SUPERECONOMIES AMERICA, INDIA, CHINA & THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD
Publisher: Allen Lane/Penguin
Pages: 392
Price: Rs 699
Other immigrant groups view the unparalleled success of America's Asian Indians with a mix of admiration and envy. 'Why Can't Bay Area Latinos Unite to Succeed Like Silicon Valley's Indians?' read a plaintive headline on the blog 'Latin Bay Area' after (Satya) Nadella's appointment (as the CEO of Microsoft in 2014). 'After all, Latinos have the highest population numbers in California, and also the largest Group [sic] in USA at 53 million people. We should be a massive force to deal with, que no?' it continued. In China, Nadella's appointment at Microsoft created 'a bit of a stir', The Wall Street Journal reported, highlighting the dearth of Chinese CEOs leading multinationals. Ever since Ajay Banga was named MasterCard CEO in 2010, said Jill Ader of the executive-search firm Egon Zehnder, clients in China and Southeast Asia have been wondering, 'How come it's the Indians getting all the top jobs?'
How come, indeed? Many factors come into play. For all its shortcomings, India's test-based education system prizes math and science, making them highly respected-and extremely competitive -fields of study which produce one of the world's best-trained technical workforces. And thanks to the imperial Brits, Indians arrive in the US not just well-educated, but also extremely proficient in English, the global language of business; 76 per cent of Indian immigrants speak English 'very well', Pew's Asian-American survey finds, compared to just over half of Chinese immigrants. Furthermore, Indians - unlike the Chinese - are familiar with the workings of a capitalist democracy and adept at navigating the minefields of a raucous, multi-ethnic society defined by competing interests. After all, the subcontinent has been a global marketplace for centuries, shaped by invaders from the Mughals to the Brits. India wouldn't have survived for this long without learning to accommodate outside influences - lessons the far-flung diaspora has carried forth. 'To be successful in foreign countries, you've got to walk a mile in the shoes of those people,' Indra Nooyi once explained. 'You retain your Indianness, but you also have to adapt to what that country needs. If you remain too isolated, you will never be successful.'
That versatility - combined with the dearth of opportunities at home -has made Indians far more willing than many other nationals to move for a job. The Chinese, by contrast, are increasingly likely to seek jobs back on the mainland - even though they compose the biggest foreign-born population attending America's colleges and universities. China sent nearly 2,36,000 students to the US in 2012-13, up more than 21 per cent from the previous year, and more than twice as many as India's 97,000. Yet growing numbers of Chinese are taking those lessons back to China, where English proficiency is not mandatory and lucrative opportunities abound. With the country plagued by a shortage of high-level managers any native son or daughter with a Western education and foreign work experience faces a bright future. Indeed, while it takes employees in most countries an average of twenty-five years to rise from intern to CEO, Chinese workers can make the climb in fifteen. Salaries have risen rapidly, too, with an executive at the 'director' level already earning roughly $1,31,000 a year - almost as much as in Japan, and nearly four times as much as in India.
Indians who venture to the US are welcomed by an extremely nurturing diaspora network. 'One thing Indians did right here that a lot of other groups didn't do was once the first class achieved success, they started mentoring and helping each other,' says (Vivek) Wadhwa [an Indian immigrant who has launched several start-ups and studies immigrant entrepreneurs in America]. Comprehensive changes to US immigration law in 1965 led to a steady influx of skilled Asian Indians. At first, they held mostly low-level technical jobs, constrained by the common perception that while Indians made great engineers, they weren't equipped to lead. But as soon as people like Vijay Vashee broke through that glass ceiling - hired in 1982 as Microsoft's second Indian employee, he was heading up its PowerPoint division within ten years - they made it a priority to help their compatriots. 'They decided to forget which part of India they were born in and just to focus on the cause,' wrote Wadhwa. 'They realized that they had all surmounted the same obstacles [and] that they could reduce the barriers to entry for others behind them by sharing their experiences and opening some doors.' They invested in each other's companies, sat on each other's boards, and hired from within the community. And they openly discussed the obstacles they faced.
The power of the diaspora network isn't limited to the rarefied circle of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Over the years, America's Asian Indian population has broadened to include a variety of bluecollar and lower-level workers in other industries. A whopping 40 per cent of America's motels, for instance, are owned by Indian immigrants, most of whom learned the business from relatives or friends. Motels play into the Indian predilection for gracious hospitality, as well as practicality; running a guesthouse provides not just autonomy but also free room and board - and often free round-the-clock childcare, found Pawan Dingha, who wrote a book on the subject. For Indians newly arrived in America, the first stop is often a motel - in Wichita or Detroit, Sacramento or Charleston - run by a relative or neighbour from their home village. Before long, they've learned the ropes and are ready to branch out on their own. 'If a new Gujarati immigrant wanted to open up a florist, for instance, his relatives wouldn't know anything about it but if he wanted to open up a motel, he would have access to experienced investors and advice,' said Dingha.
Some argue that it is precisely the experience of growing up in India that enables its immigrants to accomplish so much abroad. Living cheek by jowl with a billion-plus people of different backgrounds and faiths goes a long way towards fostering resilience, tolerance and flexibility - all characteristics associated with success. In fact, India's unwieldy bureaucracy may provide the ideal training ground for an aspiring entrepreneur, who is unlikely ever to face a more complex or frustrating set of challenges. When Ajay Banga first started working for Citibank in Chennai, he noticed that the company went to great lengths to protect data in the event of a power outage - a common occurrence in India. 'I learned that not only do you need a backup, you need a backup to the backup to the backup,' he said. 'That's not a bad way to think about management. You've got to have a Plan B and a Plan C, and they have to be somewhat robust.'
The same qualities that make Indians so successful in the workplace have helped them gain prominence in the other mainstays of American public life: schools, sports leagues, religious organizations and civic groups. More than 80 per cent of Asian Indians in America were born in India, but even the newest arrivals assimilate easily into their new country; their comfort with English and familiarity with the workings of a free society enable them to jump right into their local communities, whether to serve on the school board, chair a church fundraiser, canvass for a local politician, or coach a Little League team. Their unwavering commitment to family helps drive such participation; more than 70 per cent of Indian adults in America are married - compared to 59 per cent of other Asian Americans and just over 50 per cent of all Americans - most of them to other Indians. And they place the highest priority on raising children: 78 per cent rated being a good parent as 'one of the most important things' in life, compared to 67 per cent of all Asian Americans and 50 per cent of the general public.
Annie Gilbert, a two-term school board member in Andover, Massachusetts, says Indian Americans have made a noticeable impact on her mid-sized suburban town. At 14 per cent, Andover's Asian population - immigrants are tracked only by region of origin, not by country - is more than double the state average of 6 per cent; transplants are drawn to the town's strong public school system, tight-knit community, and proximity to Boston, which lies 40 kilometres to the south. Gilbert says Indians are among the town's most visible and proactive residents, always taking the lead in volunteering in the schools, organizing grass-roots campaigns, or devising creative solutions to entrenched problems. 'If I think about who in Andover is pitching in 100 per cent, it's a huge number of Indians,' she says. 'What's amazing is that they want to improve not just their corner of the world or their own family's circumstances, but the whole community.'
To be sure, Andover's Chinese community is also strong and involved, Gilbert says, and has been instrumental in developing an exchange programme between local students and their mainland peers. But such initiatives tend to be steeped in ceremony and designed mainly to serve the community's own needs; for instance, Andover's Chinese residents have made it a top priority to push for Mandarin language instruction in the public schools. 'The Chinese-American community is more about maintaining their culture, with Mandarin as an essential component of that,' Gilbert says. 'And the Indians are all about, "How can we fit in and be a part of this?" They aren't trying to show us what they do, and learn what we do; they're just trying to make the community better.' The 2012 Pew Survey results reflect this distinction, with Indian Americans expressing significantly less concern than the Chinese that future generations learn their ancestral language; 29 per cent of Indians deemed it 'very important' while 30 per cent considered it 'not too important' or 'not important at all', compared to 52 per cent and 12 per cent, respectively, of Chinese respondents.
The portrayals of Indians and Chinese in American pop culture can reflect this difference: Indians tend to plunge in, while Chinese remain more insular. On the acerbic cartoon series The Simpsons, for example, the local Kwik-E-Mart convenience store is run by an Indian immigrant named Apu-after the lead character in filmmaker Satyajit Ray's The Apu Trilogy - who, in one episode, demonstrates his American patriotism by changing his eight children's names to Lincoln, Freedom, Condoleezza, Coke, Pepsi, Manifest Destiny, Apple Pie and Superman. Viewers tuning in to that episode might have caught a commercial depicting a less accommodating Chinese-American couple, who are negotiating with a Honda dealer in flawless American English. Suddenly, thinking they are having a private conversation, they speak urgently to each other in Mandarin, while English translations flash at the bottom of the screen. When they switch back to English to finalize the car purchase, the dealer surprises them - and the viewer -by responding in perfect Mandarin, revealing that he had understood their entire exchange. The message is clear: the best way to connect with the Chinese is on their own terms.
Printed with permission from Penguin Allen Lane
