The past 4 days back home have been a great chance to finnaly get some rest! Sleep deprivation and jet lag have meant i have been sleeping for silly amounts of hours - but its getting better. Last night i had my first craving for a freshly cooked Aloo Paratha... or was it Roti and Pav Bhaji? The food is something i'll miss and will always remember.

The meaning and impact of my trip has only just started to sink in as i am starting to think about how i can get my message accross to as many young people as i can. But for now all i can say is thank you Global Fellowship for such an amazing and inspiring opportunity. The 6 weeks was somehting that i'd never have been able to do if it wasn't for the British Council and their relentless organising and dedication. So thank you to everyone in the UK and India who made my trip something i will remember forever.

Now the hard work begins.....

So my final two weeks were spent learning how a global business operates working at TaTa Consultancy Services. We’re staying in the outskirts of Bangalore; that means 1.5 hour drive to the city center – after all, this is a city of 10 million people! Work everyday is at ITPL – International Tech Park Ltd where many businesses have their offices. It is a huge expanse of high rise buildings which provides everything a business man or women may ever need – there’s even a large mall on-site!

 

At the company itself we have been learning about a background of the Indian economy and the role that IT Services and Consultancy has played in the service sector boom over the past 30 years. It has been really interesting to learn about the heritage of the Tata Group, which is the largest conglomerate in India. There are 98 businesses under the Tata name so it is a household name and everybody is so happy to hear we are working at TCS, the ‘pride’ company of India.

 

One day we took a trip to an engineering college to see how the company ties links with higher education institutes. Campus recruitment is where TCS gets their biggest amount of labor each year so they aim to pair with the best institutions and get the best graduates. They are competing with the best; Wipro and Infosys. I understood how it is fundamental to the successes of the IT Industry that there is a readily available of highly skilled engineers. They are of such good quality because so many students go into the higher education system; about 11% of school leavers- considering that the population currently stands at 1.2 billion that is a substantial amount of students. Due to the high demand for university education universities are able to operate under the collegiate system. This enables them to are able to have better equipment and facilities that rival most university departments in the UK due to higher funds and demand.

 

This week we were lucky enough to learn more about TCS’ CSR Maitree program that they run – In Hindi it means friendship. Maitree enables employees and their families to take part in one of many projects that they help with under the domains of Health, Education and the Environment. The lovely thing to see about this particular scheme was that it was local to each office across the country. TCS offices are widespread throughout India so instead of pairing with an NGO  they have chosen local projects which effect the local people where the employees work – in this sense TCS is truly giving back to their local community. One thing which really surprised me was that there were not a huge amount of ‘go green’ initiatives present in the CSR – generally they planted trees and told people about how to make a difference in relation to the environment. I felt that perhaps they needed to take a more active role and combine the education aspect of their CSR with the environmental aspect. This way they would be able to introduce recycling scheme across the schools that they do some great work at.

We went with about 20 volunteers of Wednesday morning to get a taste for the work that they do. We visited a local government school which had very little facilities and the children came from very underprivileged backgrounds. TCS employees go into this school each Wednesday where they teach English to students who are so enthusiastic to see them! The pupils said that they love studying English because it means that “I cam talk to anyone” which was something fascinating to hear in a country with 22 national languages.

 

We have visited many departments within TCS, such as the Financial Services branch where we learnt about the software packages in core banking systems that they provide to many major banks throughout the world. We heard about how the company is innovating its systems to meet the demands of the domestic market – India 1 in 4 adults have a legal bank account; thus hearing about how they are rolling out banking in rural areas through mobile ATM machines in the back of vans powered by solar power was fascinating. I was pleased to hear that TCS was helping to enable the development of micro-finance in India as credit is one of the key needs of development here.

We also had a video conference with Arvind Srivas about bridging the cultural divide between India and the west within business environments – he has worked all over the world in his lifetime and it was great to hear some perspectives upon our culture. I learnt so many things about my culture and the way in which we act in the west; things that you never thing about because they are habit. For example, when Indians do business in the west and particularly in the UK many find it difficult to adjust to our social etiquette of constantly saying ‘Sorry’, ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ throughout the day.

 

We were taken to an Offshore Development Center where TCS was designing engine parts for General Motors – it was all top secret in there but very interesting. The fact that they are currently designing engines for models in 2014-2015 was mind-blowing. So you can imagine the level of Research and Development the department has to undertake to understand and implement technologies that will be available for implementation in the future. We were also exposed to how the company tests their software and the labs that they use to analyze eye movements and ease of use. We also saw a Business Outsourcing Processes (BPO) set up which is what you and I know as an Indian call center – but it is much more than that. People behind these desks all have engineering degrees and are highly qualified to advise customers with queries. We got to listen to some callers from the UK who were experiencing problems on their operating systems!

 

Overall, I have found these 2 weeks really interesting due to the fact that I came with little prior knowledge of the IT Industry and I now feel that I understand this vital sector. It is an industry where there are SO many opportunities for engineers in general; be they mechanical, software or electrical experts. These are skills that we lack back home and I think if more people at 6^th Form level understood what exciting opportunities the IT Industry presents globally then more people would be attracted to enter this industry and pursue science based subjects.

 

So the past two weeks living with Nupur have flown by. Indian family life is so different to how we do it back home. Living in such a confined space in comparison to our houses makes families co-exist so much more happily and with so much more ease. Families are used to sharing person space, which I'm really not. So that has been a steep learning curve but valuable skills have come of it. I have loved living in the Heritage 'society' with its warm and friendly, community atmosphere. To me it seems like a really lovely environment to grow up in as there are many facilities to entertain young people and their parents feel that they can give their children autonomy in the compound because it is safe. However, the other side of the coin is that young people are treated like children up until a high age, 21 perhaps. So at the age of 16 Nupur is not allowed outside of the gates of 'Heritage' without special permission from her parents. In this sense I feel that the culture encourages parents to wrap their children in cotton wool a bit too much. Whilst recognizing that India can be a dangerous place I wonder how young people can be prepared for adult life when they rely upon their parents for everything up until such an old age. The unity within a family is huge; it is the most important thing to every Indian. The support young people get from their parents is unbelievable in comparison to how it is at home. Parents see it as their duty from the day their child is born to be able to look after them financially until they get a job - no matter what age that may be. Thus, they pay for all education, university - the lot. They don't expect their child to have a part-time job or to spend time looking after siblings. Instead it is the child's sole duty to study, to grow up into an individual with a sense of tradition and into someone who has a strong moral compass. Everything else is taken care of so they have fewer pressures to cope with throughout their teenage years. This means that the quality of education many middle class young people have is second to none as they all have huge determination and drive to achieve success and reach their chosen profession in life- perhaps the drive that young people lack in the UK? However, this leads to a huge amount of expectation placed upon the child to achieve top results and get into the best colleges in the country - the suicides amongst young people in education is the highest in the world. These stories are not rare in local and national papers. The culture of family is something that is propelling this nation’s economy forward so quickly; the support they receive means that they can focus on their studies and their parents help to install drive within them. The end result is highly qualified, young English speakers with huge aspirations – just the kind of young people growing MNC’s want to employ.

So on Sunday August 1st we moved in with our host families. I am living with a lovely family in North Bangalore - My partner, Nupur, is 16 years old and in the equivalent of Year 12 in the UK, studying at Delhi Public School (DPS) North. Firstly i will address an interesting point - I am in Bangalore at Delhi Public School... how does that work? Well its quite an interesting concept really. The Delhi Public School Society is one of the biggest organizations in India, which provides education at school level. There are now over 150 branches of DPS across India and there are over 10 branches in 10 countries abroad. So its an impressive franchise of private schools. At the highest level, 11th and 2th grade, parents pay around 1 lakh or about £1500 per year for tuition fees. So although the fees do not match the expense of British private schools it is all relative. DPS is known in Bangalore to be a school which educates the children of the cities elite. The campus reflects how much of a top notch school it is with extensive grounds and buildings constantly under construction and maintenance. I am living in a flat in the Heritage Society in North Bangalore with Nupur, her parents and her younger sister of 5 years old. Living in a 'society' is really different to how we live in the UK. Back home we tend to live in separate houses with separate facilities and living spaces. Often people don't interact with their neighbors at all but here it is very different. The society or compound is made up of about 15 blocks of flats, each which have about 15 floors with at least 3 flats per floor. That makes about 675 flats altogether - there is a real community feeling. There are many shared facilities like the clubhouse where there is a gym, swimming pool and a library. The kids play out on the basketball courts and in the park until the night closes in as parents have certainty that their children are completely safe in this community. This made me reflect greatly on our own society - we need to give greater trust to our neighbors and create more of a community spirit, especially in more urban areas. For my partner, this compound is central to her social life and when we go for an evening walk she seems to know every other person who walks by. The spirit and importance of the community is something i think often is overlooked back home as we lead such busy lives. Monday was back to school and a kind of awkward experience. Having just left and gained my independence from the strict structure of school life it was a bit like back to the daily grind. Up at 6:30, school by 8:30 and finish at 2:30 and home by 4:00. Admittedly shorter days that i had at school but still... yesterday was a shock to the system! School starts each day with Assembly where the entire school lines up - the 2000 of them altogether outside, listen to announcements, a summary of the news, the weather, national sports results and ending with a rendition of the national anthem with a drum and keyboard accompaniment. It is an impressive sight. We have been watching some lessons which has been really insightful though when I’ve seen some more I’ll have more to write about as I’ll be able to compare more. We have been taught a lot already. This morning i relished the opportunity to learn some Sanskrit, perhaps not to the liking of the others, but it was great fun. We learnt a common prayer about Saraswathi - the goddess of learning, which told how one should give prominence to education and not money. This is at the heart of most Indians as the acquisition of knowledge is a key pillar of Hinduism and with 80% of the population of India being Hindu we see this philosophy underpin many things within this society. Though it is true to say that many students do study with the dream of getting a well paid job in the future. This is something i really want to explore more. The experience living with a host family is so challenging as the language barrier is huge - mostly they speak hindi. However, i feel this way i am picking up on the tiny nuances of their culture and in the long term i will gain a great amount of understanding. The language barrier i have encountered makes me wonder about the lack of importance we place upon language learning in our country. Language learning is of paramount importance in todays world of global business. We cannot afford to sit back and let the rest of the world learn English whilst we take few active steps to learn other key languages of the world. If we do not step up the pace we will get left behind and the UK's labour force will be left increasingly inflexible whilst that of countries like India will become more flexible. Their economy will storm ahead. We need to rise to this challenge and understand that the skills employers are looking for are constantly changing. 74% of employers are looking to employ people with conversational language skills. To stay competitive in the global workforce we NEED to learn key world languages.

We took a trip on friday and saturday to the concept village of Navadashanam which was formed 20 years ago to provide an escape from daily life and to associate with nature through Eco-Restoration, organic and natural farming and alternative technologies. We travelled a few hours each way in the coach into the county of Tamil Nadu for the experience.

We had a Q&A session with a man, who honestly seemed to have the spirit of modern day Mahatma Gandhi. Although wacky, some of his philosophies made sense. "Only by accepting what is happening around you will you truly be able to achieve happiness"....

We also took a trip into a neighboring rural village which was a greatly eye-opening experience as it highlighted the great disparities in wealth and income in the country. About 70% of India's population work in agriculture in the countryside, so although we have seen the booming IT industries the is still a long way to go until the country becomes developed - to reach this goal it needs to be able to support the poorest and most vulnerable in society. The visit to the local school showed us the challenge this vast country faces in reducing the rich/poor divide as it was a single room school with children of many different ages being taught by a local man from the village- not a trained teacher.

We tasted some simple traditional indian food and us 4 girls settled down for the night under my 1-man mosquito net on what felt like a slab of concrete for a bed.

It's all an experience eh?

So we landed on Sunday 25th and it's now tuesday and this is the first proper time i have to sit down and blog as the British Council has kept up extremely busy as per usual.

The first two says in Bangalore have been so different to those in Delhi - it seems that the people are more friendly and the city is much safer so it feels a bit more like home i guess. We have spent a lot of time at Innisfree school in South Bangalore interacting with the pupils - on Monday we were given an orrientation on history, politics, education and social aspects of the state Karnataka by the pupils - it gave us such an interesting insight into how patriotic and proud to be Indian the people here are - whatever age it seems that they know their cultural identity instinctively. Is this something we are missing in the UK?

At the school we did some different types of art native to the region, like block printing on t-shirts with our indian counterparts and we spent some time playing basketball and volleyball together. Really fun day.

Yesterday we visited Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts. It was great to see how Indian culture is evolving with globalisation and hasn't been lost through modernisation. The center goes into schools and uses dance to explore social issues with young people accross India. It is also the one place in India which makes professional dance a viable career path for its dancers which is really positive for the country as through this we can see the gradual shift from traditional aspirations to become a doctor or engineer to the aspiration to become a professional in the arts field. We took part in a martial arts class which was a bit like yoga. It was really fun - perhaps i'd like to take something like that up on our return to the UK - i felt so at peace with myself after the session.

The past week in Delhi has been exhausting. We had a few themed days - for example we had a focus day on the environment when we met the Indian Climate Champions and spoke about the projects they were working on throughout the country. We also took a trip to Teri - The Energy and Resources Institute. It is a non-profit, scientific and policy research organization, working in India and globally in the fields of energy, environment and a whole range of sustainable development issues.

We had another day based upon entrepaneurship in India and how culture influences the Indian business environment - for example, we have seen the rise of fashion in India over the past 30 years; India has produced many influential desingers. This has led to an opening in the job market for models. Previously modeling was thought to be a dirty profession but now it has become a sought after job. Furthermore, the commercialisation of the film industry has played a decisive roll in combining culture and economics - 1000+ bollywood films are released each year and are highly demanded in the overseas market as well as the domestic market. Here we see that globalisation has not led to a reduction in the strength of culture - it has helped India in many ways to maintain its heritage and culture through the film industry.

We took a trip to Agra on the train - what an experience! The taj was beautiful and had such a rich history of the Moghul emperors which was real interesting to learn about.

 

 

 

We also spent an afternoon at The Institute of Home Economics where we learnt to Sari drape and learnt to make rangoli - a traditional indian piece of artwork which can be found at the front door of most homes to welcome guests.

An early start of 8:15 after yesterdays calamity of travel and briefings at the British High Commision in Delhi.

Today was 'CITY HUNT' in which we traveled to the major tourist destinations such as the Lotus Temple, Humayun's Tomb and India Gate via many different modes of transport - auto-rickshaw, cycle rickshaw, the bus and the metro. NEVER in my life have i encountered such busy streets, litterally cars and buses all honk at each other non stop, theres  NO lanne discipline at all; so on the freeway there are 4 lanes drawn onto the road but there will be six lines of traffic spread accross it! Crazy.

A hugely exciting yet a seriously scary moment was when Connor, an Indian student and I were in a rickshaw on the freeway and it broke down in the middle lane! We sat there peering out of the side  being honked at with the fear of being crashed into whilst the driver was frantically trying to restart it. 

We spent the day with some of our Indian peers from the university who were studying economics. It was really interesting to see the city through their eyes. They helped us get by hugely as they bartered with the drivers to make sure we didn't get ripped off with tourist prices and kept us on track so we didn't get lost!

The heat was almost unbearable, about 40 degrees and the greatest humidity. It really takes it out of you.

On Saturday 3rd July, 99 other global fellows and I descended upon the British Council for a long weekend of preparation for our trips.

I really wasn't sure what to expect as the only time I had met face to face with any fellows and/or staff was as the Interview, when most people were a bit on edge and hoping to win a place on the scheme!

So on arriving at Gloucester Road tube station after checking in at the hotel, trying to workout how to use my ticket in the barriers and then get onto the right line going the right way (i'm not from the city) i heard a voice behind me - "Are you on the Global Fellowship?".

I'm not sure how i gave it away, perhaps it was my anxious face not wanting to be late or maybe the various maps i was holding, but it was really comforting to hear another fellow ,luckily a londoner, tell me to get on the "circle line, eastbound to embankment, then we'll walk". Phew i thought, i am not going to be labelled 'the late one'.

The day went really quickly and the activities were great as we got to know eachother without experiencing too many of the awkward introductions namely of "Hi, whats you're name? Where are you from? Oh, wheres that? ......cool".

Sunday and Monday seem like a blur as we were so busy! We had really some helpfull sessions on photography and video recording/editing so we could convey our message clearly on our return. I got to grips with the tube stations and we set out for a meal on sunday night.

 

The visit to my corporate partner, Tata Consultancy Services, was eye-opening as i honestly had no idea about the scale of their business and that it was only one of the 98 businesses owned by the Tata Group, about the 9th largest business in the world. I was fascinated to hear about the structure of their business, as they are owned by a charitable trust so about 66% of their anual proftis gets given back into local communities. The visit also opened my eyes to the competitiveness of their workforce - TCS recieves about 1 million CV's for about 33,000 jobs each year.

Over the course of the weekend some really interesting people came in to teach us, like a lecturer from SOAS talking to us about Indian Culture, a Hindi teacher and an ex-IBM businessman talking about CSR. The pre-departure briefing settled many of my worries and made me feel confident to tackle the challenges that will inevitably lie ahead!

I left feeling overwhelmed at the friendliness of all the other fellows and with a feeling in my belly that i was embarking upon something really special.