Deprived of basic rights in a foreign land

“It’s Tuesday, there wont be any cops today to check,” said one man to another, goading him to carry on drinking despite having to drive back home.

So, for this guy, the absence of a cop is of higher significance than driving under the influence of alcohol.

The absence of a cop is of higher significance than being responsible for his own life and life of others on the road, needless to say, his family who might be waiting for him at home.

Ironically, in reality for his breed of highly educated, urban, upper middle class (rich), young, brash Indians, even the presence of a cop makes absolutely no impact because all they have to do is pay the cop a few hundreds and get by.

This guy is a very well educated, software engineer that has worked in the best of international companies, has travelled abroad. But chooses to live in India. This is why he loves his own country.

A lot of such Indian men I know choose to live in India/ want to get back to India in the name of patriotism and/or the cliché’ of ‘that’s the emerging market – that’s where the growth is. India is shining.’

To me at the heart of this ‘wear on my sleeve’ patriotism it is none of this.

To me, at the heart of this is to enjoy some of the basic rights and freedom that these men are deprived of in foreign countries. e.g:

• It is the ‘freedom’ to be able to bottle down as much alcohol as you wish…pay a bribe to a cop and get away on a high...
• It’s the ‘freedom’ to travel alone to hinterlands without fearing of being raped and murdered. Doing many such things that only a man can enjoy.
• It is the ‘freedom’ to be able to pinch the bottom of a woman in a bus, get some cheap thrills of it and not have any implications what so ever…
• It’s the ‘freedom’ to leach at women and/or pass lewd comments and have some fun at her expense…
• It's the 'freedom' to be under 18, brutally rape someone and be free in 3 months for being a minor 
• It’s the ‘freedom’ to return to a ‘hotel like home’ after a hard days work where some one has prepared the food, set it on the table, washed the clothes, ironed them…so these men can go back fresh for another hard day at work.
•  It is the joy of being treated like a king by the mother and in future the ‘in-laws’ for being the son and son in law respectively. 
• It is the joy of having another other gender to be called a wife who ‘provides’ and ‘serves’ – dotes on every word uttered by the man, has been taught not to ever question HIS authority.
• It's the 'freedom' that being a man, one can bully, threaten his way out of things or manage the corrupt processes where sheer arm wrestling can get things done. 
• It's the possibility to shout at a louder voice and make all the other voices shut up 
• Basically, it is the ‘freedom’ to walk, head held high in pride, pumped up chest and enjoy getting away with anything for being the superior gender. 
•  The joy of truly LIVING the ubiquitous, ‘chalta hai’ attitude, which all Indians love to hate but cannot live without.

Many of these ‘basic rights’ of Indian men are not met in western countries where over years and after many reforms and revolutions in the past, the society has become RELATIVELY tolerant to the existence of the other gender.

Who in their right frame of mind will ever want to give up on these rights and live elsewhere?

Incidentally, those that dwell on these basic rights, subscribe to them (consciously/ subconsciously) are also the ones to pretend to have a fire in their belly to change the country.

God forbid! The inferior races beware. 

(Little wonder that the inferior races try to wriggle their ways to other places eh?) 

(Recent incidents in India with respect to women's rights and a lot of discussions with various men made me write this rather sarcastic note. I do not mean to generalize. I am very fortunate that I have always had extremely open minded and supportive men around me. I continue to have them in my life. But I know there are not many like me.) 

Awaiting the Oxford alumni status

Thanks to 2 good samaritan class mates of mine, my business (thesis) project got submitted on time. I got the official confirmation of the receipt of my project from my college. (yes I can call it MY college)

Through the illness, this project proved to be a great way to keep my mind occupied with something else and something more interesting.

It feels good to have completed it despite so much going on.

It couldnt have happened without the support of V ...for keeping my focus on the project all through, Marc my professor for having gone through various drafts and providing feedback, Gautam and Isabel for submitting my project to the college on time and their enthusiasm to lift my spirits up.

Now that it's submitted, I await the results and so look forward to the graduation party in summer. I sure hope I can make it for the graduation.

And hope to get 'the' status soon too.
Feb 2012-Jan 2013, it was an awesome experience through the year.

Holistic policy making? (is that an oxymoron?)

Off late there has been a lot of news about Germany opening up to highly skilled Indian work force to address the skills gap in the country. In the last 4.5 years I have been in Germany, I have seen an increasing number of Indians relocating here.

Germany encourages these foreigners to learn the language and even offers ‘integration’ courses to learn more about the country and its culture. I highly appreciate these programs.

However, with my recent experiences with the German health system (which again relatively speaking is good), I wondered what about these systems becoming sensitive to the cultures and needs of these foreigners?

I use the word, ‘sensitize’ carefully because I do not expect whole systems to gain deep understanding of every different nationality that lives in Germany. But I do believe some basic level of sensitization (accepting diversity in the society) should go a long way.

• E.g. A sister in the University of Heidelberg Hospital (the best and most internationally diverse in Germany) will be able to find a vein in dark skin more easily without pricking me 4 times before she finally finds some blood. Only an experienced doctor gets it right the first time.

The health insurance company agrees to fund the expenses for the donor, including flight tickets, accommodation if required etc. Appreciate it. 

The kind of family orientation we have in India, there is no chance that just a patient and the donor will walk into a hospital to get a major surgery done on them. 

No an Insurance company need not spend for a big fat Indian family to fly over, however maybe some schemes/ some % can be worked out to HELP the immediate family (parents/spouse)?

A clear win-win for the German health system would be if along with opening doors for highly skilled work force of India, also sign up on collaborative health care with India (and other countries that bring tis work force). If the public health insurance system can fund for medical care anywhere in Europe, the only reason it doesn’t fund for medical care in India is because there is no official policy level agreement between the two countries.

• IMAGINE: German health officials ‘certify’ a few hospitals in every big city of India for their standard of healthcare and collaborates with them…. if this Indian work force living in Germany chooses, they can seek medical care (especially for big complicated issues) in their home country, get their family support, be in familiar environment…and be covered with the health insurance, it would be so much cheaper for the German system and satisfying for the patients.

As always, policy makers rarely think holistic. If only they did and explore possibilities, the world would indeed be more flat than it currently is.

Yes, I cannot help but think like a Design Thinker – even when I am sick. The world is full of ‘wicked problems’ to be solved and therefore full of opportunities.

Wishing away 2012

2012 has been an extremely stressful year. I am really looking forward for the year to end with the hope that 2013 will be better.
The biggest high was, I started my Diploma course in Strategy and Innovation from Said Business School, University of Oxford. Given a higher education was on my list of to dos for a long time, this was more that what I ever imagined I would do. Going to Oxford for my classes, meeting a completely diverse set of class mates was all a great experience. Studying and getting past the rituals of a closed book, Oxford style examination 3 times was definitely stressful but on each passing exams brought some kind of a thrill and sense of achievement too.
At work, after a long time I found myself totally engaged and entrenched in my project thanks to a great team and a very interesting project. We had a very ambitious timeline - to deliver a product in just 8 months. We did it. That too with a pretty happy customer. For the first time in four years in Germany, I finally was meeting customers across Europe.

With such a high engagement project at work and the executive education, there was not much time for anything else.

2012 was definitely low on getting a some quality time for myself and for just me and my husband.
We had one real vacation to Northern Fance with friends along with some short weekend trips to Oxford, Norderney (German north sea islands).

We watched:
Dream Theatre, Bruce Springsteen, Soundgarden, cold play, Nickelback

Finally as the year was coming to an end and we were running out of steam came a surprising new health situation for me. A mystery problem with my kidneys. Stumbled upon it totally by accident but something that has disrupted my schedule a lot.

Yet to find out what's really wrong, what caused it...

In the midst of it, trying to complete the (thesis) project of my Oxford course.

Usually the coming of a new year for me is not something very significant...it's just a continuation of time. But this year the new year seems to be like a new beginning...am laying a lot of hopes on it and hoping it won't disappoint.

Wishing myself and everyone a happy 2013

Prioritize...reprioritized

Whats it like to do an executive education with a full time job?
- It is completely crazy. I now know and understand exactly what people mean when they say, studying with a full time job is not easy.
Here's how I'm coping with it so far:

1. I have not spent enough time caring for my lovely plants in the balcony. 
2. The people who used to think I'm being 'frivolous' with my life (because I was traveling around all the time, I was not pregnant) turn around and start telling me, 'hey, go get some fun in life. stop being so serious. give yourself a break.'
3. I have a bored spouse who is really bored of me being buried in my course materials, doing my assignments, preparing for my exams...and also laying traces of my course materials all over the house :P 
4. I have not cleaned the windows this whole year
5. My college assignment deadlines and my bad planning capabilities screwed up a vacation opportunity to celebrate my birthday
6. Apart from one real vacation to Northern France, V and I have not gone on any long vacations this year. I haven't spent time scanning Google Maps to plan vacations. 
7. The washed laundry lie there for days before I pick up something to wear from the pile.
8. I have not been proactive for a few things at work, given my schedule

I have one final thesis to get started on and submit by mid Jan 2013. Meanwhile, we would also like to travel to India. I will try my best to manage all of this better. But its really not something I do well. My mood, the weather, people...there are too many things that can affect me and put all the planning off on a tizzy.

Lets see how it goes! :) 

Preventive maintenance versus reactive repairs

Preventive maintenance: Works on the principle of prevention is better than cure. Fair enough. But what one needs to know is, in this school of thought, each time you take your car to a workshop for check up and service...in the quest for keeping all it's systems near perfect...to avoid any big breakdown issue, almost every time there will be some thing discovered that isn't working quite right - something that needs to be repaired.
It would be extremely rare to come out of such a check up with a clear result that everything is working just fine.
From a finance perspective, this potentially involves small, frequent expenses. 

Reactive repairs: In this school of thought, you go to a car workshop when you as the owner of the car notice something strange and want to get it checked.
In this mode, you remain indifferent to all the small things that keep cropping up and only take action when you believe that the problem is not really going away and you make a decision on seeking expert check up.
From a finance perspective, this potentially involves larger infrequent expenses.

What would you pick?

This is the basic difference between a scenario where there is public health and there is no 'real, mainstream' public health system involved.
In Germany, having a public health insurance works on the preventive maintenance model. Since the money involved is a pool of tax payer's money, the aging population to look after etc. The public health system really tries to identify health issues in people early on - when treatment from this pool is relatively cheaper and lesser. They discourage waiting for the last minute because that will mean potentially higher costs.
But how can one live peacefully with the FYI given to you by the doctor about a list of things that are wrong in your body? Knowing is the first part - taking action on this is a loooooong drawn process that can span many years until some real actionable insight is arrived. This is how the public health insurance system works here.
It's a painful process, but at a macro level, it works on ensuring a certain standard of healthcare for all people regardless of their ability to pay etc.

In India, we do not visit a doctor unless we feel something is really wrong with us...unless all home remedies have failed. Recently, in the IT industry, our employers made it mandatory to do check ups annually. But this is a small segment of the population. Most of us do not think of a doctor unless we feel we need to. Most often we pay money directly to the doctors for our treatment. General, mainstream health issues are still relatively cheap for the middle class.
In this case, the longer we wait, the more the doctors and medical institutions benefit. Sometimes waiting becomes quite an expensive affair for the patients too (even middle class) because one has to pay for it completely out of one's savings.

I am not sure I know which model I prefer. From a peace of mind perspective, I prefer the Indian - reactive approach. I believe the body is capable of healing itself. I am sure there are some things that are not working optimally. But as long as they do not impact my day-to-day life, I do not bother. However, who knows when something potentially small can turn into something big? Should I be thankful of things that are identified?

I don't know. Do you? What would you prefer?

Business travel by train

For the first time, I travelled by train on a business trip to Amsterdam. I just loved it. Although it made me wake up at ungodly hours, I was immediately on the go to my destination - unlike all that wasted time spent getting to the airport, being there a couple of hours before, queing up for baggage drop off, queuing up again for security checks, get everything out of the bags only to put them back in, wait at the boarding gate, then wait on the runway...

In the ICE (inter-city express) on the other hand, there's a little cafe on board to grab breakfast, I looked out of the window at the lovely countryside along the way and best of all, I got off the train, in the center of the city of Cologne and walked in to the beautiful Cathedral before the next train to Amsterdam.

I noticed there were many other business travelers in the train. On my way back, they were a majority. When two american backpacking girls next to me got in, confused about their seating, their huge, overused backpacks banging against everyone around, they caused quite a ruckus amongst the suit clad business folks :)

I will choose train travel any day over flights or driving for such short distance business trips.