Jamshedpur: A Tale of Two Cities

I recently relocated to Jamshedpur, also known as Tatanagar (i.e., Tata Colony). Like other industrial cities that developed around one manufacturer, everything in Jamshedpur revolves around Tata Steel. In the most literal sense, Tata’s main steel plant and blast furnaces sit atop the only hill, overlooking the entire city. Nearby, there is a Tata hospital, Tata school, Tata research archives and museum, and even Tata security – the only public structure missing is a Tata Temple. However, unlike Nike in Niketown or Benz in Stuttgart which are deified in public, Tata is even ubiquitous in the home, thanks to its horizontal diversifications into the manufacturing of every commercial good. We cook with Tata salt, drink Tata tea, watch TataSky tv, which is powered by Tata electricity. [Most recently, Tata has started bottling water as well, so it’s only a matter of time before that catches on]

But much as I mock the invasion of Tata branded everything in my life, it is also a blessing to live under Tata’s competent operations. There are parts of Jamshedpur which are maintained by the public government of Jharkhand, and the differences in quality of life between the privately and publicly managed areas are stark.

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During these hot summer months when electricity is in high demand, load shedding is a part of life.  My building’s electricity is supplied by Tata’s power plant, but the building across the street is not and is instead wired to the public grid. The dependability of Tata power versus public power is as different as fire and ice. Tata power suffers infrequent outages the longest, of which I’ve experienced, lasted ~15 minutes.  In comparison, it’s not uncommon to watch the lights across the street suddenly spark out every other night. As the heat reaches 50C in the peak of summer, these outages are also becoming more frequent across the street and last for longer periods. The luckier families across the street have small back-up generators, but for the large majority of those who live in humble houses, they sit in darkness without light and worst of all, without a fan to relieve them from the heat. Last week, the publicly supplied power was out for 3 days straight.

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Jamshedpur proper has a reputation of being the “Green City” and “Clean City”, titles which it lives up to. Most areas of the city are exceptionally clean and litter-free, remarkable for a metropolitan in India. Jubilee Park, a popular gathering place for families during the evenings, is spotlessly kept with neat rows of trees and well tended green lawns. The streets of the city even have sidewalks, which pedestrians use! Tata has taken a great effort as a private corporation to maintain the city, and it shows. The contrast is on the other side of the tracks (literally), in Jugsalai – a periphery of the city, which is maintained by the public government.  Immediately upon crossing the railroad tracks, the narrow streets are covered with trash and order is left behind. The rubble piles, common to most cities in India, narrow the already crowded streets. In order to drive through Jugsalai, one has to inevitably drive over piles of building materials – gravel, sand, etc. – and avoid running over people and cattle who walk in the middle of these streets because the sidewalks have disappeared.

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It’s hard not to favor private management over public management when I witness such disparities within one city. As a stranger to this city, it’s hard for me comprehend how these two sides of Jamshedpur co-exist and how the public government can evade taking actions to improve the situation. How has there been no demand by the population to close the gaps between these two realities? I would demand a more dependable supply of power that won’t leave people sitting in the dark looking across the way into the brightly lit living rooms of their neighbors. The public government should start with that at least, otherwise Jamshedpur will always continue to be two cities – public and private – and we know which one wins that competition.

April 27, 2010 | Tags: , , , | View Comments

Save Trees – Use Coir Atlas

Given that today is Earth Day, it seems an appropriate time to introduce Coir Atlas, the green innovation company to which I dedicate my waking hours. The product is a simple one, that serves a niche market, but which has an amazing potential to impact the environment and lives. Let me explain:

Context:

India’s steel industry is the third largest in the world today at 80 million tons per year, which is expected to grow to 120 over the next 2 years. About 50% of these are flat sheets and coils, which are transported by road, rail, and sea to their destinations. An estimated 400,000 trees are required each year to sustain the packaging needs of the Indian steel industry and this number will grow in correlation to the growth of steel production.

It takes 20 years for the trees to mature enough to suit the requirements of the industry – at 400,000 trees annually this is a highly unsustainable situation. Procurement officers of steel plants are having an increasingly difficult time obtaining the needed timber as forests disappear.

In a few developed countries, the steel industry has looked to create synthetic alternatives to wood pallets (e.g., hard plastics). But even these synthetic alternatives come at a hefty price to the environment, because what happens after their useful life is finished?

So, Coir Atlas was born as the all natural, sustainable alternative for “packaging” wood. Its composition of bamboo and jute are completely bio-degradable and eco-friendly.

What is it?

Coir Atlas is a range of products, made of bamboo and jute, which are meant to replace the timber used during the packaging of steel for transportation. The main product is essentially an imitation wood log. Cross sections of bamboo are placed in a row and enveloped in layers of jute fabric. The end result is used like a wooden log, where steel sheets or plates can be placed on top.

Coir Atlas supporting steel plates

Other products under development include a bamboo pallet that will substitute wood pallets and could have a wider application beyond the steel industry.

Why bamboo?

I often get asked the question of how using bamboo is any more sustainable than wood and the answer boils down to: bamboo is not a tree, it is grass and therefore its growth is different. Bamboo grows 6x faster than wood, so while it takes 20 years to grow a tree to industry standards, it takes 4 years for bamboo to become viable. You can also grow 20x the amount of bamboo on the same amount of land as compared to timber.

The kicker is that bamboo forests actually die if not harvested regularly, so by harvesting mature bamboo, it actually helps to maintain the forest. And given that India’s 10,000 hectares of bamboo forest are underutilized, it’s actually beneficial to find more uses of bamboo.

Bamboo supporting my weight

*Did you know that bamboo has a tensile strength of 26,000, which is stronger than steel? One Coir Atlas unit of 4 bamboo sections can support up to 50 tons of pressure!

What is the potential impact?

The dual mission of the company is to have a positive environmental as well as social impact. The environmental impact is quite clear – save trees by using a more sustainable alternative. The potential to save 400,000 trees is quite encouraging.

The social impact is less obvious, but just as important. The design of Coir Atlas is simple enough that given a week’s training, unskilled women can easily be taught to make the units. An experienced woman can make hundreds of units per day, which translates into an average of Rs. 300 in earnings. That’s 3x the amount provided by government employment programs (i.e., NREG) and a decent wage for her family. What’s more, many steel plants are located in the poorer regions of the country where rural unemployment is high. Jharkhand, which is home to both Tata and Bokaro Steel, the two largest steel plants in the country, is also one of the poorest states. The creation of small cottage industry groups to produce Coir Atlas would have a significant impact on the lives of the people in the area as well.

Where we are at:

While Coir Atlas sounds like a dreamboat, there are many challenges that we face in dealing with an industry that is slow to change and isn’t well known for innovation. The steel industry is an insulated group of target customers that is difficult to break through. Even when contacts are made, it’s difficult to convince the various chains of command that they should take the risk and try something new when the old ways work just fine. The mentality of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” can be difficult to overcome. The inertia against which we’re fighting is huge, but slowly the tides are turning.

Most recently we received an order from JSW, part of the Jindal Group, to begin using Coir Atlas at their Bellary plants in Karnataka. The Jindals are particularly forward thinking and progressive with their CSR initiative, which is rare in this industry. They see and understand the potential benefits of saving trees and increasing employment. I see this as a milestone for us, as we continue to push into this industry. And so we keep prodding and pushing to move these tons of resistance.

April 22, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | View Comments

The Poor Don’t Have a Call Option Out of Poverty

Frequent field visits to rural villages also mean many long and uncomfortable bus or train rides. During a recent visit to villages around Tanjore in Tamil Nadu, the Villgro fellows logged over 11 hours on public buses in one day. A number of factors contribute to an extremely uncomfortable trip: 80% humidity in 40C weather, many human bodies squeezed into a limited space, general dusty and traffic polluted air, and ultimately too many hours sweating into the same clothes.

At first, I rationalized to myself that the discomfort was only bothering me and in my head because my North American accustomed self was not acclimated yet. But the reality is that time doesn’t bring immunity to the heat, because the other fellows (including a Tamilian) were just as sweaty and uncomfortable as me we began to stick to each other – real fellow bonding. So instead, I sought comfort in the thought of eventually reaching our guest house in Tanjore, where a shower and an A/C room would grant me relief. That was my light at the end of the tunnel.

It occurred to me then: that light at the end of the tunnel is a privilege that 60% of India doesn’t have. It isn’t a real struggle for me to sit through a day of sticky bus rides nor, if extrapolated further, is it really courageous of me to quit my management consulting job for the social sector in India, because at the end of the day (or year), there’s always an emergency eject button. If I were really miserable in my fellowship project and wanted to return to the comfort and luxuries of the developed world, I can opt out of India. In fact for many of us working in the social development sector, this job is a choice that we have made and a choice that we can undo.

Next to my apartment is a construction site, and through the window is the sight of women in colorful saris balancing pans of sand or concrete on their heads transferring building materials to the masons. They work through the day, in the hot, stifling 45C heat of Jamshedpur, hotter than Death Valley in the States. I can safely say that no one gets accustomed to working in this kind of heat, but what choice do they have?

The rural poor don’t have a call option out of these harsh conditions. They don’t have the savings, the education, or the opportunities to opt out of their discomfort and misery. They must continue to toil without the comfort of seeing an end in sight.  The unforgiving harsh conditions of India’s climate and poverty are their everyday reality, but that’s why social entrepreneurship is important. We are working to give them a call option to get out.

The discomforts that sometimes come about while working in the developing rural sector serves as a good reminder of the important potential of the impact achieved by the work that we do. If social enterprises can achieve providing the poor with that light at the end of the tunnel, it will be worth all the sticky bus rides we have to sit through.

April 12, 2010 | Tags: | View Comments

Right to Access Healthcare

Access to healthcare has become the topic du jour thanks to the monumental legislation in progress in the United States. On this side of the world also, healthcare accessibility is also a pressing problem, but on a level that Americans would have a hard time fathoming. Most of the rural population in India are more than 3km from the nearest Public Health Center (PHC) which makes it extremely difficult for them to access health care. Even more concerning is that basic maternal healthcare is still unavailable in many rural villages. The UNDP estimated that 60% of births in India are still unattended by a medical professional.

A number of social enterprises have risen to the challenge and have low-cost models for providing the essential basic healthcare that each person deserves. The Villgro fellows visited with a few during the past month of training (both models are public private partnerships):

  • Byrraju Foundation runs a healthcare clinic in each of its adopted villages, where patients can seek diagnosis and treatment for common conditions – e.g., hypertension, diabetes, etc. These patients pay a nominal fee of Rs. 20, which allows them to get a routine check-up from a nurse and a consultation with a retired doctor.
  • Health Management and Research Institute (HMRI) runs a mobile clinic program, where once a month, a healthcare van with medical supplies, 2 qualified nurses and pharmacist operate a temporary clinic in the village.

    HMRI Mobile Clinic Van

    Patients are provided check-ups, medication, and if necessary, consultation referrals to the nearest PHC. The emphasis is to encourage villagers who normally wouldn’t seek treatment for ailments at the PHC due to the distance to come forth and get treated. Particular emphasis is placed on maternal health, where the local ASHAs are charged with the task to get pregnant women to come to the clinics for monthly check-ups.

Both of these models are providing great services to the rural villages, but it’s still not enough. While visiting HMRI, the district manager told us that these clinics faced a difficulty in getting pregnant mothers to come for check-ups – their husbands often prevented them from going to the clinics. This deeply disturbs me. By denying their wives access to pregnancy check-ups, these husbands are risking the lives of both the mother and child. There are a few reasons, both rational and irrational, for why this is so:

  1. 1. Opportunity Cost of Time – going to the clinic, even in the village will take half a day of the mother’s time, which is also equivalent to half a day of wages. Pregnancy check-up is not valued highly enough to justify the lost wages
  2. 2. Distrust of Nurses – distrust of examinations that may compromise her modesty is a perceived barrier that is reinforced by cultural tendencies to shelter women from the public arena
  3. 3. Undervaluing Women – although less frequently an explicit reason, there is still a systemic undervaluing of a woman’s life that leads a husband to bar his wife from receiving free clinical check-ups. There still persists the idea that a man can remarry easily, or to put it bluntly – she is replaceable

HMRI has counseling and intervention systems in place to deal with the first two reasons. The ASHAs as well as HMRI personnel who are trained will prevail upon the husband to help him understand the value of regular check-ups during pregnancy. Often, it’s merely a lack of awareness and education and the problem can be corrected.

However, the third reason is more insidious and is a cultural problem that many developing countries face. Women still need to be empowered all around the world to be able to exercise their right to seek healthcare, particularly maternal healthcare. The WHO estimated recently that for every 100,000 births, there are 540 maternal mortalities. That is an astoundingly high number, which organizations like HMRI are trying to improve. But unless women can actually access the care made available by HMRI, the high maternal mortality rate will persist. For all the women that HMRI is able help, there are many more who are unknown to HMRI who are prevented from receiving care.  For those women, it’s not the access to healthcare that we need to worry about, but rather the right to access the existing healthcare that we need to fix.

April 8, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , | View Comments