Congratulations offered from unlikely people

The morning of November 5th (election eve in the US) found me up at 5:30am, glued to the BBC and CNN IN in rural Orissa, while my friends massed in groups of multiple hundreds throughout India to watch the returns. By 8:30am, when Ohio was called for Obama, the race was over and a rush of excitement left me cheering and crying in my room. The TV commentary highlighted for me the incredible significance of Obama’s election for India. The nightly news (and that morning’s news) has been flooded with minute analysis of every way in which an Obama presidency may impact India.

Interspersed with this commentary were glowing reviews of the “only in America” story of Obama’s election, given his biography. This we have all heard, but I can assure you these emotions are very real here in India. There is a genuine, new admiration for Americans, spurred by his election, and India is not a “US-hating” country, in general. This is particularly poignant, as India is readying for federal elections and there is a strong desire to reduce the influence of corrupt, criminal politicians (literally. A dismayingly large percentage of Indian politicians, both aspiring and empowered, are criminals, whether convicted or not). So, Indian stations were already asking who would be India’s Barack Obama. No answer to this query, yet, but I hope that India finds a similar, inspirational leader.

A few days after the election, I headed back to Hyderabad, buoyed by that sense of optimism that was painfully absent on November 5th, 2004. I had spent some time, while awaiting a rescheduling of my flight, befriending a few folks from the Deccan Chronicle cricket team. Our flight eventually gets called and I part ways with Hyderabad’s cricket gods.

I trundle towards Indian airport security. The only excitement in this line is how daring a game of chicken the CSF officer (India’s TSA, though these guys have guns) will play with me during the thorough frisking required to pass unto the pre-boarding, waiting area #2. Fortunately, his are unadventurous hands, so my plastic explosives and switch blade get through.

As I step up to his pat-down platform, CSF officer Raj Kumar asks, “what country?” Being habituated to regular recognition of my foreigner status by these friendly sleuths, I am ready with a clearly enunciated “USA.” I leave out my usual proof of “Real American” citizenship through the traditional patriotic blusters: “Don’t mess with Tejas,” “I’ll invade your backwater country,” and “Did you know that we invented your freedom?”

He completes a cursory molestation and, just as I am about to step off the platform, Officer Kumar leans forward displaying a slightly concealed mustached smile and says, “Best wishes to President Obama. I am proud.” I react with at least half of the excitement of a “My Super Sweet 16”-star receiving a gold-plated Porsche. In contrast, my enthusiasm is genuine, though lacking the energetic expletives of “OMG” and “I’m the richest girl ever.” Raj is a bit surprised that his two sentences elicit such a reaction. I respond, “Thank you, sir. I’m happy you are happy. He will be a great president for the US and better to the rest of the world.” This is probably a bit much, but Raj smiles, nods, and reciprocates my handshake. I head off to collect my bags. As my smile widens while reflecting on the exchange, I decide to return to Officer Kumar. Tapping him on the shoulder, to his evident surprise, I expand, “Thank you so much for your well wishes, sir,” perhaps ignoring that he sent his best wishes to Obama and not me.

The Annals of Unique Extortion Techniques

I’ve now experienced what I had only heard about from friends: extortion by transvestites. Armed with two first hand experiences (one in Delhi and one in Bombay), I can confirm that these were two of the less expected encounters I’ve had here. While I’ve already had to pay a number of bribes to the entrepreneurial police officer or government employee, I wasn’t expecting to encounter this extortion racket during a nice brunch in Bombay.

Let me first open with a caveat. The plight of sexual minorities in India is terrible. Discrimination is aggressive and overt. Transvestites (or Hirja / Aravani) are not respected in Indian society, by and large, and are generally viewed as harbingers of bad omens. Fortunately, some groups are working to reduce this stigma and provide health care resources.

So, while my story is light-hearted, I understand the underlying desperation that might make someone go to these lengths. A few Aravani have found ways to celebrate their identity and advocated for change. Now, my empathy for societal outcasts does not extend to the small number of people within these groups that extort others. One of my friends had an experience where two transvestites threatened to forcibly shut down the opening of her maternal health care hospital for poor urban women and cast hexes on the facility, unless they were not paid an outrageous sum of money (in the multiple lakh (a lakh being 100,000 ruppees or now, sadly, USD 2,000 at the current exchange rates)). That is outrageous, selfish, and terrible. Fortunately, my friend and her colleagues managed to defuse the situation, before it went nuclear.

Here’s my tale:

I was sitting having brunch with a few friends in Mumbai last month. Our tranquil, upper-class dining adventure was abruptly shattered. Two very masculine looking women had strode into the restaurant and were shouting at the unassuming European owner. The owner’s hostess immediately got up and started pushing these women back to the door. At this point, I broke out laughing. It finally had become obvious that these were two transvestites and this seemed hysterically out of place in prudish, “cover-up-your-goddamn-ankles” India. My friends shot me glances that suggested I should loose the sense of humor. I obliged. They quietly explained to me that new establishments in this area get shaken down by these transvestites. Apparently, Indians are very superstitious about transvestites and always give them money, if demanded, because otherwise they risk having a hex put on them. And you know what happened to the last person who had a transvestite put a hex on them – theft, deviance, and kidnapping.

Just as the Sicilians start breaking knee-caps and skulls, if people don’t respond to verbal shake downs, these transvestite extorters had their own “nucular” option. I wasn’t quite prepared for this twist in the plot.

As the hostess forcibly pushed one of the transvestites out the door (which is a no-no from the more superstitious Indian’s perspective), their life-partner-in-crime sprung out the “nucular” button and hit detonate…

BBBBOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM….OUT IT COMES. It’s flying around outside of the 2mm of fabric that had protected us from nuclear war. My friends explained that this was the extortionists back up option, if more direct argumentation fails. Though, the absurdity of seeing two people debate over paying this bribe reminded me of high school debate hypotheticals that seem unmoored from reality.

There is really no other way to make a crepe, covered in sugary sauce, look so unappetizing as when a transvestite’s business is in full view (I suspect this would apply to any one’s business flying around while I am trying to enjoy what should have been a fantastic crepe).

Sadly, the owner pushed this “business person” out of our line of vision, before I could see if he ended up paying off these entrepreneurs.

Looks like I’ve got a backup career of shaking down new establishments, if this microfinance thing gets crushed underneath the implosion of the world banking system. There’s few better ways to ensure a livelihood then preying upon people’s superstitions and unfounded fears.

The global economy is giving McCain/Palin…

…a serious run for their money in the category of distressing, hair graying news, repeated day after day.

This NYT piece lays out a startling overview of the global economic disarray that we face. And the parochial nature of the current responses.

“With Europe and the United States deep in crisis, economists said, the rest of the world could not help but suffer. Robert B. Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, warned that the crisis could be a “tipping point” for the developing world.

“A drop in exports, as well as capital inflow, will trigger a falloff in investments,” Mr. Zoellick said in a speech on Monday. “Deceleration of growth and deteriorating financial conditions, combined with monetary tightening, will trigger business failures and possibly banking emergencies.”

The immediate danger, economists say, are countries in Eastern and Central Europe, like Bulgaria and Estonia, which run steep trade deficits and are vulnerable to a sudden flight of foreign capital.

Iceland, with an overheated economy and suffocating foreign debt, may prove to be the first national casualty of the crisis. On Monday, threatened by a wholesale financial collapse, the government in Reykjavik assumed sweeping powers to intervene in its banking industry.”

Guess I’ll have to rework my backup plan of retreating to Iceland, if McCain/Palin, through screaming enough incendiary, racist, fear-mongering absurdities, scare the reductionist everypersons – Mrs. Hockey Mom and 6-beer-a-day Joe – into voting against their interests and the world’s.

Can’t keep my eyes off of the news on the interwebs

Palin, McCain, Bailout, AIG, Oil, Dow … Each day presents another stunning event, which then jump starts the process of grappling with these issues. This has laid waste to my productivity, which is only compounded by the asynchronous, anti-melodic orchestra that begins playing in our office at 10am and doesn’t stop until 6pm, when the musicians/my co-workers pack up to go home. Ah, the pleasures of putting 30 people into one room and asking them to share 5 desks.

Bear with me for a rather elaborate explanation for why I haven’t posted in too long (13 days to be exact) and why I need to cut myself off from the ” ‘nets” / news. I didn’t want this blog to be about my feelings / emotions, but I’ve got a “cold” and I can’t shake it.

I’ve created one massive trap door that I cannot avoid by waking up to Real Clear Politics, Andrew Golis‘ company’s phenomenal election coverage, and that bastion of liberal, elite opinion. While Bill Murray learned his lessons in Groundhog Day, I have not. I’m the guy who creates the gapers block. I just can’t pull my eyes away from this massive pile up that has developed over the past two months (at least most acutely). With the arrival of each morning, my short-term memory is wiped clean and I renew yesterday’s process of trying to discern what logic and explanations underpin the simultaneous collapse of our economic and political systems. The collapse of our economic system is easier to comprehend. What is nearly impenetrable to me is the total collapse of our political system – both the abdication of national leadership by our current president and Congress and the failure of the American electorate.

The issue that I am most bothered by is not the economic crisis. Instead, I am struggling to understand how 43-47% of Americans can support McCain/Palin. I’ve been trying to escape from the nightmare that Nov 4 could see their election and focus more on India and getting solar lights into Orissa. To no avail. Sure, Obama is up a few percentage points in the polls, but he should be leading by 15-20%. Of the roughly 200 million Americans that are eligible to vote, 90 million (going with 45% here) would place the keys to 1600 Penn Ave in McCain/Palin’s hands.

My concerns focus on one set of characteristics that both McCain and Palin display, though I cannot support them for numerous other reasons. McCain (“The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should”) /Palin (“You can’t blink”) demonstrate little intellectual curiosity or inquisitiveness about the subjects that will dominate their administration, if voters chain us to a McCain/Palin administration for what will be four interminable years. Even worse, they do not display uncertainty about their positions. I want Palin to blink. That type of certainty terrifies me and that mentality has contributed to grave errors over these past eight years. I want her to question her assumptions and vigorously debate policies, though not just in an attempt to determine which policy will be the most effective wedge issue. These three character deficiencies that they demonstrate are even more concerning because McCain and Palin have shown that they are willing to lie and mislead people on any issue that might help their poll numbers (I recognize that both campaigns have engaged in distortions, though I think McCain’s are worse, more frequent, and more vicious).

McCain has admitted to a lack of knowledge about economics. A point about which he did not seem concerned or abashed. WHAT? That should be unconscionable. You don’t need to be a Nobel Laureate in economics, but I’d hope that flippantly referencing Greenspan’s book makes you embarrassed, particularly if you don’t seem to recognize Greenspan’s complicity in the generation of the housing bubble and fiscal recklessness of the Bush administration. That’s almost as vexing as the notion that someone, who ran a small town of 6,000 people into $20 million of debt, on a $9 million dollar annual budget, is viewed as an acceptable second in command, by 94 million voting Americans, to guide a $2.8 trillion federal budget.

I believe it is irresponsible for someone to support two candidates who have demonstrated such a painful lack of awareness and knowledge of the dense thicket of economic issues through which they will have to guide us over the next four years. You can’t abdicate responsibility to Hank Paulson to figure this out. Moreover, it will take the moral imagination and the intellectual courage to reject the comforts of ideology or political expediency to develop practical solutions to constructing a path out of recession, credit market collapse, and massive indebtedness. I do not believe that McCain or Palin (too easy to prove with this one) have shown any appetite for this. I recognize that some policy choices could clearly represent an honest disagreement over efficacy. I just don’t believe that their disagreement would be honest.

At an emotional level, I am terrified by how uncomfortable many Americans are with those snobby academic elites and policy wonks, and the candidates who have those characteristics. This is exemplified by the “othering” that politicians, voters, and commentators do when they reject those “academic”, “elite” types who aspire to use their knowledge and experience to guide our policies. After all, who cares about economic knowledge and intellectual curiosity, when you have a surly, straight-talking band of gun slinging mavericks ready to levy their six-shooters at those maurading CDOs, depreciated currencies, and federal deficits? When they’re done with putting those exotic “financial words” six feet under, they’ll riddle those damn earmarks so full of lead that no one will dare pander to their electoral base by bringing home the pork.

Put another way, I don’t want my president or vice-president to be like me or my drinking buddies. I want them to be well versed on the hundreds of issues that we will encounter. I want them to feel uncomfortable until they have exposed most sides of an issue and consulted with credible, non-partisan experts. I want them to know what they don’t know and how to change that. Finally, I want our electorate to celebrate these qualities, as opposed to closing themselves off to the people who might not fit in at the local diner or be found at the checkout counter next to them at the Piggly Wiggly (It’s a real grocery chain. Thank you, Wisconsin. Illinois doesn’t appreciate the Piggly enough to play host).

On the positive side, I am glad that reporters have been focused on the terrible judgment McCain displayed in picking Governor Palin and the failure of the House Republicans to support the bailout bill. At least these are more important issues than moose hunting, Ayers, or McCain’s fleet of cars.

Most excitedly, Senator Obama is connecting with voters all over the world. 55 people turned out this Friday night to a debate watching party that the Democrats Abroad – Hyderabad sponsored, while 120 people gathered in Delhi. I met Indians, Brits, and Ugandans, who, along with my fellow ex-pat Americans, hoped to inform their judgments and “see what this is all about,” in the words of Cynthia, a sixty-five year old British woman. There was no notice that went out for a Republicans Abroad – Hyderabad event.

Finally, I understand that voter decision-making is not often driven by the issues I highlight here. I also know that most supporters of Obama/Biden have not made their decision on an explicit calculation of intelligence or intellectual curiosity. I recognize that my strong support of Obama colors my judgment and that I’m very narrowly defining the parameters on which people ought to decide their vote. So, please permit me these acknowledged shortcomings. Finally, I don’t mean to suggest that people who support McCain/Palin are not intelligent, because they aren’t focused on the same issues that I am. I simply wanted to explain what I think is important. Disagreement is welcome.

Thanks for bearing with me. I had intended this to be a couple paragraphs long. That didn’t work! I’ll have a couple of posts up soon about schooling in India and the fascinating areas of Pondicherry/Auroville.

One Water Buffalo Makes Two

Sewing Machine. Corner Store. Fabric. Seed. Trees. Donkeys. Fertilizer. Blanket weaving. Brick pressing. Statue Making. Pottery. Ice ream Making. Vegetable Trading. Utensil Making. Electrical Repair. Steel Smelting. Juice Shop. Welding.

The 2.5 million members of SKS are using their loans to start and expand over 160 different types of businesses. Of which, the ones listed above are a sample. Part of the elegance of this method for supporting development is that we did not ask any of our members to start these businesses. They chose. No aid agencies swept in to enforce their version of economic development on a community. While micro-lending lacks the coherence of an integrated community development plan that a government body or multi-national development agency might attempt to implement, this model provides each interested community member a resource to implement their own family development plan. I don’t mean to suggest a community should have an either/or decision between long-term, integrated development or individual, small scale income expansion. I wish these were yes/and choices. Unfortunately, both options are rarely available.

Until three weeks ago (this was meant to be posted earlier), I had never seen micro-lending actually happen. I was worse than a pretender. I had no experience with how women really used their loans and I had lingering doubts about whether or not interest rates tended towards the usurious. More specifically, I was concerned that, if the relatively educated, average US consumer can’t figure out how to say no to the fourteenth sliver of plastic promising low introductory rates, our members would be unable to price the “cost” of our loan. During my first visit to a center meeting (this is where a group of 30-50 women meet to pay their weekly interest and determine if anyone else should get a new loan), I wanted to understand how our members thought about their loans, the interest rate, and the value of the loan to them.

An overview of how our meetings work (photos follow each step, when included):

1) The group assembles under the lead of a Field Associate. The operation is quite efficient and respectful. When we showed up a bit late to the center, we had to pay 5 rupees to the center. No one gets away with being late / disrespectful.

2) Each member’s passbook and weekly interest payment is collected. Should someone not be present, their interest must still be paid by the other members of the center (I have seen this group responsibility in action at a number of centers and am still impressed that the center adheres to this principle). Collective obligation to pay the loan is the lynchpin of our model, which is based upon the work of Dr. Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank.

3) Usually a few other members of the community show up, whether children from around the area who are surprised to see folks like myself or children of our members, who sit suprisingly placidly through the meeting.

I met with one of our members after the center ended and she introduced me to her newest source of income, provided in part by a loan from SKS:

After speaking with her, my concerns (perhaps you could call them paternalistic concerns) about our members being able to price the full cost of our loans declined. She shared this thinking with me, though I have added a few additional calculations and clarifications. Her figures were not this precise, but her train of thought and explanations were.

She had decided to purchase a water buffalo, which cost ~30,000 rupees. She had Rs 10,000 in savings that she was willing to put towards the purchase of the buffalo. She would match this with a loan from us to complete the purchase. To determine if our 20,000 rupee (425 USD) loan, paid over a one-year term, was worth it, she calculated the following:

1) The cow would produce 4-6 liters of milk per day, which she could sell at Rs 15 – 18. Let’s call this Rs 75 more in daily income or Rs 500 per week, for simplicity’s sake.

2) In six months time, the cow would become pregnant. During this period, she would only be able to get 2-3 liters of milk per day. Or Rs 40 per day over the gestation and calf rearing period.

3) If the pregnancy was successful, she would be able to raise the calf for a year and then sell the calf for up to Rs 20,000.

4) She hoped to repeat the successful pregnancy at least twice more over the next four to six years.

The interest on her loan came out to Rs 5,000 on a principal of Rs 20,000. So, on a weekly basis, she was expected to pay back Rs 500 (Rs 60 in principal and Rs 15 in interest per day) per week. Consequently, for six months, if everything went okay, she would just be making her interest payments with the additional income from the milk sales. But, from then until the end of the loan repayment period, she would need to find money from somewhere to service the loan. She and her husband had decided that he would take on extra work to cover this shortfall.

She explained that she was confident that they would be able to pay the loan back over the course of the year and that, after this time, the cow would earn for the family more than the cost (interest) of the loan every four months or so.

Pretty sophisticated, in my opinion. Moreover, this was not a canned meeting. This was just one center member with whom I happened to ask a few questions. While this story seems to be a success, thus far, I know that plenty exist of these plans breaking down. I just offer this as a basic illustration. I am sure, if my conversation had gone quite differently during my time in the field, the tenor of this post would be quite different.

In the background of this photo, you can see the side of one of the community’s small shrines. If you want to see the visualization of what an angry god might look like, you’ve got it. Forgot to pay your tithe to the church? Missed that opportunity to help that old lady across the street? Forget to pay your Netflix bill? Put that pre-paid envelope in the mail, now. Include the check.

Here are a few more photos from that field visit:

Out for a morning stroll. Here’s looking at you.

A roadside Ganesh.

The Party is alive and well. I see these bits of party propaganda all over the place – from Andhra to Orissa to Tamil Nadu.

Our whole bus got in on the tank refill process. The guy in the white shirt was getting a bit frustrated with our advice.

Venkat took me on the field visit. When someone had asked him why he chose to work at SKS, he said he wanted to help as many people as he could before he died. No qualifiers or anything else. Damn.

Then he stuck me on the back of this. We passed more than a few shocked truck drivers to see this pasty, white person accordian-ed into the back of the ‘rick.

I woke up to this view of Hyderabad that morning. We were on our way to the field by 5:30am. A nice start to the day.

Surrounded by rice paddies and potential solar sites

I spent the past five days in Orissa repairing a project that had nearly jack-knifed off the rails. In the process, I learned my first words of Oriya, participated in my first Ganesh Puja, got chased away by an irate father, and saw some of the most breath taking scenery I’ve spied thus far (which, as of now, isn’t saying much, because I’ve spent most of my time around Hyderabad and Bombay).

Geography lesson time: Head north-east from my adopted state of Andhra Pradesh to the neighboring area of Orissa. Orissa’s capital is Bhubaneswar. It’s from here that we are preparing the pilot.

We’re working to crack the code on whether solar-powered lighting, through the use of micro-loans, meets the short-term electrification needs of our members and, by extension, the poor. So far, the results are mixed. In particular, a number of the areas that we had hoped would be promising candidates for the pilot are more electrified than originally thought. Nevertheless, many of our members have demonstrated intense interest in having an affordable way to obtain reliable, clean energy. And so, we are working on tightening up the model, reducing cost to our customers, and preparing for launch in the next month or so. Until then, I do not have too much that I can share about the program specifics.

What I can say is that I am convinced that this is an important first step in allowing our members to provide their families with a key resource to improve their lives. In Udala, when nature’s light goes out our members rest. After sundown, children cannot do homework, mothers cannot develop their businesses, and husbands cannot complete their work. Kerosene lanterns are polluting, dangerous, and expensive (over the long-term) and flashlights are totally inadequate for lighting a living space.The solar lights that we are currently testing will lift these constraints on our member. I am sure we’ll also learn of many creative uses that we could not have anticipated.

My hope is to work with some highly innovative, but realistic, product design and engineering companies that are creating flexible home energy solutions for off-grid households. In essence, the challenge for our members is that they need an affordable, reliable method for storing energy (i.e. – a battery) and a method for reliably accessing power (i.e. – AC grid power, solar, micro-hydro). The most expensive piece of that equation is the battery, currently. But, battery costs are declining and energy-efficient lighting units (LED lights, for example) are extending usage time and increasing lumens.

I am working on slightly more nuanced posts about Orissa, the gender divide, differences between developed and developing states within India, communal politics and violence, and my developing perspective on the value and constraints of microfinance. I suspect this will take a bit longer than I hope, but…

In the meantime, I wanted to share some photos from our field work and from our travels around Orissa over the past five days. We are pushing forward on our pilot, so I hope that I will soon be able to spend a couple additional weeks working to better understand these communities’ needs and what we can do.

Our assistant Sangam leader- beautiful and captivating.

Roadside friends.

Tanvi practicing her best Vikram Akula.

This kid was born to perform.

The 8th wonder of Orissa: The Rice Paddies

Northeastern Orissa’s main coal-fired power plant. 30 km from one of our sites, but electrification is years away. This was jarring when we came around a curve and this blight was smack dab on the horizon. I’m a bit conflicted, because ultimately this plant can drive huge quality of life improvements for our customers. That is unless, of course, we get our solar panels covering the countryside. Then our customers are in charge!

The harmony that rose from this group in the paddies was beautiful. While I couldn’t understand the lyrics, the sound was powerful. We stopped for a while and traded “ap kaise ho”s (hellos) and then attempted to stroll into the paddy. That proved a bad idea, so we stuck to the road and soon departed.

Just back from fishing. Tanvi and I decided that she carried the crown of Ms. Orissa 1958 proudly. There was no posing necessary for this photo.

A reflective moment. I found this boy’s manner to be wonderfully relaxed and self-assured.

The Cart that was put before the horse. We didn’t see any horses or water buffalo in this family compound, so I’m not quite sure which adage to mangle.

Unfortunately, the lighting was quite low in this room. I was trying to capture these fascinating, quizzical looks this young girl was giving me. A slightly blurry image will have to suffice.

GOATS. Nothing says rural India like a goat blocking a bridge.

A Sangam Meeting in a schoolhouse.

The lonely cement industry. This guy had just loaded up a huge dump truck full of sand and was waiting for round two. As we drove over this river, I caught this scene out of the corner of my eye. I could write a separate post about the construction industry in Orissa. I won’t, but for 10 KM before and after this river bed we saw families sitting in stone breaking camps preparing rocks for road surfacing. The price of manual labor is so astoundingly low that I saw rock crushing machines sitting idle next to these manual rock breaking sites.

To market.

The following are all shots of the children of our members, who (mostly) patiently waited for all this lending to get out of the way:

This girl kept peering out from behind the door frame. Her mother is in the lower left. Her shirt has a huge Chicago Bulls logo on the chest. We chatted for a while about the upcoming season, she’s bullish on Paxon’s ability to pull the team together and prefered Beasley as our first draft pick.

She spent the meeting hitting a boy in the head and eating sweets. Seems like a pretty good day’s work. This captured a moment of passivity.

Preparing to seed a rice paddy.

Beats Coppertone’s UVA/UVB protection every day.

Ingenious. Apparently cows don’t like to put too much effort into their foraging. This bundle blocked there path and made rolls of barbed wire that you might see in Wisconsin look a bit excessive.

He was knocking off the top of this wall, one carefully balanced swing at at time.

Another shot of the paddies.

You get the picture. We’re trying to create more of these scenes.

Late Registration – 08.21.08

I’ve just arrived at my hotel in Bhubaneshwar in Orissa, after a few days spent investigating the feasibility of introducing solar lighting products to our customers there. I thought I would catch up on my posts with an overview of the monolithic obstacle to enjoying a fruitful, extended stay in Hyderabad. This post is a bit light on analysis and context, as it’s been a long week. I’ll plan on adding more detail when I get back to Hyderabad.

While the US INS is decidedly less welcoming when it comes to bringing qualified workers into the US, the Indian government presents few obstacles in applying for a work visa. In fact, in a rather ironic twist, the Indian government has chosen to outsource the provision of visa applications through a group called Travisa. I always included their offices in a walking tour of NYC. Mainly because the office was next door to my apartment, but also because few tourist stops offer such a taste of irony.

The real challenge lurks at the begnin sounding “Foreigner’s Registration Office” (FRO) at the Hyderabad Police Commissioner’s offices.  I was steeled for this experience by many of my friends who spent between three and five days trying to navigate the forty feet between the assistant commissioner’s office and the FRO waiting room. People have literally broken down in the waiting room due to the mental anguish of attempting to comprehend the absurdity of the system. I saw a couple recently arrived from England welling up in tears as their son bounced off the wall after the first five hours passed.

And so, I decided to entertain myself by finishing an account, Maximum City by Suketu Mehta, of the more colorful personalities of Bombay. When that provded insufficient to tide me over during the six-hour wait, I took to using my blackberry as my method of blogging my FRO odyessey. The whole experience was a study in the creation of work to justify jobs to create more paperwork, and so the wheel of life turns.

Here are the blackboards that list all of the documents you need (I had a stack of 75 pages of paper, with duplicates of duplicated forms).

A few things happened that I wouldn’t have expected. I never thought I would be presented with this option on an application form, though I’ve seen other optional fields that have left me queasy, in the past. Play “Guess which field”:

 

This TV stand seemed like some sort of premise for a Jeff Foxworthy joke.

The live blackberry blog (with photos inserted afterwards):
35min to get there after we ask 12 different people where the Police Comissioner’s office building is.
Check-in, pat down, lounging guards. Get into the FRO by 10am. People come out early to sign us in. Welcome surprise. Call names at 10:30 (on schedule), I scramble for copies. Get there as number 3 and get in by 10:45am, 15min of document perusal. Passport checked 5 people. Documents looked at by 3. Younger folks are better dressed, more helpful and energetic, after twenty years I suspect this will have changed.

The third stage of registrant evaluation and quiet dismissal occurs slowly under the dim lighting of the musty office hall, with sheaves of gradually yellowing paper towering above you, like autumnal leaves gradually decaying. Older men are rotund, gruff, never smiling.

The senior application inspector is a colorless man who is busily harassing a newly arrived Sudanese refugee with broken English and Western clothes. “Why do you come here? You speak no English. So many don’t have jobs already. What will you do?” The man suffers these verbal thrusts with the placid countenance of someone who clearly has suffered worse aggression at the hands of officials throughout his flight to Hyderabad. After executing a proper thwacking the big saheeb, the senior inspector, reclines, pleased with himself, and accepts the Sudanese man’s application. Who knows what bureaucratic hoops he will have to dive through yet to allow himself to struggle to eke something out here. They are only allowing him a 6-month visa, so this is a semi-annual humiliation.

Of the thirty or so supplicants with whom I wait, 20 are Sudanese, the women veiled, and the men displaying too much respect for the Hyderabadi fashion sense – garishly patterened, rough cotton shirts, dark bootcut pants. With the women, there is an elegant grace, matched with a more assertive public character than I have seen with Indian Muslim women, though I know my exposure to both groups has been minimal.

Sitting in front of me: two chinese students, a couple americans, and two young women. Behind me, students, likely, with a fondness for 7up and the occasional flurries of animated discussion, which in the US usually covers the trio of pressing topics on shopping, boys, or gossip.

 

The waiting room exhibits some of the universals of bureaucratic interior design – discolored tile floors, narrow rows of utilitarian seating, the lazy whirl of fans. thoug these surely fail to provide much comfort when the full weight of the hot and humid monsoon season bears down.

A young English (I could tell before they spoke) couple enters – husband is some sort of consultant, given his computer back; the wife wears the psuedo locale clothing of a frequent international traveler and the token hena tattooes of someone recently returned from an Indian vacation destination or an inclusive wedding, who hops from city to city. The son seems content to seek dad’s attention, while asking probing questions about his father’s open laptop, entranced by the blue screen. His shirt reads, “Look handsome, young man.” This is a rather surprising exhortation to have on one’s shirt, given that those types of shirts usually project something more assured. In the US, I would expect it to read, “Trust Funder” or “Beauty Queen” or “Juicy” or “Your relative lack of wealth makes me uncomfortable, so I wear rhinestone studded clothing and massive watches.”  I am fascinated with the idea of growing up in India. I can’t really imagine how that would shape my perspective. I’m excited for this child. I wonder how he will internalize it. For the time being, he seems intent on exiting the waiting room, even if the barred window is the only escape route.

 

FRO 08/21/08 Stats:
55 people arrive to register. This is just for Day 1 of the process.

Number of staff: 14
Min docs per peson: 43 pages (mine was 75). Avg: ~60 pages.
Total pages generated for one day of applications – 60 * 55 – 3,300.

Avg hours spent per applicant for their first day – 7. Total time spent by applicants today – 7 * 55 – 385 hours.

Applicants per staffer – 3.9.
Applicantions processed per hour of staff time – .56.

An Efficient Industry – 08.28.08

I was speaking with a colleague of mine about some of the more misguided enterprises that “social entrepreneurs” have pursued in Hyderabad. We, both within our company and within the microfinance industry, tend to view ourselves as pragmatists seeking to have the most immediate, demonstrated impact. I think there are benefits and downsides to this. For me, the right area of focus is addressing fundamental challenges that support an increasing quality of life and standard of living, thus enabling people to meet additional needs.

Other folks might choose to pursue more exotic ideas. Some demonstrate a surprising amount of creativity and create a novel path towards poverty reduction. Most are largely tangential to the immediate needs of the poor. One example of mis-adventurism was of a person who came to intern at an MFI in Hyderabad. They quickly attempted to reorient their internship towards a rather hilarious idea. They had decided that the most important area of focus, for them, was in starting a trash collection program to harvest recyclable materials to create school backpacks for students.

At face value, one would certainly want to ensure that kids have the right tools for learning. But, this misses two issues. First, backpacks are cheap and easy to purchase. By my thinking, don’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up a trash recycling effort, design a bag, and create a manufacturing process, just buy the bags outright (you could buy millions of bags with that money and get them to children more quickly). Second, many people in Hyderabad (and throughout the world) make their livelihood, however meager, on the type of high value materials that would need to be collected to make the bags, which would be given away for free, so you could not empower, nor pay the trash pickers. All over the city, you see hundreds of people trudging through the streets carrying bulging sacks of materials culled from the waste bins throughout the city. It would seem that there is hardly a gram of usable waste that is not collected.

And so, a brief presentation on the trash collection industry as witnessed at the end of my street:

When I come home in the evening, these bins are completely full. By morning (and throughout the previous day), these have been completely picked through and the rest is cleared out by the “GHMC” – Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation.

And then there are the reinforcements we call in when we need extra (fillintheblank)power:

For the past few evenings, I have strolled home to find this horse helping with our trash collection needs. I have yet to meet the owner, but I suspect he is saving quite a bit of money on horse feed.

Finally, some groups have taken a different approach when it comes to helping the people involved in this industry. And, most significantly, some trash pickers have started to organize themselves to increase their strength, power, and training. It seems to me that this is the type of model that we should be pursuing for addressing, first, the needs of the people who feel compelled to make their livelihood in this manner, due to a lack of other options. After this, we can address issues of recycling.

The Motorcycle Diaries 08.19.08

Aarush’s Birthday and the Art of Motorcycle Construction – 08.19.08

Our team over at Business Development is rather close knit, whether due to personal affinities for one another or the fact that four to six of us share a desk. Regardless of the cause, we had a wonderful evening celebrating Rajeev’s son birthday. Aarush put on an impressive show of mild manners and complacency.

The whole birthday experience was wonderful, as was seeing their family come together for the celebration. I am learning more about the nuclear family structure in India and the closeness of each generation. I don’t think this observation is unique or surprising, as similar family patterns exist in the US, as I have witnessed in the Philippines, China, and elsewhere.

When it came to getting the family involved, there was no shortage of family available to help Aarush cut the cake and it took a few extra hands to get the cake eaten.

Following the wonderfully thoughtful lead of Nitin, the BD team conspired to challenge ourselves in the construction of a playskool toy and try to construct our present for him.

It might have taken an hour and five members of our team, but these few pieces of plastic eventually managed to come together, though, to our dismay, Aarush was absolutely nonplussed. One can imagine his frustration after watching five hours of collective effort and being unimpressed by the flames on the side.

We closed down the party and both dad and son were pleased.

Bombay – 08.14.08 – 08.17.08

Let me first apologize for the formatting of this photo set. I am just learning WordPress and their hosted platform offers little flexibility in dealing with images and customizing photo galleries. I’ll hopefully learn a bit more about how to manage this over the next few days. In the meantime, when you click on an image, it will take you to a “full-size” shot.

Bits of Bombay, in a few pictures:

Bombay has grown to envelop its airport (Chhatrapati Shivaji Intrl). Consequently, there are all sorts of specialized businesses that have grown to take advantage of the flow of goods from the airport. This man was running the most efficient, one-person logistics company around.

On a separate note, and to get a bit into the weeds, the aviation industry in India is fascinating. Public-Private partnerships have been introduced to help execute an epic game of infrastructure catch up. In the case of Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport, GVK (this is an Indian national company that has focused on hospitality and manufacturing) has come in to fund its revitalization and run operations. While I was at BVP, I learned quite a bit about the buzz around infrastructure catchup in India. This is an example of where private sector motivations and public needs have dovetailed nicely. The government has neither the funds, nor the experience to execute this on their own.

The disruption that low-cost carriers introduced into the US has hit India hard. Old stalwarts, like Air India and Deccan, are crumbling, by new, nimble airlines like Indigo (I think they owe JetBlue a dollar or two for ripping off their entire branding and design strategy), SpiceJet, and Kingfisher. If you have to fly, Indigo and Kingfisher are my go-to airlines, with Kingfisher being the best. Kingfisher is another interesting study. The founder of the Airline, Vijay Mallya, is the Richard Branson of India. He’s built a conglomerate from his father’s industrial company, which has come to encompass an airline, brewery group (read the title of the page. Mallya has quite the zeal for self-promotion. Incidentally, his McDowell’s rum is pretty good), Formula 1 racing team, among other businesses.

If you have a few dollars to spend on your hotel, the Taj Palace is your place. Whereas there is no sense of history in the areas of Hyderabad where I work, we spent a lot of time right at the center of historic Bombay and the Taj Palace is the most visually arresting building in this area (which is called Colaba).

Bombay beaches have a decidedly different look and feel to what we are used to in the US. I think the best comparison would be to call this a sand-based boardwalk. You will see very few people actually “dressed for the beach.” Instead, people head to the beaches to walk around, socialize, and take advantage of the local goods:

PEANUTS! I’ve never seen a man more distressed by an order (open the enlarged photo and look at his eyes). You would expect he had heard it all by now, but apparently we threw him a variable he was not ready to handle.

Flying Monkey Balloons. Superfluous, you say? Certainly not. Your beach strolling experience wouldn’t be complete without one.

Sorry for the heavy-handed visual metaphor, but… “New India” is growing on top of “Old India” in visually arresting ways. You see this intersection of development (modernity) and the historical components of Bombay that make it so charming all over the city. Unfortunately, the need for growth and the heavy-handed intervention of government bureaucracy and regulations conspire to ensure that zoning regulations are either not created or not enforced. The positive aspect of bureaucracy is that it also means you will fight for years to get a permit to tear down a historic building.

The Gateway of India is akin to our Ellis Island. Though much of it was covered in scaffolding, the Gate is quite arresting, particularly as it sits out on a miniature peninsula and, unlike most structures, doesn’t need to compete for visual space with other buildings.

As we were walking to the Churchgate train station (see below), we encountered beautiful examples of public sculpture and monuments. Unfortunately, as you can see here, resources are not being allocated to protect and maintain these treasures (there are more pressing needs, obviously). Consequently, this fountain structure has seen a few thefts of body parts and is covered in soot and mildew.

Churchgate Station. When you visit Bombay, go there. Get on a train. Ride the line that takes you to Bandra. We did it mid-day, so we didn’t have to jump on with 6,000 of our closest friends packed into 8-10 cars. I will go during rush hour at some point and hopefully get a video of the insanity. In the meantime, check out the videos I linked to above. All I’m saying is this – the Metro-North / 6 train, Metra (Chicago), PATH, etc now seem rather spacious.

Mount Mary Church (The Basilica of Our Lady of the Mount, to be correct). The Jesuits were busy in India (though this is a Dominican church). Bandra is one of the ritzier neighborhoods in Bombay with great views of the Sea. It is also the heavily Catholic neighborhood of Bombay. Mount Mary is a beautiful example of the melding of European and Indian architectural and artistic elements. I’d suggest a visit, though your rickshaw might not make it up to the top of the hill. Those motorbikes apparently were not built for three large guys.

Arresting. This reinforces the pain of the Cruxificion.

This is an example (though the focus is poor, as I didn’t want to use a flash inside) of some of the wonderful colors of the interior paintings.

Like many other buildings in Bombay, areas of the church compound displayed some improvised construction / troubleshooting techniques.

Sisyphus ain’t got nothing on efforts to clean the public spaces of Bombay. After I saw the 20th man peeing on the side of the road and piles of garbage streaking past my cab’s windows, I knew that this exhortation just wasn’t going to work. On that note though, I am going to try and keep a catalog of interesting public service signs throughout my travels. I love the phrasing of this sign. Let’s keep Mumbai clean, but let’s make sure to do it using awkward language. Anyway, pick up your trash.

There are a lot of young folks without supervision. Where are the nuns of St. Francis (my grade school) when you need them? This boy was having lunch under an underpass near the airport with rickshaws (seen on the right of the frame) racing past within a foot’s distance to him.

If you know Alp, you miss him. I was thrilled to find out that he opened a rival to Acapulco’s Palladium in Bombay. It’s a modest restaurant now, but I suspect he already has his expansion strategy laid out.

Sweet kicks, right? Kanye, watch out. Thanks, GVK and Kingfisher, for making my flying experience efficient. I hope that WiFi and a CoffeeDay (India’s Starbucks equivalent, though CoffeeDay currently carries the cache that Starbucks has lost) are next in line for the renovation.