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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

***

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.

***

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.

***

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.

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.