The
following is one of the many stories that are to be found in
Khushwant Singh's new book, Sikhs Unlimited, which was recently
released in India. Chandigarh-based young Khushwant is a regular
SikhChic.com columnist
and also writes for "The Times of India." As well,
he frequently contributes to "India Today."
"If
I could outsource it, I would."
Imagine waking at 2.30 a.m., to catch a flight at 5.30 a.m.
from Chicago with changeovers at Atlanta and New Jersey, to
reach Washington, DC's Dulles airport at 3.30 p.m. And, of course,
the airline had left my luggage behind. Continuous travel, hopping
in and out from hotels, houses and airports for almost two months
had starting fatiguing me, and the luggage episode was the last
thing I needed.
"Sat Sri Akal," I said as I immediately recognized
the white American Sikh, though
he looked more like our Bhais in the gurdwaras. A paunch and
a white kurta-pajama, a similar colored turban and a flowing
beard.
"Khushwant Singh?" he asked.
I heaved a sigh of relief at the baggage claim area as I had
been running from pillar to post trying to trace my luggage.
"I'm Sri Daya Singh, brother of Gurujot Singh," he
quickly added, "and he is waiting for us outside in the
car, probably doing laps, as you cannot park here."
"'Ah, OK," I replied, and hurriedly scribbled my contact
details for the United Airlines Lost Baggage Claim agent.
Gurujot Singh was not to be part of the book, until I reached
America and was told that I would be naive not to include one
of the pioneers of offshoring and outsourcing to developing
countries, especially India.
Driven by the late Harbhajan
Singh Yogi's desire in 1989 to create employment opportunities
in India, Gurujot Singh had humbly obeyed his master's orders.
Harbhajan Singh Yogi (aka Siri
Singh Sahib) had instructed his students to transfer American
technology into India, but Gurujot Singh went a step further.
Based on the philosophy that there is $200 billion being spent
on jobs performed in the U.S. that could be off-shored to less
developed countries at one-half of the current cost, he set
about creating call centers, technical help-desks, telesales,
customer service and other services that could be provided over
the telephone, internet, mail or facsimile for American corporations
in less privileged countries.
Gurujot's HealthScribe Inc., a medical transcription firm set
up in Bangalore in 1993 and now valued at over $1 billion, had
set off a chain reaction that was to have a far-reaching impact
on Indian socioeconomic life.
The back office business processing project, that was meant
to be based on a model to boost social engineering to create
wealth and employment in developing countries, rather than to
only make money, kicked off a new lease of economic freedom
amongst youth, especially young women who, because of their
economic dependence on a male-dominated society, were at times
subjected to physical and mental abuse.
And what Punjab missed, but Bangalore gained and Pakistan's
Punjab and South Africa are also getting, is a story that would
be unraveled after I reached Gurujot Singh's office at Sterling,
Virginia.
"Welcome," said Gurujot Singh as I got into his car,
unhappy with the events of the day. Gurujot Singh, an army man,
wore an aqua shirt and white trousers, had a paunch - though
not to compare with his brother's - and very bright eyes, probably
hawkish enough that made him see the opportunity that lay in
India.
"We are putting you up in the Marriot Suites," said
Gurujot Singh.
Interestingly, by now the trend of interviews had changed, as
I moved from one entrepreneur to the other. Unlike before, where
I was staying with families, starting from Cleveland onwards,
I was checked into luxury hotels by my hosts, and the interaction
was more over meals or in offices, rather than the usual at-home
chitchat that I had become used to.
"Worldbridge International," read the signboard on
the door that Gurujot Singh opened with a click of a key, guiding
me to his office. As it was a weekend, the office had zero attendance,
except the three of us.
"So what are you looking for?" he asked.
"I am at the door of a man who I believe triggered what
the world calls BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) activity.
I have simply come to have a peep into your life and your work,"
I replied, and like any other corporate meeting, we got right
down to business.
The digital recorder was switched on, and Gurujot Singh began:
"It was Yogiji who set
the idea rolling, when he said that he had got the Indian technology
of yoga to America and it was
time to transfer American technology to India and asked us to
go to India."
"You mean it's so simple - off-shoring in exchange for
yoga? This aspect has not been
revealed to the public, surprisingly," I added.
"Yes it is, technology for technology," he replied
emphatically. "Yoga is nothing but a technology, a science
of living that was introduced in the U.S.A. by various yogis
in the early twentieth century."
A veteran traveler to India to spread Harbhajan
Singh Yogi's yoga, Gurujot Singh showed up in India for
the first time, for the purpose of technology transfer only,
in 1990.
"Thinking about it, the first seeds of off-shoring were
sown when we started to digitalize manuscripts under back office
processing in New Delhi and Chandigarh for an American publishing
company, Simon and Schuster," he explained.
Sikh Dharma (an offshoot of 3HO,
the organization founded by Harbhajan
Singh Yogi) - under its company, Kriya Systems - in
1980 had launched an educational software called Typing Tutor,
which went on to become one of the highest-selling software
in the world (1983-1991), with over twenty million users. In
1990, Kriya Systems, using the Typing Tutor, trained young English-speaking,
semi-literate Indians in typing and then shipped off-shored
data entry work to them from the USA.
In publishing, three persons would work on one book and separate
software would detect an error if one of the typists keyed in
a different spelling for the same word. Before this, the entire
"legacy inventory" was converted into digital files
with the help of a character recognition process called Optical
Character Recognition (OCR), which was only eighty percent accurate.
OCR included feeding paper to the scanner that, in turn, tried
to read the character. The proofreader had to still go through
it and correct it by reading each and every word.
With the new method, the software would indicate any mistake,
and highlight it, thus making it simpler for the proofreader
to correct it. Through this technique, 99.9 percent accuracy
was achieved and all at a cost of $100 per person per month
- a good wage for a simple graduate in 1990 India!
"Off-shoring was the cheapest way to digitalize books,"
said Gurujot, laughingly.
"You see, software development was already taking place
in India in the late eighties, whereas we were only looking
at doing business processing."
But then, it did not come without its glitches. India did not
have an earth station at that time, so no real-time data transfer
could happen. First, the books were shipped to India; data was
transferred and then shipped back.
Gurujot, in the meantime, also began a dialogue with the Indian
government, highlighting that there were a couple of hundred
thousand jobs in the offing if the government brought in new
laws and created infrastructure to enable real-time transfer.
"Now
there are two million jobs," Gurujot said.
And the man who saw the opportunity in the then Indian cabinet
was none other than the present Prime Minister of India, Manmohan
Singh (then, the country's Finance Minister), whose policies
gave a new lease on life to a beleaguered Indian economy (1991-1996).
Manmohan Singh immediately saw the potential and got infrastructure
moving. "It is largely due to his efforts that India is
where it is," commented Gurujot Singh.
"We were almost at the same level socially as the top political
leaders, including the former President of India Giani Zail
Singh and former prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.
Yogiji used to
regularly dine with them, so having access to the top leaders
was not a problem," informed Gurujot.
"If Harbhajan Singh ji had such proximity to senior politicians,
then why didn't Chandigarh and Punjab become the hub of BPO
activity?" I asked, interrupting the monologue.
A shocking revelation followed. "We did start our first
activity in North India, but the then Prime Minister Narasimha
Rao from Hyderabad was keen that all new development should
take place in southern India. His logic was that Punjab and
other north Indian states had already ushered in the Green Revolution
in the 1960s and 1970s, whereas South India had been deprived
of any such revolution.
Hence the first earth station was installed at Bangalore in
December 1993, which led to Bangalore becoming the "Silicon
Valley" of India.
"We
went to Bangalore because we had no option, and HealthScribe
became the first commercial subscriber of the earth station
which used the satellite for data transfer."
The Shiromani Gurudwara Parbhandak Committee (aka SGPC - a Sikh
body that manages gurdwaras) also failed to rise to the occasion
after Sikh Dharma approached them
as far back as 1991 to set up an earth station in Mohali, Punjab
(a satellite city near Chandigarh) at a shared cost of two million
dollars.
"The SGPC probably thought its own importance might decrease
if people became financially more independent," said a
fuming Gurujot Singh. "You set up an earth centre when
you want to enable your people and maybe you set up gurdwaras
because you want people to come to there and pay obeisance.
In my parlance, gurdwara management is a controlling technology.
"The late Gurcharan Singh Tohra seemed to have little vision
for Punjab, except religious politics," continued Gurujot,
who couldn't have cared less how his candor could raise a storm.
"Clubbed with the agriculture revolution, if anybody had
the brains, Punjab would have been the IT capital of India.
But then, in Punjab, the politicians don't even seem to know
how to use a telephone - they ask their P.A. (personal assistant)
to make a phone call for them.
"So, such an attitude was expected," said Gurujot,
revealing the inside story of Punjab's missed opportunity and
how Punjab's bureaucracy and political leaders proved to be
as technology savvy as stones.
I listened to the entire saga dumbfounded, till I remembered
the joke I had once heard in the corridors of the Indian agriculture
ministry. The only time a Punjab politician or bureaucrat opens
his mouth is when he yawns.
And, as if just to rub salt in the wounds, Gurujot told me about
the whole new BPO activity, including voice and data transfer,
that is mushrooming across the Wagah border, a mere twenty miles
inside Pakistan in West Punjab's capital city, Lahore. And how
General Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan, was personally
taking a keen interest in the project.
"Anyway," said Gurujot, continuing with his story,
"HealthScribe Pvt. Ltd, a subsidiary of HealthScribe Inc
in the U.S., was the first BPO company in India, connected to
the earth station, from where we could do direct medical transcription
that meant digitizing reports for forty of the biggest hospitals
in the U.S., their billing and coding for insurance purposes."
Gurujot Singh became its first CEO and later, its Chairman.
"One of the unique things about HealthScribe Inc was that
the company was initially funded by Indians. We approached very
successful Indian doctors in the U.S. who wanted to help India."
Even though this was a difficult concept to explain one and
a half decades earlier (1993), the doctors still contributed
$2.5 million, the first outside investment in the company after
it was set up with an initial investment of $200,000.
Twelve people from Sikh Dharma, including Gurujot's brother,
Sri Daya, his daughter - who now owns a new age music production
and distribution company - and son-in-law, were involved in
setting up the business.
"We approached the Indian doctors for four reasons: a)
they had money, that's obvious; b) they understood India because
they were Indians; c) they understood the business, but most
importantly; d) they held high-ranking positions in the hospital
managements. They knew exactly where the medical transcription,
billing and coding was done for their hospitals. They ultimately
became customers and a web was cast that made us successful."
But, in the entire scheme of things that became an all-Indian
affair, Gurujot was simply fulfilling a self-inflicted mandate
- to be a catalyst to empower youth. It was Harbhajan
Singh Yogi, an Indian by birth, who had initiated the
idea. The Indian Diaspora was financing the project and it was
ultimately the Indian youth and Indian economy that was benefiting
from the entire exercise.
Perfect. That first outsourcing venture became typical of how
Gurujot Singh set up businesses, made them successful and moved
out of business by selling his majority shares, to a start a
new venture.
HealthScribe soon became a successful medical transcription
business model and there was a huge inflow of corporate visitors
to see the HealthScribe model.
Sitting quietly until now, Sri Daya Singh suddenly shot out
his comment: "At one point, I thought we were running a
tour company for the executives," at which we all laughed
heartily and broke for a round of coffee.
The company was sold after five years - from a mere four hundred
employees, it had grown to having a staff of twenty thousand
with $200 million dollar revenue. HealthScribe, now Spheris,
after it was bought by the same company in 2003 - is presently
the second largest medical transcription company in the world.
1998. Fiber optic cables had been laid in Bangalore. It was
time for a second revolution.
First Ring Inc. was set up in the U.S. and its own subsidiary,
under First Ring Pvt. Limited, showed up at Bangalore. Its focus:
to generate wealth and employment in India. If HealthScribe
was the first back office business company doing data transfer,
then First Ring became the first company to do voice transfer.
"We were doing call centre work for financial service companies
in America that included Fortune 500 companies like Providian
Financial Services, American Express, MCI, and Morgan Stanley."
For example, if you have an American Express card and you called
a toll-free number for assistance, all calls would be diverted
to India. The call would be taken by an executive who would
assist you with your bank balance queries or guide you to pay
your bills through the phone or any other question you might
have.
The profile also included making calls for the purpose of marketing
various products to Americans, like insurance policies, new
credit cards, and so on and so forth.
First Ring soon moved to the International Technology Park,
Bangalore. By now, GE had also initiated to offshore its back
office processing on its own. "Hang on," I said. "Can
you clear the off-shoring and outsourcing ka fund to me?"
He looked at me, probably thinking - "sari Ramayana padh
ke, ab poochte ho Sita kaun thi" ("after reading the
whole Ramayana epic, you now ask me who Sita is!").
"Let me explain the whole concept, though these are terms
that came in much later. We were just interested in creating
jobs," said Gurujot, clearing his throat. "What we
were initially selling was outsourcing and off-shoring, and
India as a destination came later, after Harbhajan
Singh Yogiji asked us to go. Originally, we had planned
to outsource work to Native Indian American reservations and
since we had the model ready, we implemented it in India."
"Outsourcing means giving work to a vendor and that could
be within the country. For example, American Express could have
outsourced work in the state of Iowa at a much lower cost than
New York City. So companies could save up to ten percent within
America due to a different taxation plan. For example, if the
total cost is $100,000, the company, by outsourcing within America,
would only pay $90,000. But if they off-shored it, they could
save $35,000.
"There are three kinds of off-shoring: a) companies set
up their own off-shoring like GE Capital did in 1998 in India;
or b) 'Outsourcing-Off-shoring', i.e., vendors offshore their
work; or c) simply both, which is a very strategic process.
"For example, what companies do presently is: set up a
primary outsourced-off-shored vendor; have two other vendors
besides having their own off-shore operation which they treat
as parallel with the other off-shoring operations. Every week,
the companies then take out a progress report listing cost and
quality, comparing all the four separate operations.
"At the end of each quarter, for example, American Express
would say that we have five hundred people more we want to offshore
and whoever has scored the best gets fifty percent of the chunk,
the second, thirty percent and the third, twenty percent. The
fourth guy gets nothing. This, from the company's point of view,
is the best way to ensure low prices and best quality.
"First Ring was later sold and is now First Source with
$200 million in revenues."
ICICI group has a holding of a little less than fifty percent
in the BPO.
It must have been seven o'clock in the evening when we broke
for another cup of coffee. "Can we call it a day and start
afresh in the morning?" I asked, exhausted by the hectic
traveling.
The concern of whether my luggage had reached the hotel was
also bothering me as it carried my cameras, and other electrical
equipment, important to proceed further with my work.
But there was no luggage waiting for me at the reception of
Marriot Suites. A hot water bath was on top of my priority list,
after which I had planned to venture out to the adjoining mall
for dinner.
TGIF attracted my attention, though I still don't know why,
as the mall was lined with other authentic cuisines. Nevertheless,
I soon found myself in TGIF and lost in thinking about the evening's
conversation.
I remembered how Gurujot had explained the whole social change
Bangalore had undergone after they had started the off-shoring
activity, also referred to as the Information Technology Enabled
Services (ITES) in India.
How labor laws in the state of Karnataka, of which Bangalore
is the capital city, forbade women from working after six in
the evening and how, due to the time difference between India
and the US, medical transcription or call centre work would
only start by 9.30 in the evening.
Of how tough it was to fire inefficient people, due to the stringent
labor laws.
"Businesses don't work with such laws," he had remarked.
"When you hire somebody, you don't know whether he or she
is going to be good. After two months of training, if the guy
isn't good, you have to be able to let them go."
Of how difficult it was for women to open bank accounts, as
public sector banks would insist on an account in the father's
name or ask the girl to be accompanied by a male family member.
In other words, despite earning independently, because of banking
regulations, the women remained financially shackled to the
men in the house.
That's not what Gurujot had come to India for.
Gurujot and his team worked towards getting these laws and regulations
changed and HealthScribe, which started with a five percent
female workforce, was ultimately working with sixty-five percent
women employees when it was sold.
I was reminded of how Gurujot felt that his goal had been achieved
and his presence in India was not required anymore and there
were other underdeveloped countries of the world that needed
him to repeat the same phenomenon.
Moreover, there were plenty of Indians doing similar work and
all companies by now knew how to reach India.
According to him, there are three parameters that are important
for off-shoring to take place: a) two-way optic fiber technology,
b) ten million strong, low-cost English speaking human resources,
and c) political stability. Only three countries meet this criterion
in the world besides India: the Philippines, South Africa and
Pakistan.
"How do you justify Pakistan as a politically stable country?"
I had countered Gurujot.
"There are issues everywhere," he had replied. 'When
we started in India, people in America didn't have the slightest
idea of what India was like. For them, India was a crazy country
where rioting, train crashes and floods were the order of the
day. Don't these things happen in the U.S.?
The L.A. riots, or for that matter, Hurricane Katrina in New
Orleans and its aftermath, are only two examples.
"Lahore in Pakistan is a great destination for off-shoring.
If you were to blindfold me in Delhi and remove it in Lahore,
I wouldn't be able to make out the difference, except that traffic
is more orderly in Lahore and there are no cows on the roads.
Musharraf is great. I simply love Manmohan and Pervez, for they
are interested in empowering their youth, though the latter
has supposedly changed his rhetoric post 9/11."
By now, I had started feeling drowsy and wanted to head back
to the suite. Taking out my notebook at the restaurant, I hurriedly
made notes of the questions I proposed to ask Gurujot the next
day. What kind of work was he doing in Pakistan's Punjab that
the Indian Punjab had missed? Almost regretting the missed opportunity,
even though Punjab today is wooing IT investments, I soon lost
my thoughts to deep sleep.
I woke up fresh and checked with the reception for my luggage.
"No, sir," said a man's voice on the telephone. My
enthusiasm was immediately reduced to half as I cursed the airline,
yet again.
Dressed in the same clothes - not that the Americans minded
it, for they love the scruffy look - I ordered breakfast and
waited for Gurujot to pick me up. He was supposed to go to the
gurdwara in the morning for a congregation and sadhana before
coming to the hotel.
"Before you ask me more questions and since you are writing
on my life, I must apprise you of an incident," said Gurujot
as we pulled out chairs on reaching his office. I could not
guess what to expect, but I think it takes great courage to
be frank and share the horrific moments in one's life, especially
when it pertains to drugs.
"Shoot," I replied. Infuriated with Gurujot Singh
for having transferred white jobs to brown people in India,
the white supremacists uploaded an incident of 1987 on the web
where Gurujot was falsely implicated in a case for conspiring
to peddle drugs.
"You see, many people from different spheres visit our
ashram. A man had moved into our ashram and raised his family
as Sikhs, but five years before, he had been involved in marijuana
peddling, whereby he used to import the drug into the U.S.,
though he did not do it after moving into the ashram. The police
had nabbed some of his past associates, who had turned into
informers, as that drastically reduced the jail term - drug
peddling being one of the most heinous crimes to commit in America.
"The informants moved into the ashram, pretending that
they wanted to be weaned away from drugs and soon became friends
with this guy. After becoming friendly, they suggested that
he do one last marijuana operation, make a lot of money and
then lead a pious life in the ashram. The guy refused and said
that he was "out of it." But just because they were
talking about it, what they were trying to do was show him as
part of a conspiracy to import marijuana.
"And since he was talking about it, they were recording
the conversation. The informers shared the same thought with
me, and I snubbed them and told them not to even mention it.
"Talk about drugs, we are even against use of caffeine,"
I had replied sternly.
"Soon, the guys became yoga
students and handed a letter to me to give to this guy."
And when the police arrested the 'guy', Gurujot was also arrested.
Luckily for Gurujot, the judge saw the ridiculousness of the
charges and Gurujot was let off with a fifty-dollar fine.
"So, when the white supremacists and anti-cult (twenty-five
million Sikhs is a cult?) people
wanted to get back at me for the whole off-shoring phenomenon,
they got hold of this case. For a long time, whenever we approached
big corporations, they would e-mail or post this history of
mine. Imagine something like this landing on the table of American
Express's CEO or the head of Goldman Sachs, whom you are trying
to woo as an investor.
"As it is, for many investors, I was a peculiar man, who
stayed in an ashram, dressed differently and was talking about
a new concept in a faraway country. I had to do a lot of convincing,
carrying court orders, taking my lawyers to tell people - look,
I'm not guilty.
Somehow, everybody understood. But imagine the due diligence
one is put through. And now, since I'm working in South Africa,
which virtually means that first I transferred white jobs to
brown India and now it's to the blacks, the season is on me."
We laughed heartily, diffusing the serious atmosphere that had
suddenly engulfed the empty office space of Worldbridge.
However, Gurujot was not finished yet. The informants had also
got the alleged marijuana dealer talking of dealing in arms,
which meant larger accusations. Since Gurujot was part of Akal
Security, a Sikh Dharma-owned company, the anti-cult people
tried to insinuate that Sikh Dharma
Sikhs were trying to smuggle in weapons through airports,
as Akal provided security to major airports.
"I mean, it's crazy," he said. "In this day and
age, airport security is one of the most critical issues of
the world. Only fools can think of doing such a thing and making
such statements. I don't know how much you know about U.S. security."
"I respect it, as I'm a peace-loving citizen of the world,"
I replied.
"These miniscule anti-cult/white supremacists that form
just a fraction of the population fail to understand the benefits
off-shoring has for the American economy. When that graduate
sitting in India earns, the first thing he wants to do is imitate
a Yankee, Levis jeans and Nike shoes."
Sure, check out my Levis tag. Which reminded me to call the
airline about my luggage again. "Yes, Mr. Singh, your bag
has arrived." What a relief it was to get back into fresh
clothes, after Gurujot drove me to the airport to collect the
luggage.
Going back a few more years, Gurujot claimed to have been to
jail over forty times in earlier days, due to his involvement
with the Civil Rights movement and anti-Vietnam War protests
in America.
When South Africans learn that he had been to jail for the Civil
Rights movement, they actually applaud and welcome him.
Another round of laughter, that allowed us to switch gears and
presented me with the opportunity to ask the questions that
I had scribbled the previous night.
"So how did you reach South Africa?" I asked.
"We are simply driven by the formula that private enterprise
plays a pivotal role in eradicating poverty and unemployment.
It also saves exploitation of the environment, as people get
empowered."
Highly impressed with Nelson Mandela, Gurujot wanted to help
him by contributing his bit. Soon, the World Bank, after conducting
a feasibility report, approached Gurujot for South Africa.
"Though we went there, work in South Africa is slow, because
of the transformation that is taking place in that country.
The power has already been transferred to the blacks, but ninety-five
percent of the money is still with the whites; slowly but surely,
there is a transfer of wealth taking place, where we fitted
in perfectly. The process is happening in a regulated manner,
unlike in Zimbabwe.
"However, with this process going on, it became difficult
for us to find funding, as everything and anything requires
funding in South Africa. As a result of which, the capital that
we were looking for, was not available. All the capital is being
used for real asset wealth, whereas we were talking about venture
funds. For example, the capital is being spent in transferring
diamond mines from white ownership to black.
"We told the World Bank that things were not working in
South Africa, at least for the time being, after which the World
Bank suggested Pakistan."
Gurujot and Co. were introduced to one Adeel Shah in Washington
D.C., who was head of the Pakistan-U.S. business council, who
took them to Pakistan, where they held a meeting with UBL Bank,
the leading investment bank.
"Between UBL ($2 million), Rupali Group ($2 million), and
two smaller banks ($500,000), World Bridge Connect raised investments
worth five million US dollars. A facility with a four hundred
seating capacity was set up in Lahore and Fortune 500 Company
Dish Network became the first company to off-shore forty revenue
seats in Lahore.
"Women form a big part of our workforce, even though Pakistan
is more conservative than India. Similar to Bangalore, we started
plying company buses to pick and drop our employees. The buses
have the company name in bold fonts so that people know where
the women are going. Pakistan is what India was ten years ago.
"But let me tell you," Gurujot warns, "if India
does not take stock of the situation - serious issues like handling
its attrition rate and quality - there could be tough times
ahead. See, the perception about India ten years ago is what
it is in Pakistan. But today, nobody thinks about perceptions,
the concern is of quality, as you can hardly get good work in
India.
"And companies today want to diversify their location risk.
Today, companies are sending seventy percent of their work to
India, but they do not want to put too much risk in a single
location. They might as well have multiple countries. And, mind
you, experimenting in another country is no big deal. Just give
twenty seats for starters.
"For example, the companies have hundreds of millions of
dollars in India and if something were to go wrong, where can
they take it? Only to America - and that would cost twice as
much. So to mitigate the location risk, they have to spread
themselves across countries."
China is out, for they don't speak English and, according to
Gurujot, it will take the Chinese at least twenty-five years
to become accent-neutral.
"The best accent-free English in India is spoken in north
India, though we faced huge challenges and made enormous investments
in training accents. We hired speech pathologists specializing
in this area, which is a science. There are eight diphthongs
or sounds made by your articulators: the tongue, lips, teeth
and the palate. These four interact in a particular way, to
form your or my accent.
"Indians made certain diphthongs which Americans never
made. When we trained people in western accents, the idea was
not to hide the fact that they were from another country, but
to train them to diphthongs that the Americans could understand.
We were looking for more global accents, not American, or anything
that would make the dialogue comfortable.
"It's a very simple process and takes about forty hours
to train someone. But, one of the other problems was that Indians
speak very fast, whereas Americans speak slowly in syllables."
Time was running out, for I had an evening flight to catch to
New York. "India has to be very careful because it's getting
trapped in a vicious cycle. Companies are not training executives
because attrition rate is high and global companies are not
giving work because quality is sub-standard," Gurujot continued,
after a business call interrupted our conversation.
"By the way, what time is your flight?" asked Gurujot.
"In three hours time," I said.
"Let's hurry then. We'll have dinner and I'll drop you."
"The next big focus is on stem cell research. And India
seems to be the right destination to offshore research. America
is just caught up in an unnecessary debate of morality,"
he added as we chatted over dinner at an Italian restaurant.
"People only think that you are a genius when they look
back at your work, but what you are actually doing at that point
of time is simply using common sense," he said.
Postscripts
In a significant development, World Bridge has shut its Lahore
operations since May 2006. U.S. clients shied away from Pakistan,
after a U.S. consular officer was killed in Karachi on 1 March
2006, in a suicide bomb attack. Moreover, owing to the growing
political uncertainty, there are few takers for Pakistan.
World Bridge is looking to start afresh in Cape Town, South
Africa, in 2007.
[Sikhs Unlimited is published by Rupa & Co., New Delhi,
2007. 254 pages. ISBN 978-81-291-1207-1. It is available at
www.EthnicIsland.com]
1: Jagdeep Singh (London, England), August 22, 2007, 7:48 PM.
What an utterly infuriating and frustrating story regarding
the SGPC and Punjab government's incompetence regarding these
investments. Is this not emblematic of so much that is wrong
with the Sikh establishment? They would rather have their selfish
fiefdoms than really usher in modernity because the status quo
is to their gain, and they fear intellectual and social liberation
of the Sikh people. What a shame that such far-sighted people,
the Sikhs, are being held back by small-time narrow-minded clique
with no vision or real concern. And Gurujot Singh is an authentic
Sikh hero of the 21st Century. As long as there are men and
women like him, we will succeed and break barriers despite all
those amongst us who hold us back and fear modernity. You cannot
keep this spirit in shackles.
2: Inder (U.S.A.), August 23, 2007, 3:58 AM.
I completely agree, Jagdeep. Leave it up to the buffoons supposedly
representing the Panth to wreck us from the inside. These are
the same people, like the heads of some Gurdwara committees,
who decide who is a Sikh and who isn't, and yet blindly follow
rituals. All the while, the youth in Punjab are lost in drugs,
forgetting their roots; farmers are losing their land; and female
feticide is rampant. If only we held our own destiny in our
hands ... I pray that one day we will. How can it be any other
way? We must invest in our own people, through education, science,
social and economic infrastructure.
3: Sukhpreet Singh (Kingston-Upon-Thames, England), August 23,
2007, 8:49 AM.
Punjab has to move into the new competitive information economy
of the 21st Century that India is at the cutting edge of. Sikh
leaders and Punjabi politicians need to get out of the way if
they cannot facilitate this. As long as people treat politics,
office and influence as feudal roles, nothing will be done to
challenge Punjab to step up to the plate and compete, channel
the natural entrepreneurial spirit of Sikhs, and plug into the
new global economy rather than just complacently relying on
providing food for the rest of India as the mainstay and base
of the state's wealth. And Punjab will continue to fall behind
the rest of India, never mind the rest of the globalizing world.
I also believe that it is these "leaders" and politicians
who stoke up religious feelings in a quite wicked and cynical
way in order to cover up their failings and lack of vision or
concern for the modern world, and their narrow-minded mentalities.
When a great entrepreneur like Gurujot Singh is frustrated by
them, we know that something is deeply wrong with those who
are supposedly our leaders at a religious, institutional and/or
political level in Punjab.
4: Amrit Kaur (U.S.A.), August 23, 2007, 10:21 AM.
We all know how the S.G.P.C. functions - that is, certainly
not for the benefit of the Sikh community, but instead, to secure
their own place and boost their own ego. Can these wrongs be
redressed now? Can Punjab be made a kind of satellite of Bangalore's
Silicon Valley by the Sikh-American entrepreneur at this late
stage? Maybe, the Punjab Government has learnt its lessons.
Is it too late?
5: Mahanbir Singh Grewal (Adelaide, South Australia), August
23, 2007, 5:59 PM.
Excellent story. We in the diaspora should back Gurujot's vision
and have him guide the community worldwide. We should divide
up the community into "missals" and proceed with developing
it, step by step.
6: Charan Singh (Toronto, Canada), August 24, 2007, 8:53 AM.
Those who really want to help, do it despite any challenges.
That is the Sikh way. Punjab remains distressed, the youth remain
alienated, there aren't enough jobs, the politicians remain
uneducated ... Help can only come from God! Men who bring change
don't regret difficulties or get distracted by failures, or
gossip or write mere stories of the wrongs done by others: they
actually help! That is the Sikh way. Dear S. Gurujot Singh ji:
you can still do so much. You have overcome so many other hurdles.
The ones you face in Punjab are but mere challenges, waiting
to be overcome.
7: H.S. (New York, U.S.A.), August 24, 2007, 11:22 AM.
Investment, money, prosperity and growth can still be seen in
Punjab, if the successive governments keep the interest of Punjab
over petty politics & political vendetta. Both Chief Ministers
Badal (SAD) & Amrinder Singh (Cong) have or had the will
to change things and a desire to do so, but were so engrossed
in politics that they missed golden opportunities ... and did
nothing meaningful. In fact, during most of their time in power,
their energies were wasted in undoing some of the good projects
of the previous governments. We Sikhs and Punjabis, wherever
we live, whether we like any of these politicians and their
parties or not, MUST start rethinking about our Punjab. We can't
let it suffer in the hands of any shortsighted politician/person.
The priority should be to make Punjab prosper ... I'm sure each
one of us can help. Gurujot Singh and other wealthy entrepreneurs
like him will pour in, the moment they are sure their investment
in Punjab will not be subject to the whims and vagaries of petty
politics. We need to remember: Punjab is much more than a land
of five rivers; it is where every Punjabi's heart resides. Like
the tough times of the past, these too will pass!
8: Tejwant (U.S.A.), August 24, 2007, 12:29 PM.
What one can gather from the above great article is, that we
may be good parrots as far as chanting Gurbani is concerned,
but we refuse to learn the tools from the same Gurbani about
how to put Gurmat values into practice. If we had learned that
then, Punjab would have become the web of mini Silicon Valleys
rather than the place where desperation is rampant and suicide
is the only way out for many. If our honchos of the Panth and
the Sikh politicos of Punjab follow Miri- Piri concept, rather
than the meri-meri one, then there may be a glimmer of light
at the end of the tunnel and it would not be the train coming
towards us, loaded with Punjabi moonshine.
9: D.J. Singh (U.S.A.), August 25, 2007, 5:02 AM.
Gurujot Singh (U.S.A.) is a businessman practicing the Sikh
faith. A story was recently reported in the press that a certain
Bal Singh (U.K.) is prepared to change the religion of his four-year
old daughter to enable her to join a Roman Catholic school.
This will enable the child to stay with her friends and also
progress in life. Sikhism respects all religions. It will be
interesting to have a successful entrepreneur like Sardar Gurujot
Singh shed light on his views on religion and its place in society,
particularly in this context. --
