Yesterday, Jerry's presentation on professional selling was a big hit. He walked us through the process for finding out how to meet a customer's needs rather than being just an order taker, and then had the class compete for bragging rights by practicing our questioning skills. He took the high road and called it a tie. The lecture on multiculturalism was very interesting as well. He brought many samples of cigarettes, spices, and other everyday items that are used by rural people and discussed how companies like Colgate and other large companies have convinced people to move to store-bought products.
In the afternoon we took a bus ride to the New Holland plant in Greater Noida. Because our group was so large, the tour itself was unfortunately not very effective. Most of us couldn't hear the speaker as we walked through the plant, but we did return to a conference room and we got our questions answered. One of our students asked why we had not seen any women in the plant, and the HR manager's reply was that the work was too difficult. We let that go at the time, but many of us took the opportunity to talk with our Indian friends about that later. The women and men both seemed fine with his explanation, but we shared our feelings that because this was such a modern plant, the men weren't lifting very much weight anyway, and if American women felt that they wanted that type of job, they would certainly be allowed to do so. They were surprised, so we had some good discussions about equal pay for equal work.
Dinner was at an amazing Rajasthani restaurant. We had many very little bowls on a large plate, and they gave us small samples of many dishes and breads, with the opportunity to have more of what we liked. I lost count, but I know it was over 20 different dishes! Most of us agreed that the mustard greens were the best. They had been prepared somewhat like creamed spinach with a spicy sauce.
On deck for today is my presentation on cloud computing and global management of IT, and one on Gandhi, followed by a trip to the Gandhi museum and a different type of market.
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