but decades of experience in offices across Bombay have taught me that such folk are in a minority. I can’t speak for other metros but, given how Indians have so much in common, I think it’s safe to assume they’re as warm and loving as the bosses in this city.
What gets in the way of this declaration being widely accepted is our propensity to misunderstand a few things. Now and again, some CEO may inadvertently say something that is misconstrued and attacked for no fault of his (we know they are always men) own. Consider what happened a few weeks ago when one of our humblest businessmen pushed for the adoption of China‘s 9-9-6 work culture. Apparently, it refers to a rule where employees in tech companies are expected to work from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week, amounting to a reasonable 72-hour work week. The intelligent billionaire praising that rule was making the case that only this kind of work ethic could help India grow faster.
I didn’t understand why it was a controversial statement, given how familiar we all are with the patriotism of our billionaires. Even this one, for instance, may own apartments that are out of reach for 95 per cent of his employees, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t thinking about them. His children may or may not be Indian citizens, and certainly don’t live here, but that doesn’t mean we should assume they wouldn’t work for 72 hours a week if they were around. What made me accept his argument without question was the fact that his wife is photographed once every year selling vegetables outside their company’s headquarters. If that is not proof of good intentions, I can only feel sorry for the scepticism of my countrymen.
Our inability to understand that managers mean well is what makes us attack them for the supposed absence of a work-life balance in India. Young people complain that they are made to spend 12 hours a day at offices for salaries that prevent them from owning homes of their own. They fail to understand that this is being done for the common good. What appears to be failings when it comes to corporate culture are really blessings if you are a patriot who believes that India should be shining more than it already is.
In all my years of working in Bombay, I can proudly say that I have seen only four or five sociopaths in senior management, at every office. Many women in my life have told me that they can’t work in India because of misogyny, harassment, and pay gaps, but this column is about what men experience so I can’t comment on that aspect of things. All I can say is that India’s corporate culture is great for men and should be celebrated instead of reviled. After all, it’s one of the biggest reasons why we are among the world’s fastest-growing economies.
I often wonder why representatives of senior management from other countries don’t spend more time in Bombay. They can learn so much about human rights and work-life balance just by working under an Indian boss for a month or so. With time, we can spread this good cheer and work culture to offices the world over.
Source – https://www.mid-day.com/amp/news/opinion/article/worlds-best-corporate-culture-23607743