After visiting IBM India, Professor Konana, Holly, and I sat with a reporter from the Economic Times to talk with him about our trip. We talked about a number of things—what we saw over the weekend, the companies we’ve visited so far, our general thoughts about India—but it was clear there were a few things he was most interested in. He first got some background on the school and the Global Plus program, and we told him how long we’re here and where else Plus trips go. As soon as he found out that a Plus trip went to China, his interest was piqued. He asked us why we picked India over China, and I talked about some of the people I had talked to from last year’s trip and the experience they had. He also asked us if we would consider working in India. We both said that we might like to come back and work for a little while. Then he asked us some more questions about what has surprised us about India and what we’ll take back with us. Before too long, though, he was back to asking us about China and jobs. He asked why we like India more than China and why we want to work in India. I could see what the article was obviously going to be about. As we were leaving I told Holly that the entire content of the article was going to be how we loved India and hated China and how we were looking for jobs only in India (even though that was about 10% of what we actually talked about). [p.s. I’ve had a chance to look at the actual article since getting back. The headline is “McCombs Grads Choose India Over China As Their Destination For Overseas Study Tour,” and they said that we thought working in India after graduation was an “interesting possibility” (which is pretty faithful to what we said). And they spelled my name incorrectly, which is all right, because the one quote they attributed to me (Mr. Laure) could not have been more wrong.
The article said, “Mr Laure said that the visit to a few software and BPO firms in India has made him realise that it is not just low end work that happens in the country.” I remember saying two things that might be relevant to this statement. I said that there was quite a debate going on in the United States about outsourcing and that people who are against outsourcing were essentially wanting to portray the jobs that are coming over to India as degrading call center jobs that are being performed in subpar working conditions. I said that anybody who knows anything about business knows that not to be the case, but it’s probably more comforting for Americans to think that we’re losing jobs just because India simply an extremely low bidder and nothing else. I told him that what we found upon visiting the call center was that people do their jobs very well and work in very nice conditions. The other thing I said was that in the States when you think India business you think, “Call center, call center, call center” and “IT, IT, IT,” and it was very nice to see places like Hindustan Lever and Biocon to get an idea of the breadth of business capability that India is building.]
After the interview, I went out to see the parliament building with Kevin and Holly. We saw the parliament building and then we walked around for a little while, half lost, until we got to this store we were looking for. I bought four packages of about ten little sandwich cookies each (two orange (the orange cookies have been a favorite of mine at company presentations) and two butterscotch) and two Fantas all for about eighty rupees. Then, at the counter, they threw in four packages of crackers because of some promotion they were running. So I got all that food for two bucks. Then I went parading it around to everybody as if I had accomplished something.
The Bangalore airport has a ton of mosquitoes. They’re everywhere, including inside the planes. On the airplane I had another one of those seats that wouldn’t stay unreclined, so I kept having to consciously try not to lean back onto Sam. The only redeeming thing about the trip to Delhi was getting spotted by some of the Perot Systems people, who were in town for the company’s first board meeting ever held in Bangalore and were able to pick me out because of my hat. They were really nice—we took some pictures and talked a little while. One of them is on the McCombs Advisory Board.
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