Crossworlds

Tajikistan’s Scarcity of Economy

Tajikistan. Where is it? Somewhere amongst the “-stan” countries, Tajikistan is probably better known for being neighbors with Afghanistan and Uzbekistan than by its own right. The result is a tendency for the unfamiliar outsider to culturally lump it with the bigger “-stans”. At least that was how I mentally understood it until I spent the past week in Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital.

On the surface, Dushanbe wasn’t surprising. Gray, communist era building dominated the city’s landscape along neatly planned avenues. A large park plopped in the city center with a grandiose statue to Amir Ismail Samani of the Samanid Empire. Most shops carried merchandise produced in either Russia or China – food products from Russia and all other goods from China. The only thing that I missed seeing were propaganda slogans and posters promoting the dictator.

Samani Statue in Dushanbe's City Center

What surprised me about Tajikistan was the underlying poverty in the country. Informal conversations and online research taught me that the average household in Tajikistan earns 250 – 300 Somoni ( ~$60USD) a month, which means that many families live on less than $2 a day. Goods aren’t cheap either – a loaf of bread costs 1 somoni (~$0.25USD) as does a bus ride. It took me by surprise, because nothing about the city’s appearance would’ve hinted at such poverty levels. In India, the poverty is in your face – children in rags run barefoot through the streets; ramshackle slums of plastic lean-tos next to railway lines. In Tajikistan, the poverty hides under a clean and orderly veneer, a remnant of Soviet indoctrination* and infrastructure development. During the Soviet era, there was funding for public works projects, but after its independence, all the development projects stopped. As a result, Dushanbe looks like it’s a city stuck in the 80’s with everything from cars to hair styles from that era.

According to everyone I spoke with, much of the wealth that comes into the country is through remittances. Out of the 7 million Tajiks, an estimated 1 million Tajik men work in Russia and send back remittances that are supposed to account for 35-40% of the GDP. The other major source of wealth is from foreign donors and international agencies. It seemed like everything was sponsored by some foreign entity – e.g., Dushanbe’s new airport is under construction with support from the French government. There is a Hyatt hotel in Dushanbe, which exists primarily to house international donor agency staff. I wouldn’t be surprised if international funding made up a large portion of the remaining GDP.

The problem with Tajikistan is that it lacks any real wealth generating industries. While there is a lot of subsistence farming, Tajikistan is 90% mountain ranges and not naturally endowed with much fertile land for agricultural crops. The locals kept telling me that Tajikistan was second to Uzbekistan in cotton production for the Soviet Union, but in comparison to nearby India, Tajikistan’s cotton production is miniscule and not competitive. Tajikistan’s Ferghana Valley also produces some excellent fruits, but that one short fruit season hardly seems like the answers to its economic problems. Foundations in the areas are promoting agricultural projects amongst young unemployed Tajiks in rural areas. I had a conversation with a program manager from the Eurasian Foundation about a project funding potato farming, which failed to take off because the domestic markets sourced cheaper potatoes from Russia or China. I’m not an agricultural development specialist, but personally, it seems unlikely that domestic produce can compete with large scale commercial agricultural production from Russia or China. At most, Tajikistan can hope to build a value add industry around processing produce (e.g., potato chip production, tomato sauce processing, etc.)

Aside from farming, I was told that most people found employment in small scale trading, meaning selling goods in the local bazaars. Since there’s virtually no export trade and only import trade, these trading activities aren’t resulting in wealth creation for the country. Currently, there are over 130 micro credit related entities, which provide loans of ~$500 USD to these small scale entrepreneurs.

Tajikistan also lacks any form of service industry that could generate wealth. Most Tajiks don’t speak English, but they do speak Russian, which creates the potential of developing an outsourced service industry catering to the Russian market. Given the growing markets in Russia and Kazakhstan, the potential to leverage Tajikistan’s cheaper labor force is high. The only glitch in this solution is that the country has an extreme shortage of human resources. Any skilled labor immediately leaves the country in search of greener pastures and so there is a significant problem in retaining strong human resources. It seems to me that this should be the moment for government intervention and incentive policies that would make it possible to build human resource capacity in the country. Policies like Singapore’s presidential scholar program that sends students abroad in return for a committed number of years of employment might be one way to address the human resource scarcity.

Although my time there was limited and my understanding of the situation superficial, I find the economic development problem in Tajikistan a fascinating one. I suspect that Tajikistan’s economic problem is highly policy oriented. Unlike India, where development in many parts of the country needs to start from scratch with infrastructure building, Tajikistan appears to have much of the machinery, but no mechanism to get it started. Tajikistan was an eye-opener for me. Apparently, poverty and development problems come in all shapes and hues.

*Apparently there was a Soviet tradition known as “Subbotnik”, from the word for Saturday, where citizens come out to sweep the streets and tidy up public spaces on Saturdays. Walking down Dushanbe’s main Avenue Rudaki on Saturday, I saw men shoveling mud out of the gutters and cleaning a public garden.

The Globalization Paradox

Returning from a long hiatus, I found notes for this blog post languishing, waiting to be written. What I call the “globalization paradox” is actually an observation on the ubiquity of global brands and culture in remote regions. I’ve been surprised throughout my travels by the level of penetration by certain branded products (e.g., Coca Cola, Pepsi, Frito Lays) or pop culture in seemingly isolated areas where other signs of development and plugging into the mainstream switchboard are rare. Despite the fact these areas are apart from the interconnected world, the exposure to globalized products and media is extremely high.

Anecdote #1:

On a minibus ride through northern Lebanon last year, I met a young architecture student of the University of Tripoli. He spoke no English and only fragmented French, but when he passed me his mp3 player for a listen, I was surprised to hear Akon, One Republic, and other American artists. It was surreal – he had all the latest hits. I offered to send him music recommendations via email, but was once again surprised to hear that he had no email account. He candidly told me, “my sister has a hotmail account, but my friends are in Tripoli or in my village so why do I need email to contact them?” I was bewildered. Here was someone who was voluntarily isolated from the external world and yet was an avid follower of American pop music, in a language that he didn’t even speak. How does one explain this pop culture phenomenon?

Anecdote #2:

A couple months back, I visited a few tribal villages in Jharkhand, who intentionally limit their contact with mainstream society. These villages mostly subsist on sustainable farming with a little income from government rural employment programs. On average, these families earned 40 – 100 rupees per day; most of them didn’t leave the village aside from occasional trips to the market in larger towns. Yet, in the center of each village, a small Airtel PCO sign would hang outside a doorway announcing cell phone recharge station and the existence of the kirana shop selling all the familiar branded goods from bottles of Pepsi to Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate bars. In these villages, people spent their incomes the same way we all do – on junk food and mobile minutes. How are these supposedly segregated tribal villages so far from mainstream and yet so tied to the same commercial brands as we are?

***

What fascinates me about this “globalization paradox” is its potential as a solution to the social development sector’s last mile challenge problem. In spite of the isolation of many areas, the deep penetration by mass market brands and culture give us a channel to reach the bottom of the pyramid. Like the proposed matchbox ad campaign article featured on ThinkChange India last year, soda bottles could be the media for awareness campaigns in rural markets. As American cereal boxes feature brain teasers and puzzles, we can place educational games on the back of potato chip bags to promote literacy and arithmetic.

The fact that there are global brands and songs penetrate deep into difficult-to-reach markets is a hopeful sign the last mile problem. In the social sector, maybe we should stop asking for monetary corporate sponsorship or investment and ask for more in-kind real estate on their packaging to further our marketing reach. And maybe we can canvass popular artists to dedicate a few lines of their work to a development cause. Whatever the method, the “globalization paradox” provides some food for thought on how we can reach out to the bottom of the pyramid.

Take a Ride on the Indian Railway

I’ve spent a lot of my time in India hurtling across the country in a railway car. Most times, I’m lucky enough to get booked on a third AC car (~Rs. 300 for a 4 hour journey), which is equivalent to traveling business class on a flight. AC class cars not only have the eponymous AC comfort, but also provide bedsheets and pillows for your bunk*. AC cars are also better kept and cleaner than the general cars; they are also strictly monitored by the ticket inspectors to prevent stowaways. Other times, if the booking is made too late, then it’s by regular sleeper cars I go (~Rs. 200). These open air cars offer the bare bunk bed covered in noticeably dirty vinyl and you risk having cockroaches and mice skitter across your bunk while you are comatose. Still, sleeper cars are guaranteed seating and loitering in these cars by non-ticket holders is kept to a minimum. Sometimes, fortune deals me an unlucky hand and I’m stuck in the general seating car (~Rs. 100), which is a free-for-all arrangement where you can place yourself wherever you find space. I once traveled during the night from Jamshedpur to Kolkata, and there were literally people sleeping under my seat, in the aisles, and even on the luggage racks.

I think it’s the latter scenario that really amazes me about the Indian rail system. A number of people have documented the incredible heartline of India that is the railway – The New York Times featured a video last month and of course, there’s Paul Theroux’s definitive travelogues (The Great Railway Bazaar) of 20 years back. But in my opinion, what is remarkable is how the railway system is an equalizer in a country that is normally full of disparities. The highly subsidized tickets ensure that just about anyone can afford a train journey. Even daily wage earners can save up for the Rs. 100 ticket for occasional trips back to their native villages. It also means that various holy and culturally significant destinations around the country are accessible to everyone. As long as you can save a few rupees per month, you can make a pilgrimage to one of the holy temple cities. I remember standing in the gardens of the Taj Mahal and seeing all sorts of citizens enjoying their country’s wonder. Talking to my auto driver later, I was told that a lot of poor Indians come from around the country to see the Taj Mahal. Like some of the more popular temples, the Taj is on the to-do list of many poor people as the culmination of a lifelong pilgrimage. There’s no such equalizer in any other country that I’ve been through, where even bus journeys can be prohibitively expensive for the poor. [The only exception perhaps is the Chinatown bus system between New York, Boston, DC, and North Carolina]

Of course, there is also a more unpleasant side to the great railway system. As the New York Times video and others have noted, the railways are overtaxed and under maintained. While the general seating cars offer the poor an affordable transportation option, the conditions are also appalling. The overfilled general compartments are unsafe for female passengers during the night, not to mention the unsanitary conditions of such overcrowding. Let’s all pray that no one with a highly contagious disease gets onto a general seating car, because the spread of that epidemic would be unstoppable.

There are other aspects of the railway system that are hard to stomach. Waiting at the Surat station in Gujurat, I saw workers digging and removing the sewage waste on the tracks by hand! They had no gloves, no tools, nothing but a metal pan onto which they piled the waste to carry to another spot for dumping. Demeaning nature of the work aside, the blatant health hazards of the job alarm me enough. While manual waste scavengers aren’t seen at every station, their existence is a complaint that I’d like to lodge with the railway authorities.

But perhaps that’s the problem – the massive network of crisscrossing tracks lacks a central authority. Each region has its own jurisdiction over the railways and as much else in Indian, the level of functionality entirely depends on the region in question. As expected, the Southeastern Railway that governs the routes I travel on most, between West Bengal and Jharkhand, is one of the weaker authorities. Our trains and stations are noticeably more dilapidated and dirtier than the other lines that I’ve taken in other parts of the country.

It’s really a shame that such a great asset of the country is slowly deteriorating without enough care. A central power really needs to take up the task of renovating and better upkeep of the system. And until someone forces the Southeastern Railway to shape up, the only thing I can say to redeem the Howrah station in Kolkata is that at least it has the largest array of food vendors out of any train station I’ve seen.

* Most train journeys are overnight, and thus these are sleeping cars. There are also AC chair cars.

Start-Up Myopia

In recent weeks, I’ve been caught in the upswing of operations and business development that I’ve grossly neglected everything else – e.g., producing content for this blog. Now that we have completed our main order for Jindal Southwest and await the beginning of that trial, production has slowed and I’ve had a chance stepped back to pause and recollect my scattered responsibilities.

When we started production in May, the new stream of operations workflow brought with it a whole host of challenges, which I won’t revisit. Amongst other challenges, setting up and running productions was like a black hole that consumed all my extra time and energy that sometimes could’ve been better spent elsewhere. For the first 2.5 weeks, I sat for whole days working with the women in the workshop, at the end of which was left little time for all the business development work. Even as the workshop became independent enough to run itself, there still remained the daily check-ins on progress, productivity, quality, etc. Between these daily interruptions and the frequent fire drills of supply shortages or unexpected employee absences, the long-term workplans simmered away on the back burner, overlooked.

I realized that the myopia that occurred during our heavy production phase was just one incidence of shortsightedness amongst many. Perhaps, one of the most difficult and unexpected challenges that I’ve faced in working with a start-up has been to remain focused on the bigger picture. I expected that business school and management consulting had trained me well enough to focus on the 10,000 ft. view, and yet it was so easy to get caught by the immediate concerns – daily production reports, last minute sales meetings, networking opportunities, etc. – that I never realized that my 10,000 ft. view was really a 10 ft. view. I realize in hindsight that the trap is easy to fall into because addressing immediate concerns gives a more tangible sense of productivity than working on something with a longer timeline. Everything that we did was in line with our general objectives of getting the business going, but I doubt that we structured and used our time wisely.

In the past few weeks, my partner and I finally had time sat down to talk about the company. There are things that we should’ve done at the very beginning – broad framework exercises – which could’ve better informed some of the decisions that we made. With more time on our hands, we’ve sat down to do a detailed stakeholders’ analysis. As we talked through the various customer segments and the purchase motivations, I realized how differently he and I perceived the buyers’ motivations, which explained a few of our major disagreements. In discussing our raw materials’ suppliers, I again discovered just how differently we could’ve managed our supply chain and avoided a number of our daily stress instigators. So many of the decisions that we disagreed upon simply stemmed from the different perspectives and understanding we had of the business.

The entire time that we were working on generating more sales and manufacturing for orders, we both thought that we had fixed upon the larger vision and were aligned in our understanding of the business. The first week that we started working together, we created a workplan with short and long term goals and sales targets – this was what we thought the big picture meant. But now I realize how myopic that was. The bigger picture discussion should’ve meant objectives and targets even broader than simply sales targets that would inform a framework for how we would make business decisions. For example, should we take on an order if we don’t have the production capacity for it or if in order to produce it we would have to hire men workers? The sales targets and goals we established for ourselves were tactical and are useless in the evaluation of the option. Especially since it turns out my partner and I had different understandings of the business, we should’ve established broader values for our business so that we knew what to prioritize when a decision presented us with a conflict of objectives.

Seeing the bigger picture is hard. Certainly harder in a dynamic, changing business scenario. It’s easier when you’re looking at it as a static business case in a classroom or consulting conference room. Constant reevaluation of your understanding of the business is a must. In a start-up, you can’t stop stepping back and making sure that you’re making decisions with a 10,000 ft. perspective, because it’s so easy to think that when you’re actually about 10 ft. from the ground. I’m sure that a month from now, I’ll be feeling myopic all over again.

The Technology Gender Gap

Originally written for the Villgro Research Blog, I’m re-posting my article here. For those short on time and patience, I would recommend just reading the last two paragraphs on the need to address the technology gender gap.

Technology and innovation are two words that form a pillar of social enterprise – even social enterprise itself is still considered an innovation. Social enterprises seek to develop technologies with the underlying assumption that they will increase productivity or create opportunities for social economic advancement. Some technologies are simple like the treadle pump, and others are complex like solar lanterns, but all of them help the BoP and it’s this latter benefit that we invest in. As social entrepreneurs, we’re obsessed with measuring this benefit and finding new ways to scale the impact further – in short we want to know that everyone who can benefit from this technology is adopting it. All the aforementioned statements are frequently discussed, but what we don’t hear enough about is whether these successful innovations are reaching men and women equally or whether there is a gender gap to adoption of technologies.

The International Council for Research on Women recently published the report “Bridging the Gender Divide: How Technology can Advance Women Economically”, which focuses on understanding how technology for the BoP differs in its impact on men versus women and what measures can be taken to ensure more inclusion of women. Four main barriers to adoption were identified:

- Lack of education and technology literacy: women are often excluded from opportunities to learn the new technology

- Time poverty: domestic responsibilities leave limited disposable time for tech exploration

- Social norms: women are often not in the habit of operating technology, or adoption would require women to enter a public arena (i.e., market) outside their customary comfort zone

- Limited economic means: domestic finances are most often controlled by the men of the households, leaving women unable to make a purchase decision to adopt innovations

These barriers can be overcome when developers of the technology or the social enterprise promoting the innovations take efforts to address the root causes, starting with including women in the design process. ICRW gives an example of the the Upesi rural biomass stoves, which were designed with inputs from women and consequently were adopted. I find this point to be one of the strongest recommendations – it addresses a systemic concern that prevents women adoption. As long as technology continues to be designed by men, women adoption will be low, perpetuating social norms that continue to support the existing gender gap. Sometimes, the solution is as simple as making a technology like a cooking stove, a height that women can reach. ICRW also suggests that inclusion of women in the design process can help to overcome many of the technology literacy and social norm barriers.

Other recommendations are centered on customizing the last mile distribution to address the awareness training needs, purchasing financing, and distribution through channels catered to women. By providing financing or bringing the innovation directly to the women, rather than relying on market place distribution, women are enabled to make the adoption. It is only through active efforts of the social enterprise to convert women adopters that this is possible.

ICRW provides the example of Solar Dryers in Uganda, which were financed by a partner NGO, enabling women to dry fruits for commercial consumption. As in the Solar Dryer example, technologies which can either create income generating activities or increase the productivity of women can go a long ways to contributing to their economic advancement. In addition, ICRW cites that the indirect benefits of increased productivity can also reduce the barrier of time poverty.

Overall, what I find most compelling and the most important point to takeaway is the need to examine and reevaluate how we think about the potential impact of a technology on helping the BoP. Social enterprises need to be more conscientious of the gender gap in innovation adoption and need to be vigilant in their efforts to address this gap.

One particular example comes to my mind of an innovative successful business model, who could benefit from thinking about their social impact with respect to an adoption gender gap. VisionSpring, an organization recently partnered with Villgro, uses a high touch-point sales distribution model to bring low-cost reading glasses to the BoP across southeast India. VisionSpring’s customer demographics are heavily skewed towards men even though there are many women who attend the eyecamps and should be customers. There seem to be two primary reasons for the gender divide between VisionSpring’s customers. The first is that eyeglasses are perceived as aesthetically unappealing, which trumps the value of clear vision. The second is that women are less likely to have disposable income and the economic means to make the purchase. Both these reasons are problems that should be and can be addressed by the social enterprise. Awareness campaigns for the importance of proper reading glasses in the preservation of vision, not to mention the benefits of increased productivity, can be conducted to overcome what is essentially a misguided social norm that is a barrier to wearing glasses. Women can also be engaged in sourcing frames that are more aesthetically appealing. Finally, some form of partnership with a microfinance institution to finance the purchases is also possible to overcome the economic concern.

The point I want to emphasize is not how VisionSpring can work to increase its female customers, but rather that it needs to proactively think and evaluate the impact of its technology to identify how to overcome the gender gap. This is true across all social enterprises. Even though many social enterprises have introduced game changing technologies to the BoP, I think if we look closer, we would see a divide in the impact by gender. This gap is one that needs to be overcome if we truly want economic advancement for all of the BoP – of both women and men.

Policy: Rights the Poor Don’t Know They Have

I was surprised to find yesterday morning, my New York Times homepage featuring an article on the rural poor of Jharkhand (where I currently live) and the government legislation, which is supposed to provide them the means to justice. The article, “Right to Information Law is Lever for India’s Poor” , reports on the legislation, Right to Information (RTI), passed by the Indian government five years ago to address some of the systemic bureaucratic corruption by allowing individual citizens to have the “right” to ask for information on government actions and decisions. The law is supposed to empower all citizens to challenge and expose a corrupt government, with the hopes that increased transparency will lead to reform. As the reporter points out this law has not led to a dramatic reformation of a corrupt system, instead benefits have been varied and come at a more individual level of successful appeals. Grassroots anecdotes are shared of Dalit (untouchable caste) women in rural villages in Jharkhand, who were helped by social activist groups to utilize the law to obtain their rightful state welfare provisions. These individual victories are a small torch of hope for how the poor may yet be able to overcome corruption.

From my perspective* the optimism of those who hail the RTI law as a panacea is over-exuberant and premature. The RTI law sounds good in theory, but implementation and execution is really where it falls short. In order for the RTI to effect change, the individuals of the population need to exercise their right, which first requires them to be aware that they have such a right, and within here, I believe the problem lies. The success of the RTI law is heavily dependent then on the dissemination of information to the public, which in turn depends on the state in question. In the better run states, such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the population is generally better educated and informed. However, in states like Jharkhand, where one side effect of the government’s dysfunction is a large uneducated poor population, the existence of RTI will remain unknown to a large majority of citizens. So then, what is the benefit of RTI to the poor who actually need it to counter their corrupt governments?

After reading the article, I conducted an informal survey of the women who work at our workshop to see if they were aware of the RTI law. None of them had ever heard about it. Not even the few girls who had finished school. If even the literate, urban population isn’t aware of RTI, then what hope is there that the illiterate, rural population is? Jharkhand has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the country.** In the last national census (2002), Jharkhand had an overall literacy of 59%, but female literacy was only 39%. With 60% of women getting any information other than through word of mouth channels, how is RTI supposed to make a dent in Jharkhand’s corrupt government? While the grassroots stories of social activists helping the one off woman to achieve some public justice is heartwarming, they don’t do enough to make RTI an effective law.

When I read the New York Times article, I had an immediate reaction against the optimistic hope and praise around this “landmark” legislation. On behalf of all the poor, particularly women, who have little access to information and are illiterate, I wanted better execution of the RTI legislation to empower them and give them access to justice. If RTI is actually meant to reform the system, there needs to be more awareness campaigns outside of conventional media devices, so that the poor who really need the legislation actually learn of it. Otherwise, it’s just another piece of legislation, good in theory, but whose benefits never reach the poor.

* And I feel obliged to add a disclaimer here that my perspective is limited

** A little more context around Jharkhand – as a state, it has only existed for the last decade, after separating itself from Bihar, another impoverished and “lawless” state. As a natural resource rich state of minerals, coal, and timber (Jharkhand itself means “Jungle Land”), Jharkhand is home to two of the country’s largest steel plants and a number of other large industrials. Logic would imply that a state with such resources and industries should be one of economic growth, not one where 44% of the population lives under the poverty line (compared to 26% for India overall according to Business Standard). The public government does little to reverse the scenario. The dilapidated road infrastructure, constant power failures, high level of civil unrest (Jharkhand harbors a large percentage of naxal rebels) are other signs of government inefficacy.

The Women I Work For

When we first established our operations to produce Coir Atlas units a few weeks ago, we encountered an unexpected difficulty in getting a steady workforce of women. It seems like a simple equation: Decent Salary + Clean Working Environment + Lack of Employment Opportunities = Loyal Willing Workers. We had spread the word around the surrounding villages and poor colonies and expected to be flooded by eager employment seekers. We were quickly taught how wrong we were. The first day, we had one girl show up. We diligently trained her in the assembly process and taught her how to stitch and knot. She didn’t come back the next day.

We kept getting new women each day who would stay for one day of training never to return again. “Why?” we asked. We found that there wasn’t enough traction and the women were hesitant about working in a newly established organization with no track record and no steady employees. It would seem shady to me too if I showed up to a workshop and I was the only girl working. Finally, when we managed to get three women to show up together, they all bunked the next day. They complained about the compensation structure, which was Rs. 50 during training days (the first week). Given our payment incentive of Rs. 15 per unit after training, the women who produced more than 3 units during training felt that we were cheating them out of their rightful earnings. So we changed our payment structure to whichever was higher, either Rs. 50 per training day or Rs. 15 per unit made, and also shortened training to 4 days instead of 7. We introduced a Friends & Family policy, where anyone who introduced a new worker who stayed received a Rs.50 bonus.

To assuage their fears of this unknown workshop, I used my physical presence as a female and someone they could relate to. For the entire first week, I sat with the women, teaching them the assembly process and making units alongside them for encouragement. Believe me, this is far from glamorous nor instantly gratifying. Training was difficult given my limited Hindi, ergo it became more of show than tell, which frustrated all parties involved. In the afternoons, our public electricity would often experience load shedding and the fans would come to a dead halt. Together, we sat in sweaty solidarity, sewing jute.

I find that people, particularly in the developed world, like to romanticize the poor and the notion of poverty – emphasizing the generosity which the poor show each other or relating how they instantly felt akin to a poor woman they worked with. The reality is gray. While our women helped each other out, teaching someone who was new, or lending a hand to finish a unit, they were also competitive and possessive of limited supplies because they were paid by the units they made. Similarly, the women and I didn’t start out fond of each other; some of them were in fact quite difficult to work with and they viewed me as their boss who was not thinking on their behalf. They were also hesitant of each other, as everyone was competing for their own interests. Generosity and mutual understanding can’t come if it’s at the direct cost of potential income.

Camaraderie only developed over the course of our days working side-by-side. While our hands tied knots, we talked and learned about each other. Standard topics of conversations included: marital status, number of kids, age of their kids and what kind of food they cooked. I learned that Ratna, one of our best workers, is Tamilian but raised in Jamshedpur, so she likes to make South Indian dosas for her 2 sons on Sundays, her day off, because dosas are only good when they’re hot. Other days, she cooks a day’s supply of rice and daal before coming to work so that her husband and kids have meals during the day. Asha was someone I initially had difficulty teaching, but who has developed into a solid Coir Atlas maker; she is Bengali and so likes to make Bengali curries for her husband and two daughters. The women also developed friendships amongst themselves, joking with each other, and walking home with each other at the end of each day. But none of this happened overnight; it took time to build this mutual respect.

It was from the friend groups that formed that we decided to implement a group production model. We divided our 12 women into four groups of three. Each group is given a common supply of jute fabric, bamboo, thread, etc. and would be compensated for their total production rather than their individual production. Without our direction, the groups developed division of labor on their own. E.g., a particular member who was better at the finishing process took over that task while the other two women prepared the structural parts for her. It was incredible to watch them help each other within their group, but also develop a friendly competition with other groups. In the first three days of individual production, four women produced 14 units in total, which was frustrating when I could produce 8 units on my own in a day. Now, the groups are making 100+ units per day and they proudly and eagerly tell me how many units they’ve made each day.

***

Saturday was our first official payday, and the women were excited to find out how much they had earned. Our payment model is simple, Rs.15 per unit produced or Rs.100 per day, whichever works out in their favor. All of the women who were making units earned more than Rs.100 per day, which is often1.5x what they were previously earning. Four of our women workers come from Bagbera, a slum near the railway station. They used to earn daily wages of Rs. 60 rolling agarbatti (incense sticks), a common trade for poor women. Heera, our top performer, was an agarbatti roller who now earns an average of Rs. 130 per day, which supplements the income that our husband, a construction site worker makes. For Puja, another worker, this is her first job and the income she earns helps her family of 6 siblings to make ends meet because her father isn’t around anymore. It was eye opening for me to hear the story that each of our women had to tell for why she was here earning what equates to ~$3 a day.

As each woman was paid her salary, she was asked to sign her name in the ledger and it was then that I discovered that a number of our women were illiterate. Several of our top performers, who are deft in stitching and bright learners, were unable to sign even their own names, providing their thumbprints in place of a signature. Even many of those who could write their own names, did so laboriously in the handwriting of a child. Manju, who was a fast learner and made 6 units on her first day, couldn’t write the 3 letters that form her name in Hindi. She also wasn’t interested when I tried to teach her to write her name, because there was no income generation value in knowing it. It was hard for me to grasp how these smart and competent women, whom I respect, could not know how to sign their names.

***

Setting up operations was and is challenging and taxing. There are constant setbacks and disappointments in the production performance. And when all the women appear each day, clad in brightly colored saris, with gold earrings and nose rings, I often wondered if these were truly women in need. I doubted the social impact that our operations had. For me, these uncertainties have been laid to rest. Even though our impact is small right now, the employment that we are providing is giving our small group of women a meaningful amount of extra income. Over the last weeks of working with and getting to know them, I came to develop a sense of kinship with and responsibility for them. My only worry now is on the business side of how to keep sales coming so that we can keep them employed. Because now that I know them, I don’t want to disappoint them and have them return to rolling agarbatti for $1.50 a day.

Semantics: Corporate Social Responsibility & Inclusive Growth

Since the inception of the double bottom line after Shell’s PR nightmare with Greenpeace, and now the triple bottom line, corporate social responsibility has become the favorite all-encompassing term and budget for all corporate communication efforts to win over public opinion. Suddenly everything from sponsoring sporting events like Premier League games to building schools and cultural spaces falls within the scope of CSR. Viewed from another direction, CSR is really not much different from buying ad space on billboards except that even non-consumer corporations are doing it – i.e., large industrials like steel manufacturers.

In developing countries like India, CSR initiatives are even more amorphous, as many corporations assume roles and responsibilities that are normally handled by the public sector. When industries set up new manufacturing plants in a rural area, they inevitably also bring economic growth as well as infrastructural development. For example, Visa Steel in Orissa builds roads for the communities around its steel mills; Vedanta Aluminum and NALCO all have health clinic initiatives for the surrounding rural villages; and of course, there is Tata Steel, which outright adopts villages and takes over most municipal functions (my city, Jamshedpur being case in point). It’s a strange niche that CSR fill in India that straddles the public and private sectors as corporations to contribute to the community’s growth and fill in gaps where the public sector fails.

What strikes me, however, about these CSR initiatives is how unrelated the various community programs are to the core business of these industries. Each company sponsors a women skills development program, a cultural sports and dance event, a basic health clinic, etc. The cookie-cutter similarity of these programs seems to me to be an indication of the lack of internalization of CSR as a core business activity, even though indirectly, they do contribute to the continued success of the corporation. I was at the Confederation of Indian Industries’ CSR conference last week, during which, each industrial panelist presented the exact same set of CSR initiatives. Of the ten panelists, there was only one representative from POSCO Steel who expounded on why CSR initiatives are crucial to the successful gaining the approval of the local community for green field projects. In my opinion, ALL CSR representatives should have demonstrated why and how their initiatives were contributing directly to the company’s bottom line. Otherwise, CSR initiatives become an unsustainable fringe department of a corporation, subject to the fancies of the budget allocator.

The good news is that there do exist progressive CSR programs, which are moving towards an inclusive business model. At a subsequent International Business Leaders Forum last week, CSR representatives and NGOs discussed how to internalize the benefits and impact of social initiatives in the company’s bottom line. Roads that are constructed in a rural village benefits the community, yes, but it also eases the transportation logistics for the industrial corporation. Even sponsored cultural dances and sporting events help a core business operate by raising the goodwill of the community and preventing bandhs (strikes). These “inclusive business models” are focused on measuring and quantifying the benefits of seemingly normal CSR activity to calculate it into the company’s P&L statement. The result is a more sustainable form of social impact activity, which is unlikely to disappear when CSR goes out of fashion.

The bottom line is that whether it’s called corporate social responsibility or inclusive business, all social initiatives taken up by a private corporation should have an impact that is measured and shown to contribute to the core business. Only then, will CSR stop being seen as a form of corporate philanthropy and be seen as a necessary part of doing business.

Climate Change: Things Are Heating Up Around Here

The hot story of the month around Jamshedpur has been the increasing temperatures felt around the city and the growing concerns around a drought. Newspapers report that by late May, temperatures will be as high as 50C and staying there as the summer peaks around June 21, the solstice. Every morning, the lady who comes to clean the apartment says to me as a way of greeting, “Bahut garmi hai, na? Zyada garmi lagte hai”, indicating that it’s very hot. In fact, it’s much hotter and drier than it used to be.

The fact is that these changes in weather patterns aren’t just peculiar of this year; it’s been a gradual change that has worsened annually, directly caused by global warming. Local Jamshedpur residents remember a time when the unrelenting summer rays were interrupted by daily afternoon showers, which would cool the city. But those days are distant memories of twenty years back. These days, we have to wait for the monsoons for any hope of relief.

In April, The Times of India (Jharkhand edition) reported that “Extreme heat drying up water bodies and triggering flash fires in Jharkhand forests are not just usual implications of summer scorch, rather it has links with climate changes.” The ripple effect of this extreme heat on the environment is great. The traditional Sakhua tree, an important source of timber for Jharkhand state, is no longer flowering because of the lack of conventional rainfall. Droughts also decrease crop yields and result in seed shortages, which contribute the overall poverty of the state. The Gene Campaign even goes as far as to state the Naxal rebellions in Jharkhand are an outcome of poverty caused by poor drought management by the government.

However, Jamshedpur isn’t the only place facing these noticeable changes in climate. Intelligent Life Magazine recently ran a poignant article on the disappearing seasons around the world: in Orissa, an eastern Indian state, farmers have noticed that the monsoon rains no longer follow the predictable schedule of centuries old. The monsoons come earlier than usual, causing floods and destroying crops. In Uganda, farmers have noticed that their once reliable two rainy seasons of three months have been replaced by spotty rains of one month duration. In Kashmir, the brief rainy season between winter and spring, called “tsonth” has completely vanished in the last decade. The examples of missing rainy seasons are numerous and the impact is felt on many levels from the ecological cycle to the millions of farmers whose crops are devastated.

While I sat in my hot, dusty flat lamenting my bad luck for arriving in Jamshedpur during a particularly hot year, I was completely unaware that in actuality, it’s just the world’s back luck that our planet is heating up. The heat in Jamshedpur is certainly unpleasant, but the environmental consequences of global warming are even more unpleasant – for everyone. So the next time you escape from an unusually hot summer’s day into an air conditioned bubble, pause for a moment and think about why it’s so darn hot. And see if you still doubt global warming.

The Importance of Being Branded – Part II

One of the more practical sessions at the Sankalp Forum last week was on developing the brand of an enterprise, sponsored by the brand consulting firm Center of Gravity. Unlike many of the theoretical, overarching discussion panels of the state of the social entrepreneurship sector, this session provided concrete advice for start-ups on how to begin thinking about their branding strategy. Appropriate brand management is often undervalued by start-ups who have enough capital expenditures to worry about without also needing to hire a brand consultancy firm. Yet, it is an important consideration that can aid in gaining traction. The session provided a few simple guidelines for start-ups, which albeit obvious can still be useful points to begin with:

1. Understand the profile of your customers

Center of Gravity begins the branding process with a market segmentation analysis to understand the demographics and motivations of the customers. Enterprises often approach the market potential as one homogenous mass of consumers, whereas the customers are a diverse group with different motivations for making the purchase. For example, organic food consumers are not all driven to purchase for health reasons – some people go organic because it’s a perceived indicator of social status , and others buy organic because it’s more sustainable and eco-friendly.

2. Make your cause and message relevant

After understanding the consumption drivers of the primary customer segments, it’s important to create targeted brand messages relevant to each segment. People respond to messages with which they identify. The healthy eater would not respond in the same way to Whole Food’s upscale organic brand, whereas the status seeker would. It’s important to make sure that your brand message is aligned with your growth strategy if you need to target certain customer segments.

3. Provide a “So-What?” statement that connects your social impact to the customer’s choice

Consumers are lazy, so don’t leave it for them to make the connection between the product and the social impact. Demonstrate a clear link between the purchase decision and the environmental / social impact. For example, if your organic produce company directly helps small local farmers, have a story of that farmer on your package.

4. Do more with less by leveraging high profile endorsers

This piece of advice is a no-brainer. Every start-up would love to do more with less, and if there happens to be an influential person who is sympathetic to your cause, all the better. Center of Gravity gave an example of how they engaged famous Indian stars for a democratic campaign in Bangalore, but hardly every start-up has the good fortune of such endorsers. A better corollary to this particular advice would be to engage everyone and anyone who is willing to speak for your company. A particular CSR person may not have the power to make the purchasing decision, but they can influence and convince others in that position of power to make that decision.

5. Simplify the complexities of your enterprise

Every entrepreneur is very excited about their start-up and can talk about their company until the room runs out of oxygen. This isn’t an intelligent way to sell your company. It may seem that every detail is important, but the more you complicate the story, the less the audience and potential customer will retain. Condense those complications into a simple, memorable story that will stay with them after your conversation. Remember that the average attention span is <1 minute, which is why the pithier, the better.

For the most part, the advice given above is more easily applied to consumer facing products and services, whereas niche market companies have a harder time developing a strong brand equity that contributes significant value. I continue to struggle with creating a brand identity for my company, Coir Atlas, which operates in a niche market within the greater steel industry, but I think the lessons learned from this session are general enough to be applied. The key as with all marketing advice is in understanding how to adapt it to fit to your enterprise’s needs. Don’t just blindly apply all branding strategies and go chasing Bollywood stars to be the face of your product. Adapt these strategies and then apply them.

Crossworlds

Tajikistan’s Scarcity of Economy

The Globalization Paradox

Take a Ride on the Indian Railway

Start-Up Myopia

The Technology Gender Gap

Policy: Rights the Poor Don’t Know They Have

Climate Change: Things Are Heating Up Around Here

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