Incensed!

It’s been a busy few weeks packed with several field visits to the Ahmedabad slums and villages in rural Gujarat. Something has been eating at me all week. And it isn’t whatever was in my bed at ‘Hotel Sketchy’ in Bordeli during my village visits last week.

It’s Shilpaben, a middle-aged woman who lives in the predominantly-Muslim slum of Juhapura on the southern side of Gujarat. To call Shilpaben a working mother would be quite the understatement. On top of working all day to provide for her family, Shilpaben helps prepare meals for some of her community’s most malnourished children as a member of Saath’s Jeevan Daan (literally “Gift of Life”) program. Just as a quick aside: Saath is one of the MFI’s that we’re partnering with, and their Jeevan Daan program helps mothers prepare more nutritious meals for their families, particularly by helping them understand which foods are both cheap and nutritious.

All day long, Shilpaben makes incense sticks, rolling them individually by hand. In a single day, she makes about 3,000 of them, which she sells to a wholesaler who packages them into boxes of 12 and then sells. For every 1,000 sticks that Shilpaben makes, the wholesaler pays her 12 rupees (about 25 cents), so she earns about Rs. 36 per day (75 cents). The wholesaler, on the other hand, sells boxes of 12 sticks for Rs. 10-15 (about 20-30 cents)…more than 70 times the price he pays Shilpaben!

As a result, Shilpaben is living on less than a dollar a day instead of potentially $50 per day (the price all 3,000 sticks at the wholesaler’s price). I’m both outraged and confused that a seemingly simple problem exists here (though of course I don’t know the whole story). Even if Shilpaben is a much better incense stick maker than incense stick saleswoman, isn’t there some amount of time she should spend trying to sell her sticks to consumers? Wouldn’t the incense sticks still fetch a good price if they were tied with a ribbon instead of put in a box? And if everything from milk to soap is sold door-to-door, why can’t incense sticks be too?

In India, a photo can be worth a lot more than 10,000 words

I was just going through some of the pictures from the weekend frisbee game and a few of the pictures stand out. Even though the kids are awesome -- both their spirit and their skills at frisbee -- the ones that I keep thinking about are the ones Dixie took of the children's chaperone and of Rajbhai.


I have mostly avoided snapping pictures of others out of respect. They probably think I'm just another tourist and I'd never want them feeling like a tourist attraction. But Rajbhai, the gentleman we met at the snack stand after our frisbee game, noticed that we had a camera and sheepishly asked if we would take his picture. This isn't the first time we've noticed how meaningful something that is so commonplace for us, such as seeing your own picture, can be for the less fortunate here.

So on my next trip to India, perhaps I'll bring a Polaroid camera and dole out the feel-goods. Yea, it's not improving anyone's health, food security or financial stability...but it is a super easy way to give something memorable.

Early Morning Fun

If I had to list the things I least expected to be doing in India, near the top would be: appearing as a backup dancer in Shahrukh Khan's next film, learning to drive on the streets of Ahmedabad, and playing a game of ultimate frisbee. Well, I couldn't even handle the beginner moves at Basement Bhangra, so SRK will have to go it without me. And if I'm alive and writing, I certainly haven't gotten behind the wheel in India yet.

As it turns out, every Sunday morning (at 7:30am) some of the kids from the underprivileged areas of Ahmedabad come to a field next to Ghandiji's Sabarmati Ashram to play a bit of ultimate frisbee. The idea was the brainchild of some of the folks from Indicorps, who figured they could give kids from the poorer areas of Ahmedabad something to look forward to each week by getting them interested in a supposedly-non-contact team sport. So after one failed attempt the week before to wake myself early enough to get there, I—along with Dixie—grabbed a rickshaw and headed across the city.

I was assuming we'd find a pretty informal game with maybe enough kids and volunteers to field the two teams. I definitely wasn't planning on running drills or seeing 8-yr olds throw forehands and backhands. About twenty-five to thirty boys and girls showed up, some as young as six years old, some in their teens. We had enough in each age group to break them into groups depending on their size and skill, which was a good thing since the little ones would probably have been lifted off the ground if they had tried to catch the heat being thrown by the older kids.

It was quickly obvious that these kids had been practicing their throws and drills for a while. As I understand it, the goal is to eventually organize a friendly tournament in Ahmedabad to give them a competitive outlet. The older kids in particular seemed to really enjoy the competition.

While I migrated from running drills with the older kids to throwing to the youngest group, Dixie sat out most of the morning with a sore ankle, but snapped a ton of pictures for us. Our favorites are posted on our Picasa page: http://picasaweb.google.com/kaizad.cama/RunningSlideshow20082009. Predictably, the kids flocked to Dixie, especially the girls. The kids were excited to be in front of the camera, some of them striking their best Indian actress look or picking up nearby clay pots with which to pose. In fact, it wasn't just the kids who were excited to have their pictures taken; their chaperone, and even an old gentleman named Rajbhai, who stopped Dixie later that morning at a snack stand, asked for their pictures to be taken. We have no way of tracking down Rajbhai, but happily for the children, Dixie has developed the pictures for them (she'll do anything to get kids' love…it's like an addiction!).

I'm not a morning person, but this made for a really memorable (if slightly exhausting day) even before starting our planned afternoon trip to see the ancient stepwell of Adalaj. I'm hoping we'll be able to go a few more times, but we're doing a lot of traveling on the weekends for the remainder of our trip. For anyone spending a weekend in Ahmedabad, it's definitely worth checking out.

The future and spot of price information

I worked more on our futures/spot prices project this week. I'm blown away by the ingenuity of the program and its potential, but the concept is fairly simple.

An overwhelming majority of the world’s poor rely on agriculture for subsistence. For these households, output risk and price risk constitute major obstacles to asset accumulation. Because farmers operate on thin margins and are often in debt, negative price shocks can have devastating consequences. The small farmers at the origin of the supply chain --the people who are the most vulnerable to these shocks-- face a host of difficult investment decisions with significant consequences for themselves. Farmers’ choices about which crops to sow, when to sow them, whether to invest in high-yield seed or fertilizer, when to harvest, and when and where to sell the output can mean the difference between meager subsistence and profitability.

Unfortunately, small-scale farmers in developing countries like India often have only imprecise knowledge of market prices, and even less ability to predict prices into the future. These inefficiencies at the origin of the supply chain also affect overall agricultural productivity. The recent increase in commodities prices presents both challenges and opportunities for developing countries: food prices have escalated, but on the other hand, farmers could potentially earn more. Realizing the opportunity, however, depends on markets functioning well and, in turn, on individuals making efficient decisions about planting, harvesting, and selling their crops.

This is where our project comes in. Our goal is to supply future price information to farmers on their specific crops so that they can make more informed predictions of which crops will be most profitable in the coming seasons. Additionally, after the harvest, we will provide spot prices at their various local markets for the crops they are selling. This lets the farmers know which market to take the crop to without wasting money shipping their crops from one market to the next (typically, small farmers pool their resources to hire a truck).

Having more efficient production and distribution benefits farmers by increasing incomes for those who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and benefit everyone, by reducing wastage, increasing output, reducing prices, and potentially lowering volatility. 

In 2003, the Indian government legalized futures in all agricultural commodities, leading to the establishment of two large exchanges in Mumbai. These unfolding changes are spurring dramatic growth in futures volume and the range of contracts available, with large farmers gaining access to trading and market information.

The futures market is at the center of a vigorous policy debate in India. In particular, critics of the commodity exchanges often claim that futures speculation has caused increases in the price of food grains. Although a government commission appointed to investigate this claim came back with mixed findings, it is not surprising that futures markets have come under fire in India.

I'll write again soon with more details about how we're actually diseminating the price information.

It probably won't get hot until March