Trust them, treat them well, and you will bring out the best in them.
August 14 started out as just another day, already tinged with orange, white and green, given that it was being followed by the day when India won freedom from the British. An event which sparked a similar hope for freedom from colonial oppression across the world, from South America to Africa to Asia. Indonesia and Vietnam preceded, the latter being divided at first but later reunified in a way that Korea has not been since the 1950s. An event in which the armed forces played a crucial albeit scarcely reported role by increasingly declining to be loyal to the Union Jack by 1946. August 14 was when Lakshmi and I flew from Delhi to Mangalore by 6E 2372.
Until that day, Atithya had been efficient and reliable, its staff showing up punctually when requested. It was a shock when there was no Atithya representative standing by the kerbside with a nameplate at Gate 1 of Delhi Terminal 2. The reason was that the phone number they had for the booking belonged to my wife. Both of us were unaware of this, and as she followed her long standing habit of not looking often at her cell phone, the messages sent to her by Atithya were not looked at. Anyhow, after trollies had been located, we placed our luggage on them and entered the terminal, only to encounter serpentine queues. Fortunately, we found a much smaller queue, but soon after that, an a staffer looked at our tickets and shifted us to what seemed the longest queue, despite knowing that our flight was leaving in only a bit less than an hour more.
At this stage, another staffer saw our plight, looked at our boarding passes, and shifted us back to the smaller queue. In a short while, we were at the gate. By this time, two of the hospitality staff from Indigo had showed up, and as one of them, Divyanshi, had helped Lakshmi in an earlier flight, had recognized her as we stood at the gate. Her politeness and apologetic behaviour even though the fault was not that of Atithya, helped create cheer. Soon afterwards, we boarded our flight, and at Mangalore, despite being among the last to deboard, an Atithya representative was waiting for us. He had helped me in the past and as soon as he recognized me, ensured that our luggage was taken from the belt and taken to the vehicle sent from Manipal University to pick us up.
It was a relief to be on the way to Manipal, and to Valley View, where the staff have retained the courtesy and dedication to service that has slowly been disappearing in many hospitality establishments. In such hotels, the staff look at the car in which the guest is arriving, and base their degree of courtesy on that standard, with luxury cars getting top billing. Manipal University works with the efficiency of a Rolex chronometer, which is an an inheritance of the work ethic of the founder, Dr T.M.A. Pai. Overall, the discourteous and unpleasant still form a small minority in our country. Overall, our people are empathetic and hard-working once placed in a position for which their skills are suited. Trust them, treat them well, and you will bring out the best in them. This is a quality innate in almost every citizen of India, which is why Prime Minister Narendra Modi is confident that once a framework of smart policy has been set in place, our 1.4 billion people will deliver the best.
All that enterprises complaining about the lack of skills of potential employees who studied in India is to spend on just a few months more of On-the-Job training of recruits to witness individuals transforming into high performers of global standard, employees as good if not better than staff in other international investment destinations. Big corporations in particular should take the gentle hint given by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her latest budget, through the FM allocating stipends to help defray the cost of hiring interns.
Hire more interns, give them On-the-Job training. Rather than sing the praises of authoritarian states, they should follow the example set by Prime Minister Modi and Trust Indians in India and go an extra inch to ensure loyalty and quality from staff that matches the best standards abroad. Loyalty and hard work are not won through mistrust and harsh treatment but through encouragement and empathy. For long, this columnist has been saying that global companies should first send junior staff to India to find out pathways towards success before the company sends higher management personnel on recce in India. Michio Suzuki believed in India and as a consequence saw rich dividends to shareholders. For long, he was regarded as a risk taker by more conservative businesspersons in Japan, but subsequently many followed Suzuki in locating manufacturing in India. Since the time when Shinzo Abe and Narendra Modi became fast friends, India and Japan are close partners. The Koreans followed, and the Taiwanese are now doing likewise. Make in India has arrived, and geopolitical needs and commercial sense come together to make it desirable that major democracies locate some of their manufacturing in India. Trust Indians. As Richard Quest never tires of saying on CNN, it will be profitable.