Two things are focusing my attention on India these days.

The first is something that I’m sure I share with most of you – the sad and terrifying news of recent terrorist attacks.  We all hope that these were acts of small groups and will not lead to wider conflict.

The second is that I am very pleased to be resuming a relationship with a very fine organization in India that I have known for 20 years.  Maplesoft recently announced that Cranes Software International will represent us in India.  I expect exciting things in the coming months and years.

India has both fascinated and perplexed me since I was a child.  I am a product of Cold War-era America, and was taught that India was an ally of the Soviet Union.  Since the Soviets were our enemies, India must also be our enemy as well, right?  But I also learned about Gandhi and pacifism, and of the wonderful lessons that Indian culture has taught the world.  What was the “real India”?

As I grew I became a student of mathematics.  India was a very poor country, I was told, and most of the population was illiterate.  Could there be many computers, or universities to house them?  Yet I also learned that India has a tradition of excellence in mathematics that dates back to the Bronze Age, approximately 2600 BCE.  (See Wikipedia for a brief overview.)  Poverty and mathematical excellence.  What was the “real India”?

On my first business trip to India, approximately 25 years ago, I was on a speaking tour hosted by Hewlett Packard’s Indian joint venture company.  On the way to the meeting I passed buildings with logos from many American, European and Japanese companies.  I started to feel a bit comfortable.  After my talk I asked my host, the CEO of the HP company, how I did.  I was egotistically proud of myself, and wasn’t really interested in the answer, but it was the right thing to ask.  He surprised me by saying that I needed to change my talk for the next day’s session.  When I asked why, he said, “Your talk was all about productivity.  That’s not a big concern here – we have lots of people.  You need to discuss a different value proposition.”  Oops.  Major corporations, but I shouldn’t talk about productivity.  What was the “real India”?

I was taught that after the British colonial era, violence erupted between Hindus and Muslims, dividing the former colony into Hindu India, Muslim Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).  Yet when visiting the Taj Mahal I learned that the building was constructed by the Mughal Empire, Islamic rulers of the Indian Subcontinent for 250 years.  How could a feat of Muslim architecture, covered in Islamic writing, be one of the most adored and most visited places in Hindu India?  What was the “real India”?

The first time I started doing business with a representative partner in India I decided to send them a supply of “consignment” stock – products that they would only pay for when they sold them.  I was doing a good thing, right?  Well, not exactly.  My partner very politely asked me to never again send them products until they placed orders.  You see, in an attempt to protect the then-fledgling Indian software industry, the government placed a 110% import duty on foreign software.  My partner was paying a 110% tax on what I had intended to be free.  Oops.  So I saw lots of foreign companies investing in India and high tech taking off, yet the government was trying to keep my software out.  What was the “real India”?

On another trip to India I traveled to several cities with a local colleague who was Indian by birth and had worked for a number of years in California.  He was clearly having some communication problems in one city, and when I asked him about it he told me that outside of the Indian region where he was born he was “more comfortable in California”.  That’s not surprising.  A 1961 census reported that there are 1,652 languages spoken in India – 29 spoken by more than a million people.  Businesspeople can communicate easily in perfect English grammar, but it can be difficult to communicate with taxi drivers and newspaper vendors.  What was the “real India”?

Years have passed, and I have made several trips to India since that first one, once taking my daughter with me in 2005.  I still find India a fascinating place, and also a perplexing one.  Sometimes I am awestruck by the very rapid advance of Indian technology – the “IITs” (Indian Institutes of Technology) are world-class technical universities, and commercial science and engineering is growing at an explosive rate.  Other times I’m impressed when Indian companies can get anything done in such a large, varied and confusing place.

All I can say is that many of my pre-conceptions have proven to be untrue, and probably many of yours as well.  And I’m awfully glad to have such an outstanding partner as Cranes to help us.