IIMA and incredible India

It is three weeks ago that I left campus, but it feels like a century ago. Living on a campus where everything - eating, sleeping, classes, library, hanging out with friends - happens inside that bubble is very intense but is also what made the experience so special. Still, it was not easy to make friends with the Indians. Common problem when on exchange, I guess, but for instance spending time with Raj in Chennai was very nice and a meaningful experience for both us exchange students as for him, I am sure. Group work with Indian students did not give me an opportunity for really getting to know Indian students. In the feedback session at the end of the semester the university promised to organize more facilitated interactions between Indian and exchange students. There was no introduction week or something similar for instance, but instead we had a dinner with the manager and professors.

Studying at IIMA is basically like studying at any good university, but you have to be prepared for constant change of schedules, having lectures late in the evening or during the weekend and that the changes happen on a very short notice. The professors are talented speakers, have understandable English and are very knowledgeable in their subjects. During the courses I learned to understand the history and political environment of India, and how that has influenced the development of the corporations and the country in general.

Colorful clothes and spicy food, traditions and a rich culture, cows wandering around on the streets and in between cars, huge crowd and noise - that was how I pictured India before going there. Now, after spending almost four months in India I really don't know how to describe the country. I could start by saying that it is full of extremes. The food is either sweet or spicy. The climate in the north can reach extremely hot in the summer and cold winter temperatures but it is constantly hot in the south. During the day the traffic is ongoing, loud and the rules are either non-existed or they just tend to change constantly. At night all the cars disappear and the streets turn into bedrooms for so many. Pavements are during the day storage of the belongings of the people who will sleep there at night. There were cows, goats, dogs and monkeys running among the traffic, and occasionally a very desperate beggar or children selling balloons approached cars waiting at traffic lights.

Infrastructure, processes and any kind of organizing requires a lot of flexibility. Whether it is eating in a restaurant or traveling - everything just takes so much time. Sometimes the inefficiency is so frustrating to see because the processes often do not make sense at all to the Western eye. At restaurants there are separate workers assigned for taking orders, bringing drinks, preparing the food, bringing the food, and once finished yet another person brings the bill to the table. Had one person done all of it, it would've been so much smoother. In India the tasks that one person could complete are divided to several people and workers strictly stick to the tasks assigned to them only. Basically in India you can see work that would not exist elsewhere.

Even though memories grow sweeter with time, what I will remember forever about India is the inequality which is so visible on so many levels it is difficult to understand. Inequality exists between sexes, religious groups and castes. To make it even worse, there is very little interaction between the different layers of society - how can  the country develop as a whole when those in power and with money do not care to think about the poor and powerless? Aren't we all human beings and because of that important as we are? The most important thing India taught me was to appreciate what I have - I am free of any external boundaries set by society because of my family background or because I was born as a girl. Instead the contrary is a problem as I have so many opportunities it is hard to choose the path suitable to me.

What I will miss most from my life on campus is the chai from the small chai stall, watching Bollywood music videos every morning during breakfast in the mess and of course the crazy crowd of exchange students with whom I had the pleasure of exploring so much of India. In the first week we all watched together a Bollywood movie called Queen. It's about a strong Indian girl who gets dumped by her husband just before the wedding, but still travels alone to Europe on her honeymoon. So, to remember the happy moments in India and to promote strong Indian women, I want to share this song here.

Exploring even more of India

And then it was my last day on campus. I spent it packing mainly, but there was also time for a long lunch at the Aplha One mall and an even longer dinner in a restaurant nearby - until it was time for the last chai and last goodbyes. Studying in Ahmedabad and living on campus was a great experience with many good memories, but it was time to start traveling and explore India a little more with Jonna, a friend who flew over from Sweden. During our two week travel we visited in total five states and seven cities, spent hours in different modes of transportation, saw the richness of the culture and the many contrasts India has - I think you could say we saw the real India. Our adventure had many highlights and a few lows but definitely a good way to finish my stay in India.

Red Fort

We started in Delhi, where we saw the Red Fort, Gate of India and Jama Masjid. The last one is a mosque where we and all the other Western women visiting the place, had to wear a full body cover cloth. We also had to pay 300 rs, either as entrance or for the cloth - it wasn’t very clear to us. In Jaipur we met a very nice rickshaw driver called Ali, who drove us to all the places we had to see, such as the Amber Fort and Jal Mahal, the water palace. He probably knew what Western girls like, so he also took us to a guru, which was a very interesting experience and gave us a lot to think about. For instance that the place I live causes me depression and said I should think about Australia.

Taj Mahal

Then we continued to Agra, where we saw the Taj Mahal early in the morning. As the sun was still rising we could see the Taj in different colours. There were several advantages of being early as we did not have to wait long, there were not many people yet and it was not too hot - in fact quite the contrary and we were shivering. Saying the Taj Mahal is beautiful isn’t enough, because it is so much more! The building captures you completely, and we really did not want to leave. 

Varanasi

The next stop was again a very new kind of India. We went to Varanasi, which is one of the oldest places of human settlement and it is the most holy place for a Hindu because of the Ganges river. There we saw for instance Manikarnika Ghat, the most famous burning ghat - a place where Hindus burn their dead loved ones. Our guide there kept talking about life, because death is a part of life. Actually sadness and crying was not allowed because it is bad for the dead person who will be reborn to the world in a different creature anyway. The relationship had to be broken.

Dharavi

In Mumbai we met a local friend who showed us the city by night. He showed us the most expensive home in the world, a 27-story skyscraper owned by the most rich man of India where 600 staff members are working for a family of four. The following day we did a slum tour in Dharavi. It is one of the largest slums in the world, there live a million people and the annual turnover of the production within the slum is 650 million USD. The term slum is a misleading term and in fact it is more a city within a city where we can find all basic facilities, children go to school, small businesses offer employment and mothers keep the homes running. It is built on government land, and only a recent law gives it the status of a legal housing area and therefore the people do not have to live in fear of their houses being demolished for some expensive real estate project. 

The last days we spent in Kerala, where we did a boat tour through the backwaters. Our boat man lived in the jungle, but his daughters studied in the city biotechnology at university. That's development to me! We then spent two days on the beach, ate good food and enjoyed the peacefulness of the place until we had to get back to the airport and our trip was over. 

Backwaters in Kerala

Temples and Lions

The view from on top of the hill.

The last weekend in Ahmedabad we spent doing two day trips towards the south of Gujarat. Friday at midnight, after having said goodbye to those leaving the next few hours, we started driving towards Palitana. It is a pilgrimage center for Jains and to get to the top to the main temple you need to take 3800 steps. In total the hill has more than 800 temples.

Palitana is located a little bit more than 200 km from Ahmedabad so it took us 4 hours to reach it. We had to wait half an our in the car before the entrance to the temple was opened and we could start walking up the stairs. When we started with the stairs, it was pitch dark and we could see the stars very clearly - absolutely beautiful! We had taken only 20 steps or so when we were stopped by a few Indians who belonged to the temples, it seemed. They told us we are not allowed to enter, only at 4.00 AM. When we asked for the time, they also realized their argument was not very strong. Then they said that we were not allowed to go because there are bats flying around which might attack us. Finally they told us it is better to go together with a group, which was when we realized there was no real reason why we shouldn't continue going up the stairs.

The Indians we could have gone with were very much slower compared to us, so we went on our own pace up alone - four girls in the darkness. Darkness can feel very peaceful when you don't hear much or see much - only stars and the lights from the city down below. This time, however, we were walking up stairs in a place which we had never seen before. The stairs could be full of cow poo, the white stones next to the stairs looked like humans and we could not enjoy the beautiful view from the hill. A few times I grabbed the hand of the girl closest to me because I didn't know what was ahead of us. Along the way we stopped a few times to rest, drink some water and have a look at the stars.

Stairs, stairs and more stairs

Walking up the stairs, we met an Indian guy who lived in the US. He told us about the importance of the temples, the though life of a Jain munk and about the religion in general. A ritual all Jains have to complete in their life time is to go up to the main temple 109 times. We saw many youngsters who aimed at completing the ritual as an organized package in 60 days. The man we met was retired and came to India for a religious holiday to complete it. So far he had gone up almost 30 times. He said it was difficult to him and that he was in no rush to complete the 109 times it in 60 days. The thing is that a true Jain would not drink or eat while walking up the stairs, making it even harder to complete during the day when the sun is shining.

It took us 1,5 hours to get up and once we reached the door to the temple we had to wait for half an hour till sunrise and that the door was opened. For us the temple had no special meaning but for the people who came up it was clearly an honor to be there. They were singing songs and cheered when the door was opened. It was interesting to sit inside the temple, have the sun rising behind us and watch the people doing their thing. They wrote with rice and sugar on plates and sang mantras to Adinatha, for whom the temple was built and who is the founder of Jainism.

After one hour we went down, and saw many people walking up. It is possible to be carried up and down by Indian men, but we kindly declined all offers for it. It was one of those days that India was beautiful and the people all very friendly and welcoming. Many of them were happy to see us in their holy place and asked what we thought about the temple. On our way back to Ahmedabad, our driver took us to a restaurant, where the owner was also extremely friendly. We asked for a toilet and there was one but inside his and his family's home, so he showed us his home, introduced us to his father-in-law and mother-in-law and showed pictures of the time Modi visited the restaurant.

A lioness.

The second day trip we did was a lion safari in the only national park in India where Asian lions live. On Sunday, in the middle of the night, we left towards Gir National Park. It was a 7-hour drive from Ahmedabad, including a stop along the way for breakfast. A restaurant along the highway is called a Thaba, we had learned in class earlier in the week. Once we reached the village we went for lunch and took a small walk to have a look at the village. It was basically just one street with small shops but not more than that. A little before 3 PM we jumped onto the safari car and after some bureaucratic issues could finally start driving towards the forest to look for lions.

The forest is full of dust, and after three hours of driving in an open car everything - our faces, clothes, bags, just really everything - was covered in dust. The car did not feel very safe because we could easily fall out and a lion could easily jump in. A limited amount of cars were allowed into the park at once, and all the cars had to follow  the same path. We drove some 50 km in the park in those hours, and were extremely lucky to first see two female lions with three cubs and later three more male lions. That makes 8 lions in total in a park where the changes to see a lion are between 10 % and 50 % depending on the sources! Our guide reminded us many times how lucky we were that afternoon. Besides lions we also saw so many deer, peacocks and peahens, a few villages inside the park but the main attraction was definitely the lion.

Lion!

After the safari we drove back to Ahmedabad. In total we spent pretty much the entire day in a car. On the highway we stopped once for dinner, once because the driver wanted chai and also once because an accident happened on the car lane driving in the other direction. Apparently India does not have such a thing as an emergency number but instead many cars stopped, the men had a look what was going on and then continued driving.

Courses at IIM Ahmedabad

University, the library in front and class rooms on the right.

As I am also writing this blog for my home university and students who want to come to IIM Ahmedabad in the future, I have to tell something about the courses I chose here. All courses are graduate level, so there are many good courses to choose from and the problem is more how to fit all of them into your schedule with the least overlaps. There was no course description available when choosing the courses so it was more of a random selection in the end. Knowing what I know now, I would have chosen slightly differently as I didn't take a course that would have matched my interests perfectly. Selecting courses happened through email communication and on a first-com-first-serve basis. So, if you were slow in replying to emails or the people at the IIMA side slow in reading them, you missed your spot - happened to me too with another course.

The courses include many assignments, preparing cases and some also exams. What I have heard is that they are very easy and teachers rarely fail second year students, to which group we also belong. The workload is more than what I am used to at Aalto University, but there was still enough time to explore Ahmedabad and travel to other cities in India. For my home university I had to do 5 Indian credit points, and I ended up choosing  6 courses and doing 5.5 credits. Others do comparatively less courses and more time to do longer trips - or they just skipped classes.

1. Good governance and people living in poverty (GGPLP) with Harsh Mander - 0.75 credits
This course tried to teach us how the life of a poor person is and to make us understand the privileged life many of us studying at IIMA are living. We discussed the caste system, the difference between the urban poor and rural poor, the role of women and discrimination of the various minority groups. The teacher showed PowerPoints and talked, with some room for discussion and questions. At times the lectures were repeating themselves and the takeaway of the course can be summarized in a few words - inequality with indifference (basically, that the rich don't care about the poor) is the mayor problem of these days. There were two course assignments - we had to talk with a poor person to understand how their live is and for the other assignment we had to analyze reading material. Overall I liked the course still and now I can better guess what the possible stories are of those who sleep on the street outside the campus.

2. Transport Infrastructure (TI) with G. Raghuram- 1.00 credits
The course was very much focused on the Indian transportation system, which was interesting to some extend. Traveling around India or driving in Ahmedabad I could see the things we learned about. The professor is an expert in his field so we got to read some draft reports an comment them, he could take our output into consideration and back to the table with other stakeholders working on the draft. However, we had to do a lot for this course - case presentations, analyze reports and an issue paper. After the last class the professor took us out for dinner, so the course deserves one extra point for that.

Visit to the ice cream factory!

3. Entrepreneurship and New Venture Planning (ENVP) with Sunil Shukla and Dinesh Awasthy - 1.25 credits
The course had all the potential to be worth it, but in the end it was just a waste of time. The lectures added little value to the learning process, the readings were all very old and the business plan we had to write as the big group assignment was a pain in the ass. The exam was based on numbers and for people who have not majored in finance such an exam is very difficult. The best part was a visit to the ice cream factory of Havmor, a local ice cream producer.

4. Doing Business in India (DBI) with Anurag Agarwal, RH Dholakia and Arvind Sahay - 1.00 credits
For this course we covered the economical and political history of India to understand the current challenges and the factors that influence the Indian consumer. The course was divided into three parts - economics, marketing and legal issues - and each part was taught by a different professor. All the three were experts in their field and in their own ways good lecturers. The assessment of the first part was based on a small study we did in groups on two industries in India, the second was an assignment we did in pairs on either market entry or FDI in India, and for the last part we had to write a small quiz with only one question. This course I would recommend because what we learned here was also helpful in other courses.

5. Strategic Transformation and Change in the Indian Economy (STC) with Hans Huber - 0.75 credits
This course was taught by a German professor, and the atmosphere around the course was different - deadlines were not postponed, lectures started on time or slightly too early and evaluation was rather strict. In each class a new case was covered, and as a group assignment we had to prepare three cases. The class was about the change in the Indian economy, privatization, the role corporations play in that change and the importance of having a good strategy. The professor was very sure about his own opinion and at times it felt that he wanted to teach us his opinion on the issues covered with little room for own realizations.

6. Strategic Negotiation Skills for Leaders (SNS) with Satish Duryadham - 0.75 credits
When this course started, everyone was very excited but after a few lectures the excitement turned into frustration. It was a course about negotiations and to learn it we had to do simulations. The implementation failed as the professor tried to put too much into one lecture and each time the lectures ended way overtime. Also the cases we had to negotiate about were incomplete and some information we needed was missing. Overall, the course was not very useful to communicate the essentials of negotiating. A one-day workshop would have had the same effect.

Finally a few words about time at IIMA, scheduling of the classes and exams. Normally classes go between 8.45 and 20.30 from Monday to Saturday, but professors are relatively free to decide on possible rescheduling arrangements and then classes might be in the evening until midnight or on a Sunday. Furthermore, deadlines are easily extended - sometimes even only on a few hour notice before the initial deadline. Exams can also be rescheduled if asked for nicely. One exam had to be rescheduled due to many students traveling. Originally it was on a Saturday, but we had already our bus ticket to Udaipur and we had no intention to complete an online exam during our holiday. When asking for a possibility to do it on another date, the professor was reluctant and asked: "Is Saturday a holiday for everyone?"