Business & Process Innovation Summit: A Glimpse into "The Road to Agra"

NOTE: Some personal thoughts on my journey from Delhi to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal

The Road to Agra is a long one, up to 4 hours by car. But it is a road that speaks to the amazing beauty, challenge and promise of India. At its end is the magnificence of the Taj Mahal - a wonder to even the most jaded globetrotter.

FIND OUT MORE AND REGISTER FOR BPIS2006

As the story was told to me many times by Indian friends and colleagues, the Taj Mahal (commissioned by the Muslim Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal) was guaranteed to be unique due to the fact that the emperor cut off the hands of its architects and builders when it was completed.

The story is only half true. Shah Jahan actually paid the architects and craftsmen enough for them to retire with an agreement that they would not replicate the Taj - the implication being that breaking that agreement would result in far more than the loss of a limb. That and the fact that it took 20,000 people 22 years to build the seventh wonder of the world pretty much assured that another Taj was very unlikely.

Still the story of the striking contrast between a immense love and an equally immense ruthlessness is an allegory for the tremendous contrasts that exist in India to this day.

On the road to Agra from Delhi you come to understand these contrasts intimately. Take the train and you will barely scratch the surface of India. Drive the road to Agra by car and India will flood your senses.

For some time now I've talked about the existence of an innovation deficit. Many people think that is absurd. If you live in the US or the developed and prosperous countries of the world you are surrounded by innovations. most of which we have easy economic access to. Consumerism is at an all time high and there seems to be no end to rampant innovation. The attitude is, If we can conceive of it we can make it. Yet what we fail to appreciate is the degree to which affordability of even the most basic goods and services remains a distant dream for most of the world's population. The vast majority of our inventions and innovations are destined for use by a sliver of society. For the most part this is an invisible phenomenon. It gets little attention because it is so distant from the origin of the innovation.

Not here, not in India. While there are many underdeveloped parts of the world there are few places where the striking contrasts innovation and indigence are as great and as close in proximity as they are here. Drive down many roads in Delhi and you may well see abject poverty and the pinnacle of the high tech boom across the street from each other. Fountains adorned with modern statues separated by high wrought iron fences and a few meters from tent city, made of old tarps, cardboard, and burlap bags.

As you make the 3+ hour drive from Delhi to Agra, home of the Taj, you will see an India of constant stark contrasts that go beyond what anyone new to India could ever expect. Beauty and poverty are never far from each other. The road winds through vistas of farm land, dotted with small mud huts, primitive tents, people bathing, getting their haircut, and eating at roadside stands with large steaming pots. At various parts of the journey you pass miles upon miles of small stores in various states of chaos and disrepair; a never ending series of strip malls that appear to have been bombed and re-inhabited. Then suddenly you come upon a glistening mosk or Hindu Statue beautifully adorned and cared for. Three new private universities also line the road, each gated in its own private enclave, gated and set apart from the countryside.

And of course there are the cows. They are everywhere but you seldom hear about the Oxen and the water buffalo that are even more abundant. They walk into the middle of the road, even the high speed roads, and just stand there, as traffic zips by. And along with them John Deere tractors, camels, scooties, old bicycles, sub compact cars, lorries all vie for the pole slot in this amazing coordinated chaos of traffic patterns. Periodically a lorry crosses the median strip to make its way on the wrong side of the road, just to get to its destination faster. Oncoming traffic swerves to make way while a refrain of horns signals mild disdain.

Our tour guide told us that a recent guest of his from the US DoD had commented that the DoD us should stop wasting millions of dollars on training aircraft fighters and instead send them to India for a few months to drive on its streets.

My favorite site was the lorries loaded with sacks of supplies that would bulge out at the sides like an immense pot belly overhang a belt two notches too tight. Some are so full that they are dwarfed by their load. Somewhere under this thing is a truck you imagine, but you can barely make out the wheels. And every so often you find the basic laws of physics have done their job, toppling one over, its driver squatting by the side of the road waiting - but for what I wonder, Triple A?

Periodically you are taken completely by surprise by what you find on the road to Agra. "Can we stop for a diet Coke?" I asked the driver. No less than five minutes later we pulled into a brand new sparkling McDonalds, where a uniformed guard escorted us in and bathroom attendants stood waiting in the rest rooms. No big macs but veggie burgers, fries (yes, exactly like the ones at home) and Diet Coke were in abundant supply.

On this road fair skinned foreigners stick out like bird droppings on a shiny black car. Children will approach you when your car stops, tapping relentlessly on your window begging for money. If you give them money you will be swarmed by a mob of them, locals will tell you to ignore them. Give them something and they will only be encouraged to continue. If you do not you will have a hard time forgiving yourself as you drive away. The mixed and conflicting feelings are with you constantly. You cannot rationalize them.

After 3 hours on the road you reach the parking lot for the Taj Mahal, were you must first disembark from your auto, leave your cell phones behind and hop on an electric vehicle to get to the Taj. The Indian government, in a bold move, has cordoned off a large an area around the Taj in order to limit the effects of electromagnetic radiation and pollution. They have even closed down all factories within the city limits to protect the Taj from acid rain.

When you finally walk through the gate and pass the guard houses, caretakers' and craftsmans' setting quarters you enter the classic setting of the long reflecting pool in front of the Taj. The walk along the length of that pool is simply awesome. Every few steps you stop and take in the increasing majesty of this structure. Standing at the foot of the Taj, walking around it, and taking in the incredibly detail of this immense structure you accept that anything is possible with enough people and time and capital.

It is at about that time when it occurs to you that the Taj Mahal is as apt an analogy for how modern India is recreating its role in the world economy as any other. Twenty years and 22,000 craftsmen, engineers, and architects, capital and an unlimited labor pool can achieve incredible feats. But beyond that, this is not a matter of cheap labor. The Taj shows the incredible attention to detail, innovation, and engineering that often goes unnoticed when we in the west speak of offshoring.

The next day back in Delhi I had meetings with several hundred IT professionals at Perot Systems. Here in the glistening Noida campus of Perot I was once again in a familiar setting. Surrounded by world class technology and some of the brightest minds in India I contemplated the future of this land of so many contradictions. At lunch I spoke with my colleagues about their views of India's future. They agreed that the social and political dynamics of this country are complex on so many dimensions. But they also spoke of the great promise that they saw, of the responsibility to ensure an investment in education, and of the great need India has for labor. And the irony, they said, is that India, with its great need for economic parity, was perhaps one of the greatest forces in making technology affordable for the rest of the world - that is itself one of the greatest innovations of the information age.

I looked back at the view of the road to Agra out of the window from a board room that could be in any of the modern high rises back home. I was reminded of a popular movie from some time ago about an immunodeficient boy who had to spend his life cocoonned in a plastic bubble, able to see but not touch the real world. If you travel to India step out of the bubble in order to truly understand, taste, smell and feel the spirit of this place. You will find that while the road to Agra may be a long one, with all of the challenges that face India, it is also lined with India's indomitable spirit, capacity to innovate and survive, fierce independence and self sufficiency, ethic for hard work and intense desire to achieve.