doing business in india – knowing the rules and learning the ropes
Business environment of today has roots in historical evolution. Present ecosystem is a function of reluctantly embraced oriental collectivism and underlying desire for individualism of the accomplished driven by contextual convenience. While collectivism / socialism are pretexts, masked individualism is the latent reality. This perennial conflict is the root cause for the perceived poor enabling environment while one refers to India.
Response to situations are not necessarily guided by what the rule book says, but by what people have engineered and learnt over time, on, how situations are handled to realise goals. These in turn are determined by people’s belief as to how informal (real) systems work. Informal systems are innovative to interpret rules to circumvent, go beyond the rule book / system. Innovative systems that evolved are not documented but learnt from observation, practice, experience, word of mouth; and over time, become the defacto way even when formal rules exist.
This paper that goes into the what, why and how of Indian ways, what to expect and how to traverse his/her path while dealing with / in India.