1. A lot of NRI’s (Non-Resident Indians or Indians living abroad) are looking to return to India due to a combination of better opportunities, visa problems, aging parents etc. However most of them find it difficult to land a job. What advice would you give them in their endeavour to come back to India?
2. What advice would you give to expatriates looking for career opportunities in India?

I must confess that I am no expert when it comes to these issues and there are much-more experienced people on this subject. Nevertheless, I tried to reach out to my network and am attempting to answer Aseem’s questions.

This slightly dated article that appeared in The Economic Times points to the fact that the demand for senior roles is being driven by industries such as IT, Pharma, Financial Services, Retail, KPOs etc. The article also mentions that “living and working in India is no cakewalk. It poses diverse challenges that require a degree of adjustment and realignment, which NRIs often under estimate.”

Gurprriet Singh, a senior HR leader based in Mumbai, shared his thoughts with me.

At work, the largest challenge is work-culture. Returning Indians need to be aware of this. Very often they come back with so many “dreams of the good old times” they forget that those good times had a lot of pain as well. Cultural adjustment, inequality in the workplace, subjectivity in decision-making over objectivity (people or other work decisions) etc. are all challenges in the Indian workplaces. If at all possible, a 3/6 month secondment will give an idea of how things are, and may help you decide whether or not to move.

Money is another issue. The tax structure, the breakup of salary and how much is really net-take-home, what are the benefits – these are all relatively unclear and complex to some. Equally important is to have a clear understanding of costs and expenses. Most returning Indians assume India is a cheap country to live in. Not true. They forget their tastes and lifestyles have changed. India is cheap to live in, if you eat ‘vada-pao’. But, higher tastes require money. Simple example – a good restaurant in Mumbai has the same charges as one in New York. Most returnees miscalculate their costs disastrously.

For expats also, more than anything else, they need to be sensitive and adjusting to the culture. They’re used to delegating. They’re used to managing by exception. That doesn’t work in india. The most successful expats are those who realize that Indian organizations have little or no systems and processes.

Some Indian workplaces are process-averse; they will always do their best to avoid/circumvent process steps. This kind of culture requires the manager to have an eagle-eye on execution at all times and not just on whether execution is happening, but HOW its happening.

Achyut Menon, from Options India, a search firm with a strong focus on returning Indians says “Look at a career in India- just like the options one considered when going abroad for the first time. Don’t expect everything on a platter. Yes, some get dream jobs. Most others have to work their way through levels/movement/responsibilities.”

I also have felt sometimes that Indians residing abroad tend to lose touch with the Indian business environment. If you are looking for opportunities in the country, you need to be fully aware of what’s happening in the country. How is the economy changing? How is the business environment shaping up? What are the business drivers in your industry? And so on.

Overall, an “India mindset” is required to get an entry and thrive in one of the world’s fastest growing major economies. One needs to remember that you are competing with a very large pool of people for the same jobs.

As per this article in The Economic Times, India received a total of about 5 million tourists from abroad. Contrast this to the tiny island-nation of Singapore – it got over 10 million tourists in 2007 alone! I mean India is hundred times bigger than Singapore and has far too many  attractions and things to see & do. The culture is rich, there are great food choices, there are the hills and the plains and the beaches and the backwaters. But, the numbers fall very short of expectations. It may be just inadequate marketing. Or it can be bad perceptions about the tourism & general infrasructure in the country. Or it can even be poor word-of-mouth from tourists who had a not-so-pleasant experience. Whatever is the case, there is an urgent need to come up with a holistic approach to tap this important revenue stream.

What do you think are the top reasons for the below par performance of the Indian tourism sector?

It has been an eventful year for me. I got promoted. I left my job at Gallup India. I got married. Yay! I had a wonderful vacation in Thailand. Yay, Yay!! I joined Towers Perrin in Sing a pore. I went about Singapore. And so on.

Meanwhile, a lot of posts on this blog got quite popular. And, I thought it will be a good idea to do a quick round-up of the various things I wrote about in 2008.

• The concept of “Micro-Boredom” and how the mobile phone has become my saviour.
• My wishlist from the grand-daddy of internet – Google.
• The business case for Employee Engagement. This post got a lot of attention and was eventually published on the front page of Deccan Herald’s Career Supplement DH Avenues.
• I got myself an iPhone 3G and wondered if it is “smart-phone” enough. Subsequent fixes from Apple have resolved some of my issues with the almighty phone.
• I borrowed from some research by my company to think about “deal-structuring” for employees or how we could maximize employee RoI from their relationship with organizations.
• 2008 was the year of economic ‘pain’. I mused about how we could manage differently.
• I am bowled over by the wonderful system of ‘incentives’ in Singapore. But, why are restaurant staff here not incentivized enough to provide great service to customers?
• I became a fan of TED. Fascinating stuff. Kevin Kelly impressed with his talk on the next 5000 days of the web.
• Mumbai will not forget 2008 so easily. Neither will I. I blabbered as Mumbai took the bullets.
• I started thinking about simplifying the interfaces of enterprise applications. I think this is a big big opportunity.
• I stumbled upon an idea to convert the employee benefits system into a ‘marketplace for benefits’. I have completely given up on looking at traditional system thinking on solving this critical problem that so many organizations face. An innovative and experimental approach is more likely to lead to a solution. I am looking for organizations who would like to partner with me on such an experiment.

And, if you think, I have bored you enough with this serious stuff, go straight to my alternate blog at Tumblr to enjoy some really cool pictures, videos, quotes and fun stuff. Or meet the shutter-bug in me at Flickr. Or, just head straight to my FriendFeed page to get a snapshot of all my online activity and networks. 

Here’s to a peaceful and fulfilling 2009. Cheers!

Today, I live in Singapore, which has a reputation for its safety record. I know that I have nothing to worry about. But, sometimes, it all makes me feel very guilty. Guilty about not being there with my countrymen, guilty about not able to do anything about the problem, guilty about being a mere bystander on the sidelines. But, at the same time, I feel very proud of the people in the thick of it – our security forces personnel who risk everything for us, brave mediamen who bring all the stories to the masses, common men and women who are there to lend a helping hand to people they barely know and a brave new generation of bloggers, photographers, twitterers and other social media activists. Hats off to them!

The scars are deep. Profound. Sometimes I wonder, on my next trip back home, will I need to stay holed up in the safe environs of my house? Will I be able to go out, without fear, for a nature walk in Bangalore or to my favourite eating places in Kolkata or just to see my dad in his clinic in Nepal? I want to and I will. Perhaps, it is easy to bomb humans than it is to mutilate the human spirit. They simply cannot. No matter how many of us they shoot down, they can’t take away our small joys. Our future. Our hopes. Our dreams. For a better, brighter and safer tomorrow.

I have recently been reflecting on how different countries digest incentives or disincentives. India, of course, has a law or rule (on paper), for just about everything. There are penalties for smoking in trains/airports, fine for jumping a traffic signal, underage driving etc. More often than not, we feel that these rules are not implemented properly. The other side of this is that citizens do not adhere to these rules. The simple explanation is that of inadequate incentives/disincentives. Fine for caught smoking in a train – Rs.100 (who cares!). Fine for jumping a signal – maybe Rs.50….and so on. Low value of penalties coupled with weak implementation – leads to very low probability of an average citizen feeling encouraged to adhere to the law.

Move on to Singapore & Dubai, and you find very high disincentives attached with the ‘wrong’ things. Smoking inside an MRT station – fine S$20000!! Jumping a signal in Dubai – something like AED 2000! You make the disincentive so penalizing that an average citizen doesn’t break the rules + put in healthy levels of implementation.

 Let’s go West for a change and you find that the USA, where most incentives/disincentives of these kinds have become moral incentives. Smoking in a prohibited area, jumping a traffic signal etc. have moral connotations (atleast in the sane hours of the day!). On a recent trip, I didn’t see sign-boards informing people about the penalties associated with such an act; instead the sign-board just said – no smoking. Cross-roads had surveillance cameras, but nothing to inform people about the rules. It appears that punitive incentives have been internalized to a large extent in that country.   

So, these countries represent the continuum through which incentives are designed, implemented, redesigned, re-implemented and finally yield the desired outcomes.

What I fail to understand is where does this nationalist feeling go for the rest of the year? All year long, we live with corruption, do everything to make our cities dirty, drive rash, pee on the walls, spit everywhere (dharti ke laal), dig holes on the road and so on. If someone were to ask me – Do Indians care for their country, I do not know how to respond. There are times we go overboard on nationalism like cricket, Indo-US nuke deal, a movie that gets recognized by Hollywood etc. We celebrate like no other nation. But on the other hand, we do not seem to be involved in community-building and hence, nation-building activities on a regular basis in our daily lives. All the zeal suddenly drops dead. On one hand, we do everything possible to pollute the environment around the Taj Mahal and contribute to its deterioration. On the other, we do a big song & dance for it being selected as one of the 7 wonders of the world. This is quite ironical – as ironical as it gets and it confuses me about how we think of our nation and nationalism.