What is the evolution of OD in India?

Answer 1

In India, O.D. and planned change started in the early 1960s. A group of Indian professionals trained at the National Training Laboratories (NTL) at Bethel, Maine, USA, brought out a good deal of O.D. technology in India. Grid programs were initiated and widely used in the Small Industries Extension Training (SIET) Institute, Hyderabad, State Bank of India and in the Indian Institute of Management (UM) programs in the mid 1960s. Unfortunately these remained isolated efforts and did not take O.D. to its logical conclusions. In the mid-1970s, O.D. was first introduced in India in Larsen and Toubro as a formal and structured part of the HRD department. It was expected that the change process would get institutionalized and more O.D. specialists would be developed. Unfortunately, this did not happen as the corporate sector in the country has a very protected and secure environment and there were very few compulsions to change. Hence O.D. remained mostly in academic institutions - the forte of a few specialists and largely limited to T-group training and other training based interventions. That it has a slow growth is indicated by the fact that even after 25 years of existence, the Indian Society for Applied Behavioral Science (ISABS), an associate of NTL, produced less than 100 process specialists in the vast country. There have been several efforts to apply O.D. approach and associated techniques in India but it has not created the desired impact. According to Srinivas (1994), one plausible explanation for this is that O.D. as it has emerged to date is culture specific, that it cannot be simply applied to locations outside the US. The issue of non-transferability of OD technology to cultures such as India has arisen because of the fear or distrust of its techniques of confrontation. The general practitioner or the change agent style of informality and an attitude of openness is also not suited to the Indian context. However, a deeper examination of values embedded in Indian religion and psycho-philosophy suggests that the cultural values are indeed largely supportive of organizational renewal and change. The rich cultural heritage also contains a paradigm of change, based on which new approaches and designs of O.D. interventions may be possible. And such designs are likely to be accepted more readily in the country. The scenario has changed thanks to an increasing number of applied behavioral scientists and T-group trainers, the HRD movement and establishment of HRD departments, contributions of multinationals in India and the influence of Western education. Professional bodies such as ISABS (Indian Society for Applied Behavioral Sciences), Indian Society for Individual and Social Development (ISISD), Indian Society for Training & Development (ISTD), and the HRD Network, and academic institutions such as the IIMs (Indian Institute of Management) have further facilitated this. In the post liberalization period, every one has been forced to seek change. As a result, the application of O.D. technology has increased.