The exotic side of India is prized as a tourist destination but its value as the location of offshore outsourcing partners depends on some measure of shared culture. In addition to shared scientific and engineering expertise, India’s widespread English-language culture has the advantage over other outsourcing geographies, such as Eastern Europe and China. But effective communication with one’s Indian business partners could probably get a boost from recognizing first that, in some measure, the United States and India are—to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw—two countries separated by a common language. And even where one’s India-based counterparts speak exquisite and perhaps even superior English, their customs, symbols, values, expectations and gestures can be remarkably different. Perhaps that’s obvious at a theoretical level, but the experience of the differences can be startling.

For example, Westerners are generally unprepared for the profusion of swastikas decorating not only temples and shrines but even advertisements. What would be an aggressive, disgusting graffito in the West is a sign of luck and goodwill in the Hindu tradition.

There are other, more benign differences that are striking in their own ways. I mentioned in an earlier post how vehicle horns are used for orientation rather than warning, and alluded to the reality that India has stray cows much in the fashion that America has stray cats. I had only to step off the plane and look up at the gate TV to be reminded that Indians have cricket, not baseball. And whereas in the United States every city has an MLK (Martin Luther King, Jr.) Boulevard, the Indian version is MG (Mahatma Gandhi) Road.

English speakers will be surprised at the ubiquity of their language on billboards and announcements in such an exotic place, even if occasionally amused by solecisms or novel idioms (e.g., “Nice Man” clothing shop or “Sure!” motorcycle dealer). The standard of English is a reflection of education, since one needn’t speak much of it to get along at a basic level. However, conversations in regional languages are peppered with English expressions that have found their way into the common idiom, and English has long been the lingua franca between regions, some of whose inhabitants are hostile to the putative national language, Hindi. Generally speaking, anyone who looks to profit from the tourist trade will speak English at least, if not also other European languages. A case in point is the beggar who knocked on my car window and said with impeccable pronunciation, “C’mon, sir, just one Rupee.”

A less benign difference relates to the status of women. Without a doubt, women are much better off and have far greater opportunity in India than elsewhere. However, India is certainly more of a man’s world than the U.S. or most European countries. An editorial in the Hindustan Times emphasized the importance to the eternal feminine principle, or something of the sort, and I wondered whether that might be consistent with a more rather than less macho society, as one could argue for the Latin countries of Europe who hold a higher place for Mary in Christian ritual and iconography. In this respect India would simply be like most countries of the world, but one thing that struck me was the discovery of a phenomenon called “dowry deaths,” which are the murders of brides by the groom’s family for reasons relating to expected dowries. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported 7,000 of these in 2003. As a consequence, to avoid what the WHO calls “female deselection,” in 1994 India outlawed the use of technology to determine the sex of unborn children.

While no strangers to contrasts of wealth and poverty, Westerners will likely be struck by the even greater contrasts in India both in terms of material well being and status. India grows richer by the day, but it remains a poor country with a GDP per capita of $3,300 (compared to $41,800 in the U.S.). The caste system is alive and well, even if on a theoretical level it is problematic to Indians whose education has been influenced by European ideals, and continues to influence social relations, such as whom one may or may not (or at least should or should not) marry.

But India is also among the most modern countries in many respects and arguably ahead in others, such as pluralism, good manners and an emphasis on study. The latter category is allied to India’s strong work ethic and its growing affirmation of meritocracy. The caste system is not so strong that it prevents genuine upward mobility, as demonstrated by a personal story told to me by an IT professional I met in India. He was born into an family of the second-lowest caste in Mumbai. “The worst poverty you see in that city,” he said to me, “that’s where I come from.” Despite the family’s extreme deprivation, his mother pushed him to study hard, which in many cases meant reading at night by the light of a street lamp. He eventually distinguished himself at one of India’s top universities and went on to a successful career in IT. He now makes more in an hour than his father was able to make in a month, and he explains not with vanity but with astonishment, that he will spend a total of nearly a quarter of a million dollars paying for his children’s education.

Probably no single factor influenced the development of Bangalore as a center of industry more than the city’s long-standing educational culture, fostered by the intertwining influences of Bangalore’s colonial administrative establishment and it’s pleasant weather. The city’s educational establishment comprises institutions such as the Indian Institute of Science—one of the oldest in the country, having been founded in 1911—and several others dating to recent decades, including the Indian Institute of Management, the Institute for Social and Economic Change, the Indian Statistical Institute, the National Law School of India University and Electronics City’s own International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (formerly Indian Institute of Information Technology).

Bangalore became an industrial center after India gained independence in 1947, with the founding of aerospace and defense companies under government auspices. However, the information technology only got started after the national government began to move away from socialist economic policy tendencies.

The establishment of so-called Export Processing Zones (EPZs) allowed for duty free import of equipment provided it was to be used to support industries with products for export only, according to V. Shankar, executive vice president and head of iflex solutions’ PrimeSourcing division, whom I met in Bangalore. “It was one of the few things that the government has done right,” he comments. The zones originally applied to specified geographical areas but can now apply to individual facilities. The government later also granted multi-year “tax holidays” to allow companies to gain some financial momentum.

The headline should not suggest that I attempted to drive in India. Perish the thought. My various hosts always made sure to schedule transportation to get where I needed to go (if not necessarily always at the appointed time). One way Indian Drivers compensate for traffic congestion is to refuse to be bound by the concept of lanes, even when these are clearly painted on the tarmac.

This creates a terrifying spectacle to the eye of the uninitiated, especially as vehicles range in size and type from the occasional large truck to significant numbers of medium-sized trucks, to the usual complement of sedans, to three-wheel motorized rickshaws, to cantering cows. Yes, cows. Added to the visual assault is a sonorous one, owing to the constant honking of horns. One is struck by the sheer frequency of their use and also by the fact that, whether by industrial happenstance or government decree, they all appear to have the same pitch and amplitude.

But one soon gets past the sensory menace of the scene and begins to see signs of order amid the chaos. If one were to temporarily establish this regime in, say, New Jersey, the result would be destruction—and probably homicide—on a grand scale. What makes it work in India is a code of conduct whereby drivers acknowledge that everybody is simply trying to get where they’re going and don’t take offense at whatever maneuvers support that objective. This results in drivers being very alert to any possible moves on the part of fellow drivers. The code includes an imperative to use one’s horn to let the guy ahead of your know you’re coming. Like the trucks in the U.S. that encourage motorists to pass on the left, the backs of Indian trucks say “Horn Please.”

Once one understands this, the constant sounding of horns ceases to sound like an unmitigated orgy of screaming hostility and transforms itself, aided by the tonal monotony of the standardized horns, into something more like a field of contented motorized crickets.

The Southern India city of Bangalore has long been considered something like the Florida of India—a good-weather destination that makes a nice place to study in or retire to. Like Florida, Bangalore is in the South, but in India “good weather” means cooler weather, which Bangalore enjoys by virtue of its elevation at roughly 3000 feet above sea level. As an administrative and educational seat dating from the days of British occupation, Bangalore long enjoyed a leisurely, small-town feel—very different from a large, densely populated commercial city such as Mumbai. But Bangalore has changed.

Today Bangalore is India’s third largest city, with a population of 6.1 million. It is home to about 2000 electronics and IT companies, including indigenous companies active in the U.S. insurance industry, such as Wipro, TCS, InfoSys ITI, Satyam and iflex solutions, as well as foreign concerns such as Motorola, Siemens and the company whose investment sparked the IT culture in Bangalore, Hewlett-Packard. Over 100 companies, including most of the preceding firms, are located in Bangalore’s Electronics City, a 330-acre industrial park and island of polished modernity amid a city that includes an abundance of the dusty, perennially unfinished and poverty-stricken milieu of a third-world population center.

To be strictly accurate, Electronic City is on the periphery of Bangalore, to the south-southeast. Along with the constellation of companies along the Airport Road on the eastern side of the municipality, Electronics City has contributed in a big way to levels of traffic that sorely test the existing infrastructure. The resulting effect is of a small town with big town traffic; the roads and buildings are on a more intimate, comfortable scale but the volume of vehicles seems to have rushed in, as if by breaching a traffic dam that separated Bangalore from some teeming metropolis. My driver, who has been at his job for 20 years, laments the current situation, explaining that even 15 years ago Bangalore had no traffic lights.

India has proven itself a leading destination for offshore outsourcing through its success with many customers in the insurance industry, as in others. There is therefore no need to establish its basic credentials. However, for those who have yet to do business with India we feel there is some utility in sharing the experience of being in India as it sheds light on many aspects that illuminate both the advantages and challenges of working with Indian partners, as well as giving a deeper impression of the cultural foundation of Indian capabilities. For those who have done business with Indian partners, what follows may present a reinforcing, complementary or novel point of view. It may also shed light on what the future of Indian technology might mean for your business. In service of these ambitions we have included not only information directly relating to the insurance business and technology, but also the sights and sounds of the subcontinent. As the expression goes, there’s nothing like being there.

Be sure to visit Insurance & Technology's new blog for reports from Senior Editor Anthony O'Donnell. Anthony will be traveling to Bangalore, Mumbai, Udaipur, Delhi and Agra, meeting with vendors and carrier executives.