INDEPENDENCE IN INDIA; INTERDEPENDENCE IN JAPAN

India is a divided country. Indian trust on other Indian is low. One has to prove himself over a period of time by words and action that they are trust worthy. India is a country of hero worship. Some of the individuals go to the extend of semi-God status. The rise of the concept of ‘individualism’ goes to the Indian education systems. Children go to the school at the age of three. They are taught, train and evaluated separately. The children are ranked first, second, third and go on respectively. The pressure on the children is so much to perform and be best among the best. This leads to the intervention of the NGOs, social groups and Government to abandon the marks and ranking system to more acceptable grading system. This system creates tough competition among individuals. Friends are all competitors during the period of studies and in work. Bright students do not help the weak students. In fact the upper middle class and the middle class focus on education make India a knowledge hub and a fertile ‘brain’ hunting ground for the Americans and Europeans.

Indians have a strong motion, ‘I must come up in life’, ‘I must achieve’, ‘I must earn tons of money for me and to my generations to come’. Independence has advanced meaning here. It is not only I must be independent, my sons and daughters also should be independent. This is certainly applicable at least on ‘financial independence’. That is why individuals amaze wealth in India. Indian ‘black money economy’ may be as big as ‘white money economy’.

Money makes almost all the things in India. There are lot of proverbs in India regarding the importance of money. ‘Even if you are dead, you need money’. ‘Even the dead open its mouth, if it smells the money’. Materialistic is a symbol of success in India. In Japan samurai culture, money has been thought to be somewhat course or crude and Japanese does not like to discuss about money.

Japanese education system develops the interdependence. At schools, the children are assigned to groups. The performance of the groups will be evaluated. The brighter students help the weak students in their group. So the over all performance of the group will go up. Students will identify themselves with the group. Students are all learned to be interdependent and work as a group. Out of the group is the worst punishment one will get. Japanese education is one of the competitive and best in the world.

In India, individual is different, organization is different. There is a saying, ‘You may go, I may come but organization exists for ever’. There are some chairmen and CEOs, their image is bigger than the organization itself. There are some cricketers in India, their image is bigger than the game itself. There are some film personalities who can enter politics and change the state and results of election. Individuals should be called to the public meeting and honoured with shawls and mementos on every possible occasion. Praise the individual on the public by listing what are the good things he has done and will do. It is a very important ritual in India, which most of the foreigners do not simply understand. Grease the individual ego in the public is an art the foreigner should understand to deal with the Indians.

Every month, quarterly, half-yearly and annual individual target will be given. Individuals will be evaluated monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and annually separately. It is a rigours process in sales. Numbers are more important. If you don’t have the numbers, you will be terminated. Incentives, increment and bonus are all based on numbers and your boss recommendations. If you dependent in an organization, that means, you don’t have the competency to occupy the chair and you don’t have the executive stature to command others. You will be dumped and out of the company with in six months. The employees will work in an organization, on an average, of two years, that’s it.

In Japan it is very difficult to separate the individual from organization, in which he/she is working. Since Japanese like harmonious relationship, an employee fell absolutely comfortable on dependent on other employees – Inter dependable among employees. This forms a chain of human network or human unit and works smoothly. Organization and employee relationship is life time and it is rare an organization fires an employee. Organization is dependent on employees and employees are dependent on organization. In Japan the success goes to the organization. Once Mr. Konosuke Matsushita, Founder of Matsushita Electrical Co. Ltd has said, “No matter how outstanding, a businessman will never receive an accolade from the Academy of Art, nor will he be awarded a Nobel Prize. But, all the same, he will at least have the satisfaction of having made a contribution to the wellbeing of humankind just as valuable as that of any other virtuoso.”