There are no secrets in India, that is well known. But that shouldn't stop you from simply passively accepting these conditions: quite the opposite! Take advantage of this fact! With a smart and systematic approach, you can get information in India that you would never get in Europe.

The prerequisite for this is building a comprehensive network of personal contacts in India itself that you can really trust. This is of course a question of time and your own presence on site. Reliable contacts cannot be established or maintained from Europe alone. Be sure to invest enough time in India yourself, or even better: make sure that you have your own employees on site in India who will take care of this network maintenance for you. In this way, you can gain invaluable long-term advantages through an information advantage.

More on this topic: “Communication Policy in India”.

Information in India and the power of servants

Here in Europe you can't even imagine what information and contacts servants or drivers in India have.

Servants and ordinary employees always have access to sensitive information in India

Such a servant - called a messenger in India - naturally first has contacts within his company - for example to management or to the second management level. At the same time, the messenger also has external contacts at a wide variety of levels, especially with the servants of other companies. They in turn have their own network and access to their own management.

Although messengers can access sensitive data without much difficulty, they are generally not involved in the issue of confidentiality or the handling of sensitive documents. This also applies if you are supposed to forward documents or documents containing such sensitive data.

Of course, it becomes clear to the messengers very quickly which documents are confidential and which are not. And since knowledge is power, as we all know, they sometimes obtain copies of these documents - without management's knowledge. This can be, for example, sensitive tax data or personnel documents, contracts and other documents that do not belong in the hands of others.

Experienced India managers can confirm that it is surprisingly easy to obtain confidential data through the contacts of one's servants. Two conclusions can be drawn from this:

  • Confidentiality only works if it is regulated down to the smallest detail - and of course this also applies to your own confidential information!
  • You can most likely assume that not every company in India has such a regulation. These gray areas can be used.