| Mick James looks at the UK’s “special relationship” with India, as it may be about to enter its most remarkable phase yet. |
| From Celebrity Big Brother to consulting: the evolving relationship between the UK and India |
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| | By Mick James
One of the
consequences of creating
a global information
superhighway is that
nothing is trivial
anymore. First we saw
Gordon Brown, our
Chancellor and future
Prime Minister, on a
goodwill tour of India,
having to eat humble pie
over a TV programme he
had no part in and had
never seen. A few days
later, the chairman of
the CBI complained that
the Celebrity Big
Brother furore was
making it harder for
British firms trying to
gain access to India’s
hard-to-crack retail and
financial sectors.
You couldn’t make it
up, but this is the way
the world ends: the
apocalypse will probably
come, not in a bitter
struggle over oil and
nuclear arms, but as a
result of an off-colour
remark by a British
comedian in a Chinese
restaurant.
I have to confess
that, like millions of
others who should know
better, I’ve been glued
to the controversy ever
since it broke. There
were many disturbing
aspects to the whole
affair, but what struck
me was how little people | |
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Now India offers us
another get-out of
jail-free card. UK
consumers may have
shopped and borrowed
themselves to death, but
there’s no need to worry
– we can ship our tired
old business models off
to the sub-continent and
enjoy another few good
years.
In all of this there
is a massive failure to
engage with India on the
one level where it has
most to offer –
intellectually. We get
excited over cheap hands
and bulging purses but
good brains leave us
cold.
The think tank Demos
recently produced a
document which underlined
this point, claiming that
Britain was losing out in
the development of
scientific links with
both India and China. A
government spokesman
responded that that was
precisely what we were
doing, but it turned out
the disagreement was more
one of scale than
approach, with investment
running at about a
quarter of what Demos
believes is called for.
What the think tank fears
is that in future Indian
and Chinese students will
prefer to head for the
States to gain their | |
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| | scientific education, and
that this will be the
axis of the scientific
communities of the
future. The report’s
authors claimed that
Britain was “sleepwalking
out of its special
relationship with India
because not enough people
have woken up to how fast
the country is changing”.
Add to this the spreading
perception – justified or
not – that the UK is
still steeped in racism
and blind to the
achievements of Indians
and we’re hardly going to
encourage bright young
students to pick Silicon
Fen over Silicon Valley.
Is the consultancy
industry guilt-free in
all this? After all,
consultancies have led
the pack in establishing
business links and
subsidiaries in India and
China. But the tendency
has been to portray this
side of the business as
“resources”, brawn to
back up the consulting
brains.
Naturally, firms with
Indian roots don’t
necessarily conceptualise
things this way. The
challenge as they see it
is not to grow a delivery
side to deliver the
downstream promise for a
consultancy front end.
Rather it’s to add | |
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| | consultancy to a
pre-existing delivery
capability in a way that
allows it to be deployed
more intelligently. I’ve
been lucky enough to meet
with a number of Indian
firms and their growing
consultancy arms over the
last year or so. They’re
definitely poised to be
super-competitors, but
only if clients are going
to be receptive. As the
Indian economy continues
to grow, so will the
scale and complexity of
infrastructure and
enterprise projects. That
expertise and experience
can flow back into the UK
– or we can ignore it and
let others take
advantage. What a shame
if the burgeoning Indian
consultancy industry
decided to bypass Europe
and concentrate its
efforts in the States.
As a country it’s time
we woke up to how lucky
we have been in our
“special relationship”
with India. It’s possible
it may be about to enter
its most remarkable phase
yet – let’s hope we don’t
throw the opportunity
away.
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| | in this country seem to
“get” the modern India.
“Bollywood” may be the
world’s largest film
producer, but as far as
most people in this
country are concerned it
might as well not exist.
Hence the confusion and
suspicion among the Big
Brother cast about the
appearance of an
apparently glamorous and
wealthy film star from
India, to the extent that
some of them thought she
might be a plant.
It’s easy to dismiss
this profound ignorance
of India as a disease of
the lower orders, but I
feel our business
approach is similarly
blinkered. The
outsourcing boom
positioned India as a
seemingly endless source
of labour arbitrage, the
British captain of
industry’s equivalent of
crack cocaine. The result
has been the survival and
even proliferation of
massively inefficient
processes, such as the
blanket cold-calling that
is the bane of all our
lives.
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