Sunday, May 6, 2007

Chalta hai

I ventured out of the ISB bubble for the first time the other day into the city of Hyderabad. And my first impression, extremely well-managed and beautiful roads, not very unruly traffic and all in all, a pleasant environment. Of course, this description discounts the very hot and humid weather.The first thing we noticed about Hyderabad was how green it was. Considering that in the old parts of town like Jambaug, water supply is restricted to every other day, I was amazed to see how green all the medians and the lawns were. I could see the effort on the part of the authorities in trying to make this a greener and cleaner city than others in the country.
My foray was prompted by an urge to eat something non-Indian on the part of me and my husband. California has completely spoilt us, in terms of the broad palette that we have been exposed to. I cannot believe how we could eat just Indian food everyday of our lives for the 22 odd years before we left home! So, I had to find out about stores that would sell imported vegetables and the sort a la Pulse in Pune. I was told about a place called Pure n Natural and that is where I was headed. I did find an expansive array of really fresh fruits and vegetables and a lot of "exotic" ones too (e.g. avocado). But I also found a perfect case of "chal raha hai to chal ne do" attitude that is so typical of us Indians especially, in the market place.
This is a relatively small store, filled to the brim with merchandise. From the looks of the clientele, I am sure the owners/managers make a tidy profit out of this store. But the place is poorly managed. Actually I would say there is no management at all. It is one step above the retail vegetable vendors at Cotton Market in Nagpur. These are some of the things that I noticed:
  • There were too many employees than there should be. There were employees who were supposed to be arranging vegetables on the shelves. For 4 rows, there were 4 employees. This job could easily have been done by 2 people and as there were 4 employees in close proximity to each other, chatting up seemed to be the order of the day, rather than finishing the work at hand. In spite of the place being overrun by employees, nobody knew anything about the prices or availability of the merchandise. Neither me or any of the other 4 people who had questions got any answers. I understand that we have a huge population, but employing 3 people to do one person's job doesn't make business sense. And given the general work ethics of the populace, the job DOES NOT get done. I do not understand why they could not just have a hierarchical system, with a manager, 2 people at the 2 registers with 2 helpers to bag the goods and 1 person each for the 4 rows. Thus would make for a proper flow of traffic for the customers who would not be ducking sacks of potatoes and maneuvering in the 2 feet between the rows of vegetables to get to the fruits.
  • Another slip on their part is the absence of labeling on the shelves. I saw an effort to do so in form of sloppy, handwritten signs of chalk on slates, but even those were illegible. When you have a successful and sophisticated data entry, pricing and bar-coding system in place, how difficult is it to have proper signs so people can find what they are looking for instead of asking 4 different employees who usually don't know the answer anyway.
  • Young boys of 10 and 11 years of age were the carry-out helpers! And the amazing thing was well-dressed, educated looking middle-aged men and women did not bat any eyelid before letting these young children carry their heavy bags for them. Societal apathy?
This is how things have been done in the country and irrespective of the growth that we have seen in the past few years nothing really has changed. The "chalta hai" attitude will be the bane of the Indian society.
In spite of all my ravings, will I go back to the store? Till I find out that there is another store which sells mushrooms or red bell peppers of avocados, I will. And the owner knows that. If he can scrape the last paise of profit, what difference does it make how his store is run ? He may be living in a palatial mansion in Jubilee Hills but his store will have rotten vegetables on the floor. After all, how the customer feels and what kind of an experience the customer has are things that are best left to American companies, right? But what they don't realize is that these Wal-Marts and Sonys and Citibanks take this "customer satisfaction" issue seriously. And for the discerning customer these "soft" things will be important. So in the long run, the ill-maintained Indian store loses out to the firangi companies- and that too in the name of development.

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