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'Indians need attitudinal change to catch up with China'

To bridge the widening economic gap with China, Indians need to change their 'attitudes' more than anything else, according to an international marketing expert.

"The world likes Indians, but would not do business with them; whereas people may not like the Chinese very much, but tend to do business with them. This is because of the attitude of the Chinese," Egon B Heil, professor of marketing and head of foreign studies, University of Rosenheim, Germany, said at a news briefing in New Delhi.

Indians need to be reliable - productwise and personally - to do business with the outside world, he said. Heil is in India for a series of workshops on marketing organised by the FICCI Ladies Organisation.

He also stressed on the importance of cleanliness and punctuality for business. "If foreigners find the country clean they are attracted towards it and invest there. So Indians need to clean up their streets because a clean country conveys a lot about its people," he said.

"In China punctuality means five minutes before the scheduled time. This conveys a lot about the reliability of a person," he said.

Heil also advocated the need for change in India's education system. "India needs to change its education system to ensure that school and university graduates are proficient in at least one foreign language, apart from English," he said.

"India thinks that it has an advantage over China as a large percentage of its population knows English, but this would not last for long. China has introduced English at the middle school level and is pushing for another foreign language at the high school and university levels. India needs to act fast on this front. To sell products you need to speak the language of the customer," Heil said.

Between 1990 and 2000 China has managed to increase its share of world trade from 1.8 per cent to 3.9 per cent. India has also expanded its share in world trade during this period, but the increase is just from 0.2 per cent to 0.7 per cent.

"This gap will continue to widen unless some drastic change comes about in the attitude of the Indians," he added.

UNI

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