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.

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.

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.

A quick story to illustrate my point: a couple of years ago, while traveling through remote areas of Xinjiang, I was invited to the house of a camel herder for tea. He lived in a one room mud house with his sister, brother-in-law and nephew. There was no running water and no furniture other than a carved dresser, which was a wedding gift. The communal outhouse of their village was a small bus shelter like structure with holes in the ground, that was 0.5km from the village. What would a someone who never interacted with them propose to install to “better” their quality of life? I would bet that a public toilet would be at the top of the list. What did the village choose to value instead? Television. The village had one windmill generating electricity, enough to power the one television set so that they could all watch CCTV dramas. Instead of spending their resources on running water or using the electricity for light or heating, they choose entertainment. And the choice becomes easy to understand when you spend time in their lonely remote part of the world. TV is their link to the world and to a little diversion and that marginal value is incredibly underestimated by those of us who don’t live there.

Coming back to India, I am looking forward to spending my time learning the context and understanding a different set of values. The social entrepreneur sector should not be about what we think the people need, but about how to better provide access to those things that the people tell us they need. The first step to figuring the latter out is by going to the source — by being here. I would encourage everyone who professes passion and interest in this sector to commit themselves to learning and reshaping their thoughts around what the Bottom of the Pyramid needs are by dedicating the time to truly immerse themselves locally and experiencing it firsthand. Until that happens, I remain skeptical of the effectiveness of arm-chair social enterprise supporters.