As I wrote yesterday I read a wonderful Indian novel, The white tiger, an example of ambiguity in motives. I wrote the novel shortly after hearing a wonderful presentation from Aya Gnadig and Harry Key from H,T,P, Concept at the qualitative ESOMAR congress in Istanbul, called Culture Karma Chameleon.
The gist of their presentation was that the complexity of the Indian society is not easy to dive in to. They sort of summarized the indian culture in 5 words, but none of these actually meant what you would have thought if you read them without context. The word ‘quality’ for instance was applied to gear that needed repair every day, but that proved to be very usefull. The ease to adapte was another aspect of quality.
The most interesting word was ‘Masala’ that apparantly is a sort of symbol for the complexity of Indian society. Literary the word means ’spicemix’. But it is a metaphor for the ‘no fixed state’ that everything is in according to Indian society and for the fact that in india opposites are often held for truth.
This is a difficult concept for western society and especially for the Management culture that is up to now mainly binory driven (a bit can be either true or false). Maybe the Indian society is better equipped for the growing complexity than our own.