The opening up of the Indian economy has had a very beneficial effect on the quality and variety of goods that are on offer to the Indian consumer. We still remember the days, when the Ambassador car and an ancient Fiat model were dominating private transport in India.

The white Ambassador, which an auto exhibition in Brazil once described as the world’s ugliest car, had almost become a national symbol. Wherever you encountered it, you knew you were on Indian territory. Only a few decades later, it is as difficult to spot an Ambassador in the dense traffic of Mumbai as it is to encounter a Trabant, once the “dream car” of the worker in the former GDR, in the eastern parts of Germany.

Indian industry, which had been hampered for all too long by the stifling “licence raj”, has found the vigour to compete with the best in the world. Europeans have to become used to Indian companies and investors buying up some of their prestigious brands and making a success of them. Looking at the speed with which private enterprise in India has been modernising, there can be no doubt that in the foreseeable future the label “Made in India” will become an indicator for high-quality standards and reliability.

This change has happened in Japan and it is at present happening in China. The world has forgotten that in the 60s, the label “Made in Japan” was associated with cheap goods and shoddy imitations. Today, it carries great prestige. Some years ago, the Chinese leader Hu Jintao declared that his country does not want to remain forever the world’s factory of cheap mass products.

China, wants to have brands and high technology. Already significant progress has been made, as is evident in cases such as Lenovo or Huawei. Looking at the Japanese and Chinese experience, we have every reason to be optimistic that the same process will take place in India.

India’s rich history and culture shows us as a country where courtesy and refinement had a very high standing. Muslim and Hindu courts over centuries excelled in good taste and superb manners. Today, unfortunately, the world does not think of Indian society as a stronghold for politeness and sophistication in human interaction. Visiting India from Japan is every time a culture shock.

It is not so much the huge disparity in wealth between the two countries that shocks, but rather the glaring lack of public cleanliness and politeness in India. Of course, the Japanese way of life is a hard act to follow for anyone. When it comes to public order, Japan puts to shame even Switzerland, which once upon a time had been a beacon of quality and reliability.

With regards to exquisite manners, there is no other civilisation in the world that can compete with Japan. There are obviously serious hurdles to transform even parts of India into a Japan. There are the challenges of huge numbers and of mass poverty that hold India back. However, the question remains which lessons India could learn from Japan. We believe that the first major step is to redevelop a common sense for service culture.

Two major changes make this necessary. The younger Indian middle class urbanites have a much greater knowledge or even experience of the outside world than their parents and grandparents. The prices for high-end products and services in India have reached world-class levels. Indifference and shoddiness should, therefore, not anymore be acceptable to the more discerning customer.

The Japanese excellence in services is not a God- given character feature of the Japanese. It has to be taught and constantly improved. In fact, Japan today is the first country in the world where service innovation is a teaching and research subject at the university level.

Generally, people are aware that there is technological and industrial innovation. However, when it comes to services, people remain stuck with the old saying “the customer is king”. This is the most convenient way to calm one’s conscience. In reality, it means nothing, since nobody has ever had a king as a customer and nobody knows how to treat a king, At the centre of the modern service culture as it is practised in Japan, stands the attitude to clients. There is no us and them, which degrades the customer to a petitioner. Service innovation means the introduction of pre-emptive action and empathy.

Pre-emptive action implies that the problems that may emerge are dealt with even before the customer is aware of them. Emphatic thinking means that before a customer has even stated an obvious requirement, it is being taken care of. It is not left to the customer to spell out every single demand and he most certainly is not required to plead for a service for which he has paid good money.