Doing Business in India For Dummies®

Navigating Everyday Life in India

Navigating your way through day-to-day life in India depends heavily on two crucial areas: your ability to build and maintain personal relationships and the realization that you have to assert yourself. Establish a healthy rapport with the Indians who play a role in your daily life by respecting your staff and colleagues and make it clear that you value the help they offer.

Work to develop your Indian friendships because there may be a time that you need to call on a friend for help. These times may include borrowing help or running to the hospital. (Indian hospitals require that a friend or relative is with you before you can be admitted.)

The second area is recognizing when you need to assert yourself. Some folks from the West are taught to be modest, but certain situations in India may require some bullish behavior. Hospitals in India are one example. Indian hospitals can, at times, seem overwhelmed with patients, and if you’re not assertive enough to push ahead to the front of a line (assuming your ailment or emergency warrants that behavior), you could spend quite a lot of time waiting for care. Don’t be scared to tell the management of the hospital what’s wrong with you, and who you are, so that they can better serve you. Don’t be shy. This is how things work in India!

One of my foreign clients had a small accident that required him to go to a well-known hospital for a precautionary x-ray. At the front desk he was directed to counter 4, and ...