The (at least) Half Way Point

(On the Bay of Bengal in Mamallapuram, south India)

I am now starting month number seven over here in India. I’m half way done with my original commitment of one year to the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII – http://www.cii.in/ – check out the new website (Let me know if you think it’s a little less like a busy Indian street now, Tina)). I know that to this point I have not really talked about my job on the blog at all. That is largely because, honestly, after working I don’t ever think I want to spend an evening writing about it. I think that could probably sound fairly like a negative sign of how my job is going, but that’s not it all. My job is going well. Originally, I was working on creating a sustainable development plan for CII’s own Social Development Initiatives. Currently, CII has about 10 very different social development programs in place and they each receive fairly limited resources from CII (remember, CII is still a non-profit and doesn’t have excess funds either). So these programs have not grown much over the past years and my first 2-3 months were spent developing a plan to make these more sustainable and scalable.

(Jose and I at CII's National Summit on CSR in Chennai)

Over the past three or so months I have been focusing much more on CII’s proposed Centre of Excellence for Responsive Corporate Citizenship. Now you might ask, “What the heck is a Centre of Excellence (COE)?” or maybe instead you’re asking “What is Responsive Corporate Citizenship?” Well, to answer your first question, CII has 5-6 Centres of Excellence which specialize in providing certain consultancy services and resources in specific areas such as logistics, quality management, sustainable development, competitiveness and “green business solutions”. Our COE is the most recently proposed center. This part of my job has been challenging as up until now I haven’t had a lot of experience looking at corporate social responsibility (CSR) or social development from a business standpoint.

(This is Shimla, a mountain town that was home and office to the Viceroy (the head of the British government when they ruled India) during the six or seven months of summer)

My work at the American Red Cross provided me with great experience at looking at the relationship between civil society organizations (CSO) (a preferred term to NGO or non-profit) and businesses, but from the CSO perspective. So to say the least, I’ve been learning quickly, reading a lot on the subject from the McKinsey Quarterly, Harvard Business Review and other similar publications. We are now, hopefully, at the doorstep of beginning to take tangible steps towards making this thing a reality.

(During the concert of Shimla's International Summer Festival - we were definitely the most international part of the festival)

Two weeks ago, I traveled down to Chennai with some work colleagues to help run our National Summit on CSR. Jose Luis talked the Basque government and his boss at the commercial office of the Spanish Embassy to approve his attending the conference, which was cool. To top it off, CII didn’t charge him the registration fee (I think because my boss thought of him as a diplomat of some kind – which he is - kind of). Starbucks made an appearance as one of the event’s main sponsors. If you didn’t already know, Starbucks is trying valiantly to get into India’s growing coffee-drinking market but continues to face new hurdles with their application. One of their marketing strategies was to sponsor this event and talk about their social responsibility initiatives through their C.A.F.E. program. Instead of sending Sandra Taylor, Senior VP of CSR, next time, I want them to send out Josh Terlouw.

(Last Sunday, a bunch of work friends and I rode Delhi's new metro (commuter train) to a theme park on the outskirts of Delhi. Left to right: Michael, Ankit, Shipra, Richa and Amit)

India continues to be such an incredible learning lab. And I could go on and on about each thing, but just to give you a little bit of an idea. The caste system continues to be a fully integrated part of society from a macro level and interpersonal human interaction. The government has categories of “scheduled castes”, “scheduled tribes” and “other backward castes” that determine levels of government assistance and new affirmative action policies. It’s not just a rural reality either. It’s everywhere in the city also. Nearly all Indians I know can tell you what caste a person is after only a couple of minutes. They can tell from a number of indicators such as their last name, mannerisms and language use.

Next, there is such a huge canyon between law and enforcement. It’s illegal to make kids beg, let cows roam the roads, ask for bribes, ask for a dowry in a marriage, run a red light, and on and on. However, there is little, if any, enforcement of any of these things.

(One thing about India is when it rains, IT RAINS. Rain is almost always accompanied by a storm that includes thunder and lightning.)

There are also so many things that just don’t have any kind of logical answer and if you are trying to find one, you are going to waste your time (I know). For example, no one has “change” in Delhi. You go to stores, use rickshaws, go to the modern cinemas. No one has change for your rupees! Sometimes it’s understandable. Often times the rickshaw drivers have it though but don’t want to give it to you. Heck, Lauren went to the bank the other day and they didn’t have change! Next, in six months, I have yet to see one turn lane in all of India. Thus, you have roads with a big medium in the middle with places to take a u-turn every so often. The lines to make these u-turns can back up as you might imagine, to say nothing of that fact that you often have to drive quite out of the way to just go to the other side of the street. Every Indian city I have seen is like this. My last example is highways with no shoulders on them. The problem is that when a car breaks down, it just stops in the middle of the lane and has no where to go until someone comes to tow it away. You can imagine how unsafe this is and how fast traffic backs up trying to merge around it. The funniest part of all this is that if you ask any Indian, even incredibly bright, traveled, "logically thinking" Indians why any of these things are the way they are, I swear, you cannot get any kind of coherent answer. They just are and it’s really no use in trying to advocate for a change in the present reality because there’s not really a problem in their view.

(When the power goes out, we often have no other option but to sit in the living room, sweat...and take photos and make faces. However, I've found that if I can get past how sweaty I am, the darkness and humidity can actually be quite peaceful and meditative.)

Six months in the book. At least six more to go. It’s great to hear from all of you and even though India is on the other side of the world for most of you, I would love for you to come visit!