India Round 2

This Post is semi-incomplete, I apologize, it will be finished soon but I just need to get it up here so I can start posting about Costa Rica!

Day 1:

Traveling to India is no short feat. It takes hours of patience, sitting, eating airplane food, finding new terminals, attempting to connect to random WiFis, and skill. After having one of the most pleasant trips (via Emirates, I highly recommend them!), I finally found myself back at Bangaluru International Airport, surrounded by kurthas, screaming babies, bangles, staring men, and armed police forces. You know, the usual.  After what seemed like an eternity, I finally made it through customs with no trouble and headed to the front of the airport. Dodging pestering taxi drivers, I made my way to the currency exchange counter; you don't get the best bang for your buck there but it is super convenient. I didn’t see Sandy anywhere so I took my sweet time exchanging some dollar dollar bills and then finally took my chances and braved the great Indian urban outdoors at 4am. I cautiously stepped outside to face the wall of yelling taxi drivers, confused children, scolding mothers, and intensely scared tourists. Taking my time I looked around and to my utter relief I see the familiar face of my favorite brother. With a little pep in my step I made my way over to him, MAN was it good to see him!! He brought a friend along and after a quick stop at the washrooms (aka bathrooms, aka no real toilet, aka back to going in a hole in the ground) we piled into an actual taxi and started the trek into the city. We made it to his apartment around 5:15 and it was full of his friends. It was New Years day, so evidence of a party were still present. All the beds were filled and I was wired, so we waited for them to clear out, caught a quick nap, and then headed into town.

Coming back to India is not at all what I expected. I expected to experience a sort of adjustment time, a period of culture shock, getting used to the noise, the smells, the staring people. But it was honestly as if I had never left. I stepped onto the street and instantly felt at home. Seeing the familiar sights of my beloved Bangalore, smelling the quite awful smells, seeing the people, the traffic, the weather, it was all just as I had left it. Bargaining for rickshaws hadn’t changed a bit, either, and I have consistently gotten fair prices, which is marvelous because usually non-Indians get terrible deals.

After heading to one of my favorite little restaurants next to my old university for a masala dosa, we headed into Christ University to catch up with my old director. It was nice to see him, but I was really looking forward to meeting the new USAC kids (the study abroad program I went through). I was a bit unsure whether I should meet them, I didn’t know if they really wanted to talk or if they wanted advice, but it turns out that they wanted to pick my brain of everything I knew, saw, experienced, ate, traveled to, and did while I was here. I was actually really surprised that I could answer every single one of their questions. I sometimes forget that I lived in India and in doing so I subconsciously picked up a lot of information. I told them about how to wave your money in the caf to get food, how to bargain for an auto, what fair prices were for autos and some things at the market, where to eat, where to go out at night, where not to go, what teachers to be especially nice to, and things of the sort. It was really interesting to see how like babies they were; I forget that I was the same way when I first arrived as well.

After meeting the new kids, we dropped my things off at my hotel (which was actually wicked gross, I ended up switching after three days because there was black mold and rats in the ceiling that would scurry around and make pieces of the ceiling fall in) and then headed straight to Commercial Street, one of my favorite locations. A huge outdoor market, probably six blocks by six blocks, packed with people, cows, stray dogs, running children, auto (rickshaw) drivers, beeping cars, motorcyclists, and vendors, is never a boring place. Only having really two free days while I am here I wanted to get most of my shopping done then, I wasn’t sure how much free time I would have after each day of the conferences. We just wandered around, I got another ghee dosa (just a plain dosa basically), and got quite a few things crossed off my list. It was so nice to just wander around and see everything I had lived a year ago. It felt marvelous to be back.

Day 2:

Sandy had to work on the second so I was off on my own, which is fine with me because then I could do whatever I wanted! I slept in, probably more than I should have, the jet lag was awful, and then headed to campus to meet up with my friend Manoo. He showed up right at three and we headed to his apartment to hang out. He was having trouble unlocking his suitcase, he had just gotten back to Bangalore from Bahrain, and we thought we were going to have to break the lock but then I wiggled it open! We just caught up and hung out, talked about everything that we had missed in each others lives, and then I went to meet up with my lovely friend Hiral.

It was SO nice to see Hiral, one of my only female Indian friends, actually probably the only one now that I think of it. We headed back to Commercial Street to just wander around and then went to catch dinner. Catching dinner turned into a five-hour conversation about everything under the sun, I forgot how much I missed her. We headed to the hotel that I am now in to check out a room to see if I wanted to move there, turns out its WAY nicer than my other one, although I am convinced it is actually a brothel, and then we parted ways.

I headed to Sandy’s apartment, apparently he had invite the new USAC kids to hang out, so I showed up and much to my surprise my other friend and basically brother Aziz was there! Talk about a warm welcome! He spun me around and couldn’t stop laughing with excitement that I was actually there; he has basically been at my side ever since. It was so nice to see him, he treats me like a queen and never fails to tell everything that he “lives for me, and would die for me.” He is a doll. We had a nice time just hanging out, but then around midnight I needed to head back because my friend Kindra was getting in at around 4am. When she knocked on the door we basically stayed up for the rest of the night catching up and ignoring our jet lag. Probably not the best idea, but whatever!

Conferences:

Thursday was day 1 of the Global Ethics Forum conference. There was nothing about this conference that I didn’t enjoy. I will not bore you all with every single detail of the conference, so I will summarize each day very briefly (well, actually not so briefly, as you all know I am long-winded) before moving onto all the other good stuff after the conferences are summarized (so you can skip the conference things if you are only interested in the social aspect of the trip). What? You can’t possibly think I just went to conferences and then straight to bed, can you?

So the first day of the conference Kindra (one of my study abroad friends who met me in Bangalore for the conferences as well) and I got lost on the campus (The Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, aka IIMB, aka the best business school in India). This campus was gorgeous; big, so green, quiet, you could barely tell you are still in bustling Bangalore. So we got lost and rolled in late, per usual, but no one was mad because everyone shows up everywhere late in India. We settled down in the audience, about two hundred people, a mixture of Indian, European, Middle Eastern, Latin American, Asian, African, and a few scattered Americans, mostly all professionals, with the occasional Indian student. We were the only international students and only one of four or five Americans, which was amazing. The MC was a woman from Russia, she was a sparky little thing, filed with attitude and energy; I liked her a lot. She introduced the conference and name-dropped quite a few very influential people in the ethics and corporate scene (including international NGOs, which is what I want to become involved in). She pointed out that IIMB was the first business school in India to directly address the issue of ethics in the workplace; just one of the many amazing milestones about this conference.

We heard from the CEO of Infosys, who pointed out that we live in a world of contradictions, and we must combine profits and purpose to create progress, and we cannot achieve the final product without an equal mix of both. We also heard from the President of Intel India who encouraged us to do the right thing right, that inequality is in fact important because it becomes motivation for competition, but it is not all positive, obviously, in the sense that it can quickly become demotivating and destabilizing. He said one of my favorite things of both conferences, that “India is a country of stark contradictions.” I don’t think I could have put it better myself. His solution, and a common solution throughout the conference, was to level the playing ground to achieve inclusive growth through four roles: technology, governance, innovation, and public/private partnership.

After the opening session we began to attend the panel sessions. Panel one was one with the entire audience as viewers, later on we broke up into smaller, more focused workshop groups. This first panel discussed the importance of discussing ethics in the workplace was. We had representatives from India, China, Switzerland, and South Africa; two were women.

The second panel was also in the auditorium, the mediator was a man from South Africa, Deon Rossouw, who actually had some fascinating things to say; his voice also reminded me of a movie narrator so he was also really not hard to listen to. This panel was about equality and diversity in business relations between the BRICS countries and Africa (all of BRICS was represented except Brazil). The main focus of this discussion was focused on Africa’s opinion of China’s presence on their continent. The overall feeling towards the Chinese was not a positive one, to say the least, although there were many valid points brought up about why they are not as bad as perceived. To summarize, we need to keep in mind that 50% of African’s live on less than $1 per day, and China is Africa’s 4^th largest investor. There are many problems with the Chinese being in Africa (mining, bringing in external labor instead of hiring locals, etc.), however there are also benefits such as goods getting to Africans more easily, also introducing another model of economic development. The main conclusion was that the African opinion of the Chinese needs to change into a much more positive light because in reality they are not going anywhere. The conclusion of this panel brought forth three basic virtues that need to be kept in mind when discussing ethics: sympathy, dialogue, and practical and active engagement. I agree with these three, although I think that in place of sympathy we should consider empathy instead.

During the tea break (which were often, thank goodness!) Kindra and I got to catch up with Vikas, one of my closest Indian friends. It was beyond wonderful to see him! He was volunteering at the conference so he not only got to bunk school, but attend for free as well, and of course hang out with us during the breaks. The afternoon began the workshops, which were all very different but equally as interesting.

Workshop 1: Gender Equality. The panel of women were from India, China, and a representative from the UN (originally from Ghana, she was super interesting, I caught up with her later to talk about UN internships; she told me she had a great opportunity for me in South Sudan, I told her I’d get back to her). We discussed how India is still vastly unequal, it ranks 101 out of 136 countries for inequality, 120 in education, and 135 for health/survival, and keep in mind a higher number is not a good thing. However, we do see things such as education have been improving as of late. The women all pointed out that politics has a significant impact on inequality, and until policies begin to change more rapidly we are not going to see significant improvement. In order to achieve this, businesses need to become involved to pressure government changes. The second Indian woman (Sucharita Eashwar, the first being Gita Sen), pointed out that the GDP of India had the potential to rise by 4.3% if women became an active part of the workforce, especially in government; women empowerment groups were going to be a huge facet in doing this.

The representative from China, Le Ping, noted that the fast-growing Chinese economy presented women with some issues, although she did not really elaborate more than that. She did talk about how women’s rights have improved, some examples she gave were women can now choose who they marry and not simply be sold as wives, legislation and the communist party are making efforts to support more women’s rights, and the People’s Republic of China is calling upon women to help build up their nation.

Afua Ansre, the UN representative from Ghana, talked a bit about UN financing programs to fight gender inequality. She also pointed out things such as women need better education, access to information, and credit. She talked about how, especially in Africa, most of the markets are run completely by women, yet the men get all the credit. The government needs to invest in women because the kickback will only benefit them. She emphasized that transparency was a massive issue, this was also a theme throughout all the workshops. 

The thing that stuck with me most from this workshop, though, is something Gita said: “Religion is a mode of suppression and oppression by the government. It is based on money, greed, and power that usually supports inequality.” This, coming from an older Hindu woman in a sari and bindi, was quite refreshing.

Workshop 2: Innovation Ethics for Sustainability. The three speakers focused mainly on how innovation should serve the people, and if it is not then it is a waste, and also not all great ideas have adequate startup resources; there could be the best idea ever out there and is stuck in a person without access to the right technology or even education. Titan Yike talked about the relationship between people, objects and people, and spirit, and about why there are so many ordinary people and so few successful ones; he credits it to their innovative thinking. He emphasized that a relationship between the entrepreneurs and the consumers was key, and if you reach success easily that may be just as bad as failure.

Rosa Hänseler, (who had an impeccable fashion sense, it was hard to not be envious of her wardrobe) taught us about the African Law Library, which has opened up information links to the people of every African country. This program allows people access to the laws of not only their country, but the ones around theirs as well. She emphasized that it was tools such as this that we needed to support in order to overcome inequality and injustice.

The next speaker, who I actually became very well acquainted with (he invited me to his university in Switzerland and even knew of some amazing internships I could apply for; he ate lunch with us youngsters every day and enjoyed talking about his new experiences in India equally as much as boasting about his university, which actually sounds worthy of its praise), Ganesh Natan, focused on the importance of technology with innovation ethics. He pointed out that usually we see technology just fishing for profit and this needed to change so the technology actually catered to the long-term needs of the consumers. He noted that ethical innovation needs to include honesty, integrity, equity, autonomy, inclusivity, and responsibility, and that innovation is a fantastic opportunity for transparency. The big question posed in this workshop was: “How can we validate and utilize indigenous knowledge?” Although there was no solid conclusion, a major suggestion was to increase accessibility to information and resources, such as education and the Internet.

Workshop 3: Ethical Principles of Equality and Inequality. This session was more of a wrap-up; it had an overarching theme of principles and not so much focused on one topic within ethics. This workshop really talked about how we are all human beings, and we need to focus on the expression of intrinsic worth of each human, seize opportunities to advocate equality, and integrate the idea of care. We talked about how everyone should have the basic right to start out on an equal plane/playing field, but that does not mean that there will be an equal outcome. Equality is a kind of attitude, and this includes environmental stewardship (in the sense of considering where people come from and applying that to the solution). How the system should work is we grant others what we wish we had ourselves; sort of along the lines of having the ability to see the “other” as they are yourself, to put yourself in another’s shoes. Also the topic of legacy rose, although no real solution was set forth on how to deal with it (especially when it is a problem). Equality, it was stated, is counterintuitive to who we are as humans, we must conquer this. It is not just about rising up about this topic, but also about actually claiming less, doing something proactive about it, actions speak very strongly. And finally, religion was mentioned again. Someone (I don’t exactly remember who anymore) mentioned that although religions have failed frequently, there are success stories as well, and that is why it still exists. A lot of problems are blamed on religion, but we must look outside of that to come up with a practical and realistic solution.

After all of the workshops were completed we all broke off into smaller groups with all different topics, 12 total. These groups were meant to put what we have been discussing, learning, and preaching about into action. My group was focused on youth. It was ironic because I was the youngest in my group by probably 30 years, as well as the only female. That suited me just fine, however, because when I spoke, everyone listened. We started talking about how the youth viewed ethics topics, and I mentioned that “ethics” is a word that most young people tend to stray away from. I pitched the idea that there should be a home base for youth web portal. I thought that it would be really nice to have a type of search engine to look up things such as internships, job openings, study abroad opportunities, etc. with approved ethical companies and corporations. A neat idea that we had as well was the companies that agree to partner with this site could have stipulations such as a candidate would need to participate in some sort of internship or volunteer opportunity before they qualified for a position with them. This portal would provide a base for listings for opportunities such as these. We talked logistics; apparently the people in my group (which included two INGO CEOs, a doctorate student who is also a director of a Sri Lankan NGO, and an assistant NGO director) had some great connections and were excited to actually get started on this idea. This was refreshing because I feel as though a lot of times think tank groups come up with good ideas and then never act on them, but this time everyone in the group seemed dedicated to getting this idea off the ground. We wrapped up headed back into the main room for the presentations. Most of the presenters were the most important people, the speakers, the panelists, and then there was me. My group nominated me to present in front of the entire conference. So up I went in my salwar kamis and sandals to present in front of the conference. I explained our idea and I went from the little American girl visiting India to someone who the head of Infosys India and international non-governmental organizations wanted to talk to.