Lessons from India

Lessons from India
This is a very difficult column to write, since India is such an interesting and different country.
I worked in Nicaragua last week and from there took the 2 and a half hour trip to Miami, then 3 hours Miami Chicago, three hour wait in Chicago to board the plane to New Delhi, a 13.5 hour trip, 8 hours in Delhi waiting to board the plane to Bangalore, only three hours and then a 4 hour trip by car to Mysore, where Infosys Technologies has its world headquarters. I arrived Tuesday afternoon.
I was attending the TED India convention, a place where remarkable ideas from global thinkers are exposed for the world to know. I heard stories that touch you deeply, irrevocably and intensely to say the least.
India has 1.1 billion people, the second biggest country in the world, behind China and three quarters of a billion people are under the age of 35 which makes it a very young country population wise. They speak 17 major languages and at least 844 dialects, with a million Gods and the most populous democracy in the world.
It is a country where 4 billion movie tickets are sold each year. A country that adds 8 million new cell phone subscribers a month.
The sheer age of civilization here allow us to look backward as we look forward.
The first university in the world was in ancient India, in Taxila in the 6th century BC. Algebra, Calculus and trigonometry; the decimal system; chess, all were invented in India. Also very fascinating is the way cultures and faiths come together in this enigmatic country.
There are 300,000 mosques in India, more than in any other country. Jews and Christians have been living here since 200 B. C. and 52 A.D. respectively. In the mean time, the Hindu shrine at Tirupati, attracts 30,000 pilgrims every day.
India hosts one of the fastest growing economies in the world as is evident when you visit one of their big cities. The national film industry is well known that is more productive than Hollywood, the software industry, some say is bigger than the US has helped make India a force in the world economy. Other sectors are making themselves felt, such as the wildly creative auto industry which recently produced the Tata Nano, the world’s least expensive car, valued at $2,500.
I must admit that there is an undercurrent of poverty and need still existing in this bustling nation. If we add India to Pakistan, Bangladesh, The Maldives, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan, half of the world’s poorest people live in this part of the world. Poverty stares you in the face in this nation and it really gets to you and makes you realize that we live in paradise. No matter how bad things get.
The World Bank recently reported that half the children in India are underweight.
One of the speakers, Hans Rosling predicted that by the year 2048, China and India were going to catch up with the United States in economic power. I highly doubt it, but it is the feeling of many experts attending this conference.
A speaker named Devdutt Pattanaik has the title of Chief Believe Officer in his company. He said that nothing lasts forever in India, not even death. This is an interesting concept.
What most impressed me from this conference was the quality of the people attending it
It shouldn’t be a surprise since TED’s motto is “ideas worth spreading”. By the way, I spoke at TED in Long Beach, California in February and you can see my talk at www. Ted.com, do a search and type my name.
One of the speakers that impressed me the most was Tony Hsie, a young entrepreneur that selling shoes on the internet, took his company from a million to 1 billion in only six years. His company name is Zappo’s and he says that what he delivers is happiness, even though it looks like he delivers shoes.
I found many millionaires that have sold their businesses and all they want to do now is help the poor or the needy. They have started non profits and they are tackling India and other countries.
Others that I either saw speak or spoke to, were people that had a great personal tragedy and they converted that tragedy into success.
Sunitha Krishnan really touched my heart. This woman was gang raped by eight men when she was 15. That provoked and anger in her that she decided she was going to channel into helping other women in the same situation. She told us that in India, some two million women and children, many younger than 10 years old, are bought and sold around the globe. Angry about the silence surrounding the sex trafficking epidemic, she co founded Prajwala, or eternal flame, a group that rescues women from brothels and educates their children to prevent second generation prostitution. She runs 17 schools for 5,000 children and has rescued more than 2,500 women from prostitution and 1,500 of whom Krishnan personally liberated.
After her speech, a woman who was touched very deeply by her story, stood up and said “If 10 people here donate $10,000 to Sunitha’s cause, I will give $10,000. Eleven more people raised their hand making it a $120,000 donation. Google came in and told her that they would hire their best students in India.
A very creative lawyer came up with the idea that he will stamp out corruption in India. He opened a company where anyone that deals with a government agency to try to get anything done and the official doesn’t do what they have to do, because they refuse to pay off the bribe, can call him and they will charge them much less than the corruption money they are asking for him.
What a concept? Someone is not doing their job in the government, and they ask for a bribe, gets representation, it costs them little and they get the case through. He says that it has worked 42 times.
Yes, I have learned so much. Now I have to figure out how to apply in our country.