The First Ten Days

I’ve just about finished two weeks at the Centre for Microfinance. I’m splitting my time between three projects that are going on here. One is looking at whether giving farmers information about crop futures prices (via a billboard in the village or via a text message to their mobiles) will have any impact on their planting decisions, or whether spot prices at local markets will have an impact on where they take their crops to sell. The second project is looking at how different methods for teaching financial literacy affect the take up of the material (which is hopefully manifested in future financial decisions). The last project is trying to create a viable rainfall insurance contract that farmers want.

Each project offers a different side of microfinance. The financial literacy project obviously tackles a core issue for the poor that keeps them under-banked and outside of the traditional financial sector and MFIs, and leaves them vulnerable to predatory alternatives. The weather insurance project deals with risk management at the policy level and consumption smoothing at the member level. And finally, the project on price information looks at technologies that can improve the playing field for the poor by giving them the information they need to make more strategic decisions.

So far, the most interesting days have been the two afternoons that I was able to spend with some MFI clients outside the slums of Vasna and the Old City. We organized two informal focus groups with members of Saath, a local MFI with a strong emphasis on savings and asset building. Our goal was to better understand the members’ baseline financial literacy so that we could design a curriculum appropriate for them. The first group we met with consisted of mainly housewives while the second group was made up of rickshaw drivers and owners of small- or micro- businesses such as kite vending, scrap metal and egg wholesaler.

Most of the focus group attendees are illiterate, but extremely saavy. Alex Counts (the founder of the Grameen Foundation) talks about this survivorship bias that leads the poor to defy stereotypes and misconceptions about their capabilities. Those that are somehow surviving poverty must be smart, resourceful and brave – traits that seem to aptly characterize the people I met.

Despite their minimal schooling (especially among the women), they showed a higher-than-expected baseline financial literacy. One reason for this might be the length of their experience with Saath, as they certainly seem to have Saath’s emphasis on savings engrained in them. When asked what they would do with a small windfall of cash (eg. a small inheritance or an especially good day at work), most said they would save it to protect against a bad day’s earnings in the future. I was especially impressed by one lady, Vastuben, who said she would not only save the money, but use her additional savings to obtain a bigger loan through Saath. On one hand, it seemed risky for her to essentially double-down on her savings. On the other, it reminded me of a PowerPoint slide that Vikram Akula (founder of SKS Microfinance) showed. In his presentation, he showed that the poor were often able to get ROIs between 30% and 230%. Of course plenty of microbusinesses fail, but his point was that microbusinesses tend to produce better margins than traditional businesses because they can keep their costs down through the use of family labor, low infrastructure costs and no taxes or legal costs. So, assuming his assertion is true, that could make Vastuben a pretty astute money manager.

Udvada, Navsari and Sanjan

On Sunday, we made a day trip out of three places in southern Gujarat that have historical and religious significance to the Parsees: Udvada, Sanjan and Navsari. When we departed in the morning, only the Iranshah Atash Behram (one of the nine most sacred temples to Zoroastrians) was on the agenda, but the other two were pleasant, if somewhat rushed, additions.

In the Zoroastrian faith, eternal flames must be kept burning at Atash Behram temples and Atash Adaran temples (the two types of holy temples for Zoroastrians). The temple in Udvada is especially significant since it holds the oldest of the holy fires, one that has been kept continuously burning for at least 1,300 years. Apparently, it also holds significance as a sort of Jersey Shore for Indian Parsees, with everyone and their mother there; we ran into Dixie’s aunt and uncle as well as my aunt’s two close friends, all visiting from Mumbai. Udvada is actually a quaint coastal town that would make for a pleasant vacation spot even without the religious significance. The fire temple is built in the style of Persepolis with its winged bulls on each side of the main staircase. The main building is under renovation and the fire has been relocated to a smaller temple.

Sanjan is another coastal town not far from Udvada where the original Parsees landed in their boats after fleeing Iran 1300 years ago. They sought and received refuge from the local king and have proudly called themselves Indian ever since. Sadly, despite the importance of this place to the Parsees, our visit was a bit underwhelming. One pillar, erected in 1917, in the middle of an overgrown garden commemorates the Parsees landing and the fire temple (an Atash Adaran) hardly gets any visitors.

Luckily, we ended our day on another good note with a stop at Navsari, the ancestral home for my dad’s side (before Ahmedabad). This was my first time seeing Navsari and its old, narrow, meandering streets. Despite its size, the city has a very neighborly feeling to it. Like Udvada, Navsari is home to one of the other Atash Behrams –one that is arguably even more interesting. Thought it sits in the middle of the city, it is located on a slight hill and has enough space around it that it stands out prominently from its surroundings. The walls are made of marble and one slab, facing the inner sanctum of the temple, supposedly has a naturally-occurring image of a revered priest, Dasturji Meherji Rana. We arrived after sunset and it was dark inside (artificial light is not allowed inside the temple), but the vague outline of a figure—which I first mistook for a bass-relief carving—was not enough to either confirm or disprove the claim.

Second Class Ticket, First Class Ride

This weekend we took the train from Ankleshwar to Ahmedabad, a four hour journey. Second class chair car – no AC – the only way to travel! Actually, it is the only way to travel when you don’t book your ticket far in advance for a holiday (Republic Day) weekend. But the truth is, the scenery from the train blows me away and the ride is a lot more fun than going by car.

Our train car has pairs of padded bench seats facing each other. The leg room is only enough so that if you sat up perfectly like you were taught in second grade, maybe your knees wouldn’t touch your neighbors’. However, with the number of bags that were stuffed half-under most of the seats, this isn’t possible…nor does it really seem to matter. In India, your concept of personal space changes. The poor old lady across from me has her bare feet up on the bit of seat space that she found next to me, and this is an upgraded situation for me – she originally propped her feet up on the seat space between my legs until I offered her some space beside me instead.

Space in the perpendicular direction is quite a bit worse. Each bench is ostensibly for three people small (based on the fact that there are three seat numbers on the seatbacks), but there are four people sitting on our bench and four on the bench across from us. That’s actually a bit better than average for our train car, as far as I can tell. At the moment, Dixie is on one side of me (the tickets we reserved weren’t together, but we arranged a 3-way trade that would make Brian Cashman proud). On the other side is a mother and her child who didn’t have tickets for the seat but were gifted it by a kindhearted guy who now has four inches of a seat corner to call his own. Across from me is an older gentleman, who (like most of us) also has given up some of his properly-reserved space to the aforementioned old lady and her two relatives. He has the typical look of the well-educated older generation. Lastly, there’s the family of three – two old women and their granddaughter/niece – who are headed to Rajkot. Their extremely calloused feet (for which I have a front row seat), and their presence on this car despite the age of the two women, suggest that they are less than well off. They’ve got a lot of luggage with them and they’re wearing gold jewelry in the form of bangles and earrings (often a form of savings for the un-banked poor), so I tell Dixie that perhaps they are moving house.

Despite the fact that we’re all jostling passive-aggressively for space, the Rajkot-bound family offers us some of their fruit: first bohr at the beginning of the trip and then some grapes towards the middle of our journey. They’re also quite intrigued by the hair claw that Dixie clipped to her purse and the book she’s reading. They discuss each of the objects amongst themselves before leaning forward to take a closer look at the claw (it’s nothing special, and I think they eventually conclude the same), and then take the book out of Dixie’s hands to leaf through it together. I’m taken aback by both their forwardness and their generosity and I’m thinking three months will hardly be enough to get to know India.

My India Mobile Number

I've got a local cell phone in India: +91 9898[six] 35361

 

Just remember the time difference (1pm on the West Coast means 2:30am here, 1pm on the East Coast would be 11:30pm here).

I've added captions to a number of the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/kaizad.cama/RunningSlideshow20082009.

Kaizad 0 - Surat 7

I've posted some pictures from Kite Day (January 14th) in Surat (Gujarat) at http://picasaweb.google.com/kaizad.cama/RunningSlideshow20082009. As expected, the native Indians were able to send each one of my kites floating into the stratosphere by cutting my string with theirs (the kite string is coated with crushed glass so that it can cut other strings...and my fingers).

I wanted to take a video of the excitement, but there's no way my camera's zoom was going to be good enough to capture the action. Perhaps someone can find a video of kite cutting and post it in the comments?

On our way to Ahmedabad.

Catching up

Today we're in Ankleshwar, a small town that neighbors Baruch (to me, it resembles an old European village more than anything I could compare it to in the US -- but even that comparison is pretty feeble). I've been jotting down a few notes on paper every once in a while, since I can't get to a computer every time I see something blog-worthy. Here's a few observations from the last two weeks:

1/5 (or 5/1 as it's known here) - For better or worse (I'm not sure yet), extreme poverty isn't in plain sight as much as I remember it being. We arrived late at night (on the 2nd), so we didn't see the giant shanty town outside the airport. If there are 'two Americas' (i.e., a rich one and a poor one), then there are at least five Indias. If you saw the way an upper-middle class Indian lives and then saw of the way that some of the poorest live, you'd have a hard time believing that they live in the same country, let alone the same street in some cases.

1/6 - Between being with Dixie and getting involved in microfinance, I've developed a much stronger appreciation for India (in advance of this trip). A bit to my surprise, I'm really comfortable living here.

1/8 - Ran into the Byramjis, family friends from NJ, in Mumbai. I thought I was going to be lost in this sea of humanity, but I guess now I'll have to abandon plans to let my appearance go.

1/12 - Saw a film (Gajini, with Aamir Khan) in an Indian movie theater for the first time today. More importantly, I went out and got 2 samosas during the customary break for intermission (Indians enjoy 3-hour-long movies, but like the rest of mankind, can only go so long without food and bathroom breaks). I may not have been able to appreciate the movie to its full potential (I can't really understand much Hindi, and it was too close a copy to 'Momento' for my taste)...BUT the movie redeemed itself in the end. The last scene was shot at Aamir Khan's home in Panchgani -- right next to Mount View, where we had stayed. I recognized it immediately (despite the fake sign reading 'School for Orphans') and when the last shot panned over the Krishna River valley, we got a bit too loud and unnerved the other theater-goers with our excitement.

Pictures from Panchgani and Mumbai

A small sampling of the pictures we've taken to date... http://picasaweb.google.com/kaizad.cama/RunningSlideshow20082009

Twelve years

It's been kind of nice to not have a working cell phone or internet connection for the last couple weeks. Still, I thought I'd pop into an internet cafe in Mumbai to post here.

Dixie's cousins, Farida and Vizak, have been accompanying us around Mumbai. A lot can happen to a city in twelve years, and I feel like this is a very different Mumbai than I remember. First, India's economy is much more open than it used to be and its culture is more cosmopolitan (at least in big cities like Mumbai). Having eaten my last hamburger at In-and-Out on the day we left and having enjoyed French food for a week, I thought I might be saying good-bye to good Western food for a while. Not the case -- unlike my last visit, international food, international brands and international people are everywhere. Nonetheless, we've tried to stick to local food as much as possible and we've been treated to some of the best dhabas, cafes and restaurants around (courtesy of Vizak, who fills in for Yelp quite handily in a country where Yelp doesn't exist).

Mumbai's bustle makes Manhattan look like Modesto. It's an amazing city, but you feel like you could get swallowed by it as soon as you leave the flat.

Together with my aunt Dhun, we also spent four days in Panchgani, which is where my mom and her siblings grew up. Panchgani is still a relatively quiet and picturesque place -- it's the Yang to Mumbai's Yin. Maybe it was the familial connections to the place, or maybe it was the natural beauty of Panchgani and our old property there (even though it fell into disrepair long ago), but I didn't want to leave. I have 450+ pictures from the few days we spent there, and when I finally get my laptop properly connected, I'll let them do the talking.

We still have another week of traveling before we get to Ahmedabad to start work. Better sign off. It's lunch time and I hear there are some battatawadas with my name on them.

Landed in Mumbai. Very excited to begin this trip. It's been 12 years.

On the plane for India. When we booked the Paris vacation, it didn't occur to us how much we'd have to switch gears now.