Challenge for ‘The Office’ in India: how to do boredom
● Jagdeep Chaddha is not yet a household name in India but in a few months’ time he may be as familiar as David Brent in the UK or Michael Scott in the US, as the gauche boss and lead character in the Indian version of The Office.
BBC Worldwide announced this week it had sold the rights to the global hit comedy to Applause Entertainment.
Instead of Slough, the Indian version will be set in Faridabad, a satellite town outside Delhi. The company at the heart of the programme has been changed from Wernham Hogg to Wilkins Chawla.
But apart from the different settings, the show’s producers hope that its central themes — the monotony of office life, the daily irritations caused by an overbearing boss and the pettiness of work politics — will translate well into an Indian context.
The programme has already been adapted in France, Canada, and most successfully, the US. But its launch in India offers both its biggest potential audience yet and some of its greatest cultural challenges.
“I’m sure it will be a big hit in India,” says Upasana Taku, a founder of MobiKwik, the digital payments company, who has worked in large offices in both the US and India.
“But they have to make sure they find a context where the work is sufficiently slow and boring — perhaps an Indian bank.”
Unlike in most countries where the programme has aired, office workers are a relative rarity in India, with 75% to 85% of people employed in the informal sector.
But those who do clock in for desk-based jobs say the programme makers will have to reflect some of the more unique aspects of Indian workplaces. Out go grey suits, quiet conversations and repressed frustrations, in come hour-long communal lunches, regular shouting matches and chronic lateness.
“There were so many things I had to get used to when moving from a Western office to an Indian one,” says one office worker who does not want to be named.
“Firstly, I couldn’t bring soup for lunch because it couldn’t be shared. Secondly, I had to save my work frequently because I was never sure when the power might cut out.”
David Brent made British audiences cringe when he tried to bond with his Wernham Hogg co-workers by telling them he was a “chilled-out entertainer”. Indian viewers, however, are likely to be baffled by any attempt by Jagdeep Chaddha to do the same.
“Indian offices are incredibly hierarchical,” says Kalyan Bose, a partner at Grant Thornton, who has worked in the UK and India. “When I first arrived here, I would say things in Hindi that were awkward or just plain wrong. But I would never know because no one dared tell me.”
And if Western viewers have enjoyed watching chaos unfold in the relatively staid environs of a suburban office block, Indians might just see that as normal.
Kishore Jayaraman, president of RollsRoyce in India and South Asia, says: “When I first arrived, what surprised me most is you would have a meeting with someone and that person would sometimes walk out halfway through or other people would walk in and start speaking to them. There was no sense of respecting other people’s time.”
But if there is one thing that will make writing the Indian version of The Office easier, it is that there is always plenty of conflict.
“The arguments are crazy, Indian workers are always shouting at each other,” says one Western worker in a Delhi office. “It might be about politics, Pakistan or just about food, but nobody ever seems to mind. They see it as par for the course.”
Indian workers are always shouting at each other. Nobody ever seems to mind Western office worker Commenting on Indian office etiquette