Crossworlds

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.

***

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.

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.

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.

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. 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. 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. 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.

As Simple as H2O

Woman Getting Water from Naandi Plant

Yesterday was World Water day and my recent visits to the field made me pause and think about the tremendous strides that have been made in parts of India to bring clean water to every village. Just last week, the Villgro fellows were in Hyderabad, visiting the rural water plants of Naandi and Byrraju Foundations. Both organizations have similar operations of establishing water filtration plants in rural villages, which provide clean water for consumption at a price of ~Rs. 2 per day for each family (assuming a consumption of 12L).

How it works:

1. Villages demonstrate that they want and can support a water plant by collecting a portion of the funds to contribute to the building costs, which also creates a sense of ownership

2. Naandi and Byrraju Foundations conduct due diligence on the village including a feasibility study and evaluation of need

3. Local panchayats (village heads) allocate land or a building for the installation of the water plant; Naandi and Byrraju work with the community to plan the building to make sure that the community’s needs are incorporated

4. Naandi and Byrraju raise the additional funds for the cost of building and installation of the water filtration system

5. Local people are trained and employed to be the plant supervisors and managers (Naandi’s model has 2 employees per plant vs. 4 employees per Byrraju plant)

6. One employee serves as a sales and awareness building representative, who encourages village households to use the facility

7. Each household pays an initial ~Rs.100 – 150 for a 12L or 20L water jug as a membership fee and then pays a monthly ~Rs. 60 for daily water usage; purchases are tracked with a membership card

8. Operational costs of employee salaries and filtration system maintenance are covered by the pay-per-use model

Best Practices

Visiting both facilities, there were also a few best practices which I think are worth sharing:

1. Instill practices to encourage usage of clean water – Naandi’s membership card has 30 slots for each day of the month. When households come to collect their water each day, the appropriate slot is marked off. Households pay Rs.60 for the monthly card of 30 days and cannot roll over any missed days. According to health studies, 12L is the amount that an average household needs to consume daily, so the objective here is to encourage households to consumer only clean water by forcing them to collect 12L per day or losing that option value.

Byrraju Water Plant

2. Make it a water party - the water plant in Nellutla that we visited was a community center as much as it was a clean water source. The multiple taps and self-service model encouraged villagers to come in the mornings and evenings around the same time to commune as well as to collect their water. The plant was also located right by the village temple. The village also hosted parties around the water plant, since it was centrally located and was a natural gathering place.

3. Increase transparency and accountability of the NGO – at the Nellutla water plant, there was a prominent plaque on the building displaying the donors who contributed to the building. But what was more remarkable was the display of the responsible parties and their contact information. The manager of Naandi’s water project was clearly listed along with his mobile number. Any time that the villagers had a problem with the plant, they knew who to call.

It may sound simple, but it is truly impressive what Naandi and Byrraju have done in just the last few years. Naandi aims to be in 400 villages by the end of the year, which at an estimated 2,000 people per village could potentially impact 800K people! Both Naandi and Byrraju currently operate in Andhra Pradesh, which has one of the country’s greatest needs for clean water. The lessons learned there will certainly need to be brought to other states in India – there are still millions of people waiting for access to clean water.

It’s All About the Last Mile

Last week, the 2010 Villgro fellows took a trip out to Gobichettipalayam, site of Villgro’s pilot project of 10 retail agricultural supplies stores. Located in the Erode district of Tamil Nadu, Gobichettipalayam is the heart of paddy (rice) country. According to Wikipedia, the fertile paddies of Gobi are the cause of the perpetual influx of Tamil dancers and singers who like to film amidst all the lush greenery. The same lush fertile paddies were also the same reason that Villgro decided to pilot its retail store model in Gobi – the local farmers had steady enough crops year round to be willing to try out new agricultural products. Gobi was just ripe for retail agriculture.

The Model

Villgro’s retail model revisits an old-fashioned salesman model that has since gone out of fashion in the West – the Avon model (see model in photo).

In order to address the challenge of reaching small rural farmers, Villgro has come up with the concept of a Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE), who are local farmers and act as the direct sales representatives for Villgro. Each VLE is responsible for 4 villages, and each Villgro store has 5 VLEs, thus each store can reach 20 villages in an are. Like the Avon ladies who go door-to-door to sell cosmetics, the VLEs reach out to each individual farmer in their village to demonstrate and sell crop fertilizers and animal feeds. VLEs help to increase the credibility of the products by providing local endorsements. In addition, each Villgro store conducts pilot tests locally of each product before they are sold. The pilot tests serve to both demonstrate to farmers the value of the fertlizers / feeds, as well as increase the brand visibility. All of these labor and cost intensive measures are necessary in order to overcome the difficulties of building the trust and distribution channels for sales penetration of the rural market.

We visited with several VLEs and farmers who were conducting pilot tests for Villgro products around the Gobi area. They weren’t the most sophisticated business people, but they were financially savvy and understood the cost-benefit analysis behind the fertilizers and feeds that they used. They said that they saw dramatic benefits in terms of their crop yields and dairy production when they used the organic products distributed by Villgro. The farmer pictured below is a woman with 5 acres of land on which she grows 2 seasons of sugarcane and 1 season of rice. She stands amidst a health strong sugarcane crop that is fertilized using one of the organic products tested by Villgro. Even though she had little knowledge of the Villgro brand, she trusts the VLE who sells products to her and above all, she trusts the results that she sees from usage.

Sustainability

It’s undeniable that sustainability is a key issue in this model. Not only are there great risks in the VLE model, the same ones that have led to the negative perceptions of Avon and other pyramid schemes in the US, but there are also risks with the cost-heavy structure of the sales process. However, there are great benefits to be considered as well, which is why Villgro is hoping to roll out 20 more stores within the next year. The benefits are that farmers are finally aware of the products that are available to help them increase their income generation. The other benefit is also the development of a whole new level of entrepreneurs within the villages. VLEs, who undergo significant training and who develop these businesses, may just lead to the next generation of rural innovations. So even though the risks are high, it is a worthy undertaking and if Villgro can succeed to create a rural distribution channel to take it to that last mile, then we all profit.

Semantics: Objectifying People in Hindi

I’m fascinated by learning languages, not only because they allow you communicate with people, but also because of how much cultural value is embedded within. Native speakers of languages often miss the implicit meanings within the sentences they say; but for the language student laboring over every grammatical construction, these cultural gems can make it all worth the effort.

One such curiosity of the Hindi language is in showing possession. In English, we use the verb “to have” for everything. In Hindi, the construction is different depending on the situation:

1. “Ko” indicating a state of being as in “I have a cold”

2. “Ke paas” is used for possession of portable, tangible objects (and time)

3. “Ka/Ki/Ke” are used to indicate relationships with people and ownership of large immovable structures (e.g., I own a house or I have a brother)

What is curious though is that “ke paas”, which is used for portable objects, also encompasses servants! For example, if I wanted to say that she has a driver, I would say, “Vah ke paas driver hai”. This would be the same construction applied to all portable possessions, from books to furniture. The implication of this particular grammar rule is that servants are considered portable possessions.

Of course, this rule is dated and certainly not necessarily an accurate reflection of how servants are treated today in India. However, it still shocks many of the Hindi speakers with whom I’ve discussed this point. They never realized that they were making an implicit value statement when they spoke. The fact is that servants are still very much a part of Indian society – my roommate and I have a live-in housekeeper who takes care of us. And while many maids and housekeepers are treated very well and are seen as part of the family, a class division still exists within the society which is greatly explained by the cultural values hidden within Hindi. Perhaps awareness of this issue is the first step towards bridging the spoken divide. Or perhaps it’s all just semantics.

Going to the Source

Returning to India, I’m struck once again by the dramatic differences between the sights, sounds, and smells (emphasis on the smells) of Chennai and those of New York or San Francisco. The perpetual honking of auto-rickshaws and smell of spices mixed with human bodies serves as a daily reminder that this is not San Francisco and I should not treat Chennai as if it is. This is an obvious statement when observing culture, so why isn’t the same logic applied to social impact?

Why do we still operate and fund social enterprises, which are trying to achieve impact in developing countries, from the comforts of a developed world city 20,000km away?

The question is not new, but the problem persists. Many social enterprises that are aimed at improving conditions in developing countries are still operated out of cities such as New York and San Francisco, which are far removed from the center of action. Ever since social entrepreneurship became the “it” industry for generation Y, more and more young professionals have expressed an interest and have engaged in social start-ups situated in the developing world. While I am encouraged that more people are getting involved, I doubt the effectiveness of the enthusiasts who have not spent a significant amount of time in the place they’re trying to help. I do not think a week-long field visit qualifies as significant. This leads to an issue: what is often perceived as valuable by the social entrepreneur is not similarly perceived by the rural consumers. The simple fact is that it is not possible to understand the nuances of the context and in particular what the target consumer needs without investing a lot of time to experience it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Crossworlds

Jamshedpur: A Tale of Two Cities

Save Trees – Use Coir Atlas

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

Right to Access Healthcare

As Simple as H2O

It’s All About the Last Mile

Semantics: Objectifying People in Hindi

Recent Posts

Categories

Twitter Updates

1,000 Words

Recent Posts

Tags

Categories

1,000 Words