Growing Pains at the Level of a Nation

In India, the exception to the rule is the rule.  It’s historically been that way and it’s still that way in many cases.  Standardization in daily life dealings is not the way things work.  An exception comes from left field, you get a bit frustrated, have to adjust to it and make the situation work. 

It’s not that these things don’t happen in other countries.  They do.  It’s just that here in India there doesn’t seem to be a method to the madness.  Many times, there is no structure to anything.  And so things feel like they come from nowhere.  The truth is not everything is a coincidence and you aren’t losing your mind.  It’s the unstructured way of doing business that is throwing your head in a spin. 

Why, or how, do things happen in bunches?  An unwritten rule is that people don’t work in isolated environments and there is constant overlap in dealings.  Many things are passed on.  Many things and many people are connected, whether you want it or not.

For example, if you apply for one credit card, somehow you will start getting calls from 3-4 other companies within the week (the consumer data services can’t be that efficient).  You will finally talk to them and be surprised at how they know so much about you.  You’ll call the representative at the first company who solicited your application and completed your paperwork and find out that he’s not actually employed by the credit card company you were applying to, he’s just an agent.  He services many credit card companies.  Of course, he never disclosed that to you.

The agent took it upon himself to submit your information to another vendor, but not officially.  He passed on your information and the second credit card company is now calling you with an offer and asking you questions they already have the answers to, as their subtle acknowledgements will confirm.  The agent thought you wanted a credit card, so why are you complaining?!  He doesn’t seem to think that you might not have wanted two and even if you did, that doesn’t give him the permission to pass on your information.  Oh, but how does that matter, he was trying to help you get what you wanted.

As another example, if you apply to one job (via HR) at an educational institution, you’ll all of a sudden get a call from another company where you hadn’t submitted a resume, a company you would not have applied to (i.e. a company in an industry you want to leave).  The educational institution will have passed on your resume without your consent (and keep you hanging for an interview by telling you they’re not scheduled yet!).  If you ask Company B how they got your name and information, they’ll inform you you had just submitted your resume last week Friday, coincidentally a few days after you had submitted your resume to the original organization.  You have your answer yet you can’t do anything about it.  Either the two people at the two organizations were friends and they routinely pass resumes along or, shudder the thought, there’s a structured (the irony of it!) underground system at work when it comes to educational institutions passing on resumes to companies/recruiters as if you were one of their students looking for a job, not applying for a staff position.  I call it underground because it was done without your consent.

This is not just about disclosure or that your information gets dumped in a database that a company can buy.  It’s also not about lack of transparency.  It’s not about discerning you from similar but unrelated groups of people or customers.  It’s much more than that.  It’s not even just about privacy, a concept that isn’t mainstream, it seems like it’s only starting to make its way in.  It’s even more than that.  It’s about professional conduct and respecting an individual’s right to choose (which jobs they apply for or which/how many credit cards they want, for example).  It’s about having and following rules so when things happen they don’t seem so out of whack.  It’s about structure!

The further interesting thing is that the opposite of this is also true.  Things have improved dramatically where rules are being enforced.  The problem is also that we may have now hit the other extreme in many cases as well.  We may not have the flexibility to accomodate situations in an attempt to enforce rules.  So you either have no structure or you have too much.  Either you have no rules and business happens chaotically or you have extreme rigidity where customer focus and service don’t matter.

Yes, my judgement is a result of the fact that I lived in the US for many years.  It’s also the result of a country that is finding itself, is growing, is stretching.  It’s just that sometimes the way it goes about doing all this can be a bit harrowing.  These are growing pains, at the level of a nation!