Indian? Yes. Air-Indian? No
(October 18, 2004)Why does one set of people produce world-class service and another opt for mental poverty?
I was to fly Air-India from Delhi to New York. In my hotel room, I was getting ready in a leisurely manner, confident that I had plenty of time - until the phone rang. The hotel told me that I had the timings wrong. The flight was leaving an hour earlier than the time written on the ticket. I tried arguing, half-drenched under the shower, that my ticket had to be correct. The hotel staff said they had the airline at the other end and I could speak to them. I did. After a quick confirmation, I rushed out - I had barely an hour to reach the airport and check-in.
The check-in counter was deserted but for a couple of people before me. The lady at the counter took what seemed to be eternity before my turn came. I was convinced she would not let me board. Anxious, I asked her the time of the flight. In a very placid voice, she said it would leave as per the time written on my ticket! I told her that I had spoken to Air-India earlier, and had been told that the flight time on my ticket was wrong. She had no answer. I boarded the plane, still smelling of soap. Just before take-off, while I was cursing the whole incident, the check-in lady appeared, apologised for the mix-up and upgraded me to first class. I promptly forgave Air-India.
On board, I met a friend. We were chatting in the alley with a drink, when a purser got us a bowl of mixture. What customer service, I told myself. My friend and I took turns to hold the bowl because we were also holding our drinks. After a while, the same purser joined us. He decided to get friendly, and started eating the mixture from the same bowl. We were taken aback by his friendliness, not to mention the unprofessionalism.
On another occasion, I flew from New York to Delhi - there was a family emergency. I had to rush from New York to Bhubaneswar. My idea was to land in Delhi and make a connection. The flight took off on time, but landed in Mumbai. I knew this had been planned because I had checked the Air-India website and learnt that there was a ban on flights over Pakistan. So the carrier was to land in Mumbai and then go to Delhi. But, to the 100-odd Sardarjis and their entourage who were headed for their pind, this was a surprise. They were told to get down and re-board in an hour.
That was alright. Except that an hour passed, then two, then three, then four, and nothing happened. No announcement. Not a single Air-India official there to say what was going on. The passengers began shouting, children were crying, old people in discomfort, a passenger fainted - confusion everywhere. Finally, the police got people from Air-India and after another three hours, a plane took the passengers to Delhi. I barely made the connecting flight. I told myself I would never fly Air-India again, not for the love of my life.
But I could not stay away for long. Last January, my wife and I boarded the national carrier from Newark to Mumbai via Paris. It was the thick of winter with temperatures near zero. You won't believe this, but the plane did not have enough blankets! There were a few that were given to people with young children. When tempers flew, the pursers - burly men in their 50s with hair awkwardly dyed - asked passengers to "complain to the authorities". The plane landed at Paris airport but was not taken to a gate. It was parked in the middle of the tarmac, where they opened the doors to get the plane cleaned and the pantry filled up. It was snowing, and for that full hour snow kept coming into the plane. Only frayed tempers kept us warm.
It is people who make an organisation. It baffles me to think of the low self-esteem of those who don the Air-India uniform and live this image. All airlines fly the same planes, get their lease, finance and insurance from the same agencies, use the same aviation fuel, take off and land at the same airports and get their food from the same catering service. Why then, does one set of people produce world-class service and another opt for mental poverty? Explanations apart, it is a pride thing.
The Mahatma's sadness
At first glance, our poor sense of hygiene seems to be rooted in poor education andpoverty. It is not WHEN the Mahatma returned from South Africa, he was pained by the pervasive lack of cleanliness among Indians. The most talked about story is the one in which he was travelling in a train. A co-passenger who kept coughing would spit the phlegm on the floor of the train. The Mahatma took his handkerchief and cleaned the phlegm with his own hands. In Sabarmati, he started the practice of cleaning toilets, and insisted that 'Ba' do the same. Even in his writings, he expressed pain over the lack of sensitivity among Indians for hygiene and cleanliness. It would appear that the problem is rooted in poverty, poor infrastructure and education. The truth is, it is not.
1990: I was posted in California. My work included looking after Indian software engineers who came for six months to a year to work on projects. Typically, two engineers shared an apartment. Most of them were bachelors. One day, an infuriated apartment manager called me up and blasted me. She demanded that I come and see how my people 'lived in a pig sty'. I drove to the apartment complex at once.
She took me to one particular apartment where two engineers had stayed. The tour began with the toilets. The tiles were covered with mildew and soap stains. The floor was black, there was hair all over. The mirror on the washbasin was covered with water stains and shaving foam. The basin made my stomach turn. She showed me the carpet - it had not been vacuumed since they had moved in. The sofa was littered with food. And in the kitchen, dirty utensils which had been used over several days were piled at the side of the counter.
I was speechless. Apart from the complete lack of sensitivity, I was dumbfounded by how the residents found living like that acceptable. After all, they came to the same place everyday and cooked, ate and slept there! A thought that crossed my mind was the poor allowances that were paid to the engineers. Back then, the RBI permitted remittance of $1,800 per person, per month as 'living allowance'. Out of that, an engineer kept $900 for personal expenses and food, and used the balance to pool in with two others and rent a car and an apartment. For some time, I thought that the poverty of the mind began somewhere there.
2004: The Indian software industry has arrived. We do not have issues with how much we can spend on our travelling engineers. In every country where our people go, we pay comparable wages. Yet, the other day, a pained customer of an Indian software company brought to light a repetition of what I had witnessed in 1990. This time, the customer had to bear the brunt. He brought photographs of a place he had rented for visiting Indian engineers. The housekeepers who managed the place were exasperated, and refused to clean it any further. The gentleman had to ask for expert help to clean the place. The expert agency had one look, and said they would bring it back to shape if they were paid $3,200! Meanwhile, word had spread and locals there refused to rent to people of Indian origin.
In Japan, children who go to kindergarten are taught to clean their toilets. A child who realises that it is not one man's job to create filth and another's to clean it grows up with greater sensitivity. Years back, when I was working on Six Sigma in one of our earlier companies, a group of visiting experts from Motorola told me: "The day your toilets are Six Sigma, your products and services will become Six Sigma."
We have created great educational institutions. But what value is an education that fails to teach us ambassadorship? What good is our reputation as software designers if residents in a small European town do not want to rent to us because we leave their houses in a defaced condition? When I was a little boy, my father taught me a simple message. He said: "Always leave the newspaper and the toilet the way you would like to find them." For me, that was good enough. For the rest of us, do we need to make the Father of the Nation return again?
