Writer's BlogK

Shashi Rajagopalan: A Personal Essay

2011-08-10T06:58:00.005+05:30

Shashi Rekha Rajagopalan, member of the Central Board of Reserve Bank of India, and NABARD and also a member of the Malegam Committee on MFIs, passed away on the 5^th of August 2011. She had just crossed 60. I got to know Shashi as a young student from IRMA who had gone to do a summer project in Samakhya, where she was the Director. For somebody who was encountering an experience within work environment, quite different from the carefree student life, it was indeed a welcome way of transitioning. Me and my batchmate Shankar Raman had a briefing in the head office of Samakhya and then we travelled by train to Kazipet from where we would go to a village called Mulukanoor. Shashi accompanied us on that trip.

This was not my first outing in the village. I had already spent near to about 10 weeks in a village near Mysore, doing fieldwork. Compared to that village Kalale, Mulukanoor was much better. We were given two individual rooms on either sides of a godown. The room was decently furnished – a table, chair a bed and a functioning fan and geyser. The food was from a nearby hotel, which opened in the morning and would continue to function till about sun-down – or till milk lasted whichever was earlier. In the evening the co-op campus would close the large gates and it was indeed an eerie experience to be in such a large space alone.

However, as Shashi had briefed us, we had come there with a purpose. There was this efficient co-operative in Mulukanoor that took care of all the needs of its members and we were expected to do a costing system to understand the profitability of each of the lines of business. I was quite excited being in such a place and experiencing all the newness of being in a serene environment, with the added bonus of basic necessities taken care of. There were two theatres – one somewhat Kaccha with a single projector and another a fancy one by Mulukanoor’s standards – where the typist of the co-op was a ticket dispenser. In both the places seeing the movie was an experience in itself.

Shashi in her briefing had told us some basic non-negotiables. That we have to respect the views of the local co-operative employees and not talk down to them, keep to our appointments and generally be seen as responsible people. She also introduced us to Mr.A K Vishwanatha Reddy the President of the co-operative and almost a patriarch of the village [it did not matter that he never won an election beyond the Zilla Panchayat, but he had also never lost an election of the co-operative]. While one found Shashi to be overbearing, she also had an innate sense of humor, which diffused any misgivings one might have had. We knew that we could take some liberties with her we also knew where she drew the line. There was never any confusion on her expectation from us.

At the end, after several interim trips to Hyderabad to present the progress of our work, we were done with the project. There was a warm farewell for us, and the office gifted both of us a book each [Managers of Tomorrow for me]. I suppose I must have given the impression that I was the hardworking of the two, though there was no such reason. Shankar’s parents were in Hyderabad and he would go off to the city every weekend, while I, having nothing to do in Hyderabad would stay back in Mulukanoor and be happy with the Telugu movies in the touring talkies.

I took an instant liking for Shashi and Samakhya basically because of the general work ethic that the organization showed. She was accessible, willing to pick up an argument and also tell me clearly what she approved of and what she did not. There were no two guesses there. Mr. M Rama Reddy, the secretary of Samakhya, the super-boss was an enigma. He never spoke much, and it appeared that Shashi was in charge of the day-to-day operations and only she and a handful of others reported to him. She would be the face of Samakhya in all public forums – the funders, the visitors and the government. Shashi and Rama Reddy seemed to enjoy a good working relationship, but we would often find her arguing with him as well.

When I got back to Anand after the project, I remained in touch with Shashi. During those days, I used to write letters and keep in touch with people much after the engagement was over. There was nothing deep in this practice, but I somehow felt the need to remain “linked in”. In case of Samakhya, it was also more than just being linked in, but also possibly wanting to work there. Fancying myself as a writer of fiction in Kannada, I thought this organization would not only provide me the necessary exposure to rural India, but also give me “plots” for my stories. Being a small organization, and I having a management degree, I fancied that I would be a part of the senior management soon. So I did write a letter of thank you to Shashi, but was really surprised to get a nice letter from her, appreciating the work we had done. Not only was the work appreciated, a shorter version of the report was published by them with illustrations from a brilliant artist, Karunakar who was working with Samakhya during those days. The icing on the cake was that the report was also translated into Telugu and later used in some of their training programmes as well. This was sufficient for us, as upstart students to be on cloud 9.

At the end of the stint at IRMA, it was placement season and Samakhya was listed to interview us on the first day. I took the interview, and in the evening Shashi called me in to tell me that I was selected. Having taken the interview of two other jobs that day, I had the luxury of three job offers. One was in Karnataka Milk Federation based in Bangalore – my hometown, another in NDDB, in Anand. Something in me told me that I should go and join Samakhya in Hyderabad, even though that was paying me the least. I did not regret that decision.

The two years I spent at Samakhya was quite exciting. During those days, we were replicating the Mulukanoor model in other co-operatives. That meant that, we were helping the primary agricultural co-operatives to become like Mulukanoor – a multipurpose co-operative. The model was that every co-operative offered credit, input supply, technical advise/equipment hiring, marketing of output, consumer and welfare services. In addition, these co-operatives were to be trained in book keeping, internal audit, planning, governance. Each of these training programmes had a non-negotiable component of teaching in detail the co-operative principles. My baptism to the concept of co-operation happened through such hands-on training and capacity building programmes. In addition we used to fill up a checklist of things when we went to each co-operative – things like does if have a sign board, does it have its own office, telephone connection, was the general body held within three months of closure of the year, was the annual report printed etc., which basically looked at internal management of the co-operative. A lot of this detail was usually looked into by Shashi – the success of a co-operative not only was in the big picture of governance and planning, but also in the smaller details of housekeeping. How important it was to straddle both the worlds. This could happen only because of the thought given to the intervention by somebody as insightful as her.

Somewhere down the line, I was inducted into a new exciting project of Samakhya. This project was an ambitious project of strengthening the co-operatives along the command area of the Sriramsagar Project. A dam was built at Pochampad on the river Godavari and distributory canals were under construction. The idea was that by the time water from the project came to Karimnagar and Warangal districts, the co-ops would be strong enough to absorb the changing cropping pattern [from maize to paddy] and set up their own rice mills so that the farmers could get a better realization. They had also planned a federation that would process by-products and co-ordinate the levy and market information aspects. This was a project of mammoth scale that was not seen by Samakhya earlier. AF Ferguson was hired to do the feasibility report and based on the report, I along with a colleague Krishna Kumar were assigned to gather more data to operationalize the dream. For me personally, this was a project of a mammoth scale, which had the potential of doing an Amul on the paddy-rice sector. Naturally I was quite excited. However, disappointment was to follow soon.

In the run up to the assembly elections I had seen the iconic NT Rama Rao come on his famous ‘Chaitanya Ratham’ to Mulukanoor, when I was doing my project. The speech that he gave at the ZP School premises was not only full of drama, but was equally moving. He had talked about the pride of Telugus and how Delhi was humiliating the aspirations of the local people. By the time I joined Samakhya NTR had won the election and become the Chief Minister. One of the early decisions that the NTR government took was to supersede the boards of all the primary co-operatives – a usual tactic used by many a political party to gain control over grassroots organisations. Possibly NTR’s icon, MGR had already done this in Tamil Nadu, which was famous for co-operatives run by government.

However, this move affected CDF significantly. Suddenly I found Shashi and Rama Reddy abandoning the work that we were doing on the paddy co-operative federation. Their argument was that these co-ops were no longer co-ops because they were run by government administrators, and until the basic democratic nature of these entities were restored; we should not work with them. My argument was that, by the time we fight the battle and come back to this constructive work, it might be too late. Water would have flown and the districts would be dotted by private mills. That has partly happened in Warangal and it would happen in Karimnagar as well. It was frustrating to see the work we had done during the past months come to a nought.

However Shashi and Rama Reddy vehemently believed that this was the time for protest and litigation. The office started looking like a war room with district level strategies being drawn up for street protests, advocacy and lobbying. In addition Samakhya also took the route of litigation by challenging the supersession in the court. For a young professional trained in Management, this looked too impractical and too ideological a position. However, I could do nothing but sulk. That was the time I think I had deep differences with what Samakhya was doing as well as with Shashi, and my reaction went to the extent of writing a letter to the editor of Eenadu against an article written by Mr. EV Rami Reddy, the then President of Samakhya. Hell broke loose after this, because Shashi was not happy with what I had done. My own frustration in the organization grew and it was time to leave.

I quit, and while we had fundamental differences, the parting was good. It takes a great deal of maturity for Shashi to have the magnanimity to respect my views on the strategic directions that the organization should have taken. She did tell me that she often found me arrogant, and that was the feedback from the co-ops as well – that he is good, sharp, but a bit too full of himself. The sense of self-righteousness that I had as an upstart was something that could have been curbed by an intolerant boss, but Shashi was made of different material. She allowed me the freedom of expression but finally called the shots. It is to her credit and her magnanimity that I enjoyed a good relationship with her and Samakhya many years after I quit.

While I went on to join IIM Bangalore for my doctoral work, the initial seeds that Shashi and Rama Reddy had sown in my about the co-operative sector continued and I ended up doing my thesis on co-operatives, and went back to the same co-ops with whom I had worked for data collection. Shashi was magnanimous enough to give me office space, put a computer at my disposal and allow me to use their facilities when I was doing my data collection, including an occasional ride in their vehicle if I were to go in the same direction.

Eversince, I have been in touch with Shashi and Samakhya. I watched the metamorphosis of the organization from Samakhya to Cooperative Development Foundation, from an organization that evangelically believed in the multipurpose co-operative model to an organization that excelled in advocacy and moved to promoting single purpose co-operatives. I also watched the next generation of professionals pass through the organization. I was engaged with them off and on including on a small consulting project on doing their accounting manual for the paddy and thrift co-operatives sometime in 2000.

In the later years I watched her take CDF on a dual path of [a] advocacy for a better co-operative legislation that honour the principles of co-operatives; and [b] working with structures that followed the co-operative principles but not necessarily incorporated as co-operatives. As a result of intense work on the co-operative law – a work that started in 1983-84 they were able to pull through an enactment in the state of AP, which gave genuine co-operatives a chance. A decade of work with the AP Government of conducting workshops, educating bureaucrats, engaging with elected legislators and using the press led to the passing of the seminal AP Mutually Aided Co-operative Societies’ Act, a legislation that respects the autonomy of co-operatives and the co-operative principles. [The civil society members working on the Lok Pal Bill must possibly pick a lesson or two in the modes of engagement from the experience of CDF]. Ironically the new legislation was passed under the same NT Rama Rao, who triggered the advocacy work of CDF by assaulting the democratic nature of the cooperatives. The new Act provided a framework for Shashi to work with the womens’ thrift groups to organize them under the new act. In addition, the unfinished agenda was also to get such Acts passed in different states across the country.

During this phase of CDF’s work I saw one more face of Shashi, which for me was an enduring picture. While she and Rama Reddy worked relentlessly for the for the new legislation, right from drafting an alternate legislation to the advocacy, the face of this entire effort was a Co-operative Initiatives Panel headed by Dr.Kurien, with Mohan Dharia and LC Jain as members. Shashi and Rama Reddy who were very adept at reading and interpreting laws [though not trained in law] kept a very low profile and did not even claim credit for the work. They were happy shedding the spotlight on the luminaries.

When I look back, it appears that the choice of abandoning the Paddy Federation in favour of fighting for legislation was indeed a correct decision. This was not only practical given their capabilities at that time, but also gave them the moral high ground to say that they stuck to the principles at all times. CDF at that time did not have the management bandwidth to pull off something on the scale of a large federation in the classic Kurien style. However, being non-compromising on principles, it was possible for them to doggedly work for change of laws, while continuing their grassroots work in the two chosen districts of Telangana region.

In the last phase of her career, Shashi withdrew from CDF and evolved as a person who worked equally effectively as an independent consultant. The growing differences with Rama Reddy had made her position in CDF difficult. For long she was the face of CDF – being articulate and aggressive. However, there was a growing sense that CDF had achieved its purpose. Indeed today as a reflection of this, the entire management of CDF has been handed over to the community who run it from Warangal without the involvement of any of the English-speaking professionals.

After Shashi quit CDF, we were more in touch, essentially because there would be an occasion to meet outside of Hyderabad as well. In addition, she was on a wider canvas and we had many more things to share. I remember that once she quit CDF, she started sending in her personal annual report, a delightful read on the assignments she had undertaken, the reasons why she undertook some assignments and her own take on how the year had progressed. Her transparency went to the extreme of her sharing her accounts with the readers as well. I did try to emulate this when I got out of employment about a year and a half ago, but it has been a tough act to follow. It is not easy to tell to others, let alone justify to oneself as to why one is doing some assignments, and how well it is progressing. The process of introspection and then sharing this with the outer world is so complex that my failed attempts at writing my own annual report made me appreciate her annual reports even more.

Shashi was a fiercely independent person, usually making a point by vehemently arguing for it, but also demonstrating it in life. Sometimes she was outspoken to the extent of being rude. In training programmes, she would embarrass Bank Managers who came in late by making the entire room clap in celebration of the late arrival of the “royalty”. In spite of this she would emerge as a favourite at the end of the programme, which she achieved through a great sense of empathy and by connecting with that person immediately and putting every person at ease. She had learnt not only to speak Telugu, but could effectively put together training manuals.

Shashi continued to work with small organisations and in the spirit of transparency that she always espoused. In the last few years, she was suffering from cancer, but refused treatment. Her research had shown her that in 90% of the cases the harm that the treatment did to the body was greater than the relief it gave. I wondered if this was a right decision for her. But never questioned her, nor brought up this issue with her, because I knew that she would have had a much stronger reason to take that path, than what I could suggest. She battled pain but was up on her feet till the last moment, trying to keep her faculties alive and lead a fiercely independent and professional life.

Shashi as a person was a full time professional. She remained unmarried and insisted that her parents be with her. She juggled between her travel schedules, her mother who needed full time caring with a sense of joy and righteousness. She constantly had this inner urge to prove that there were no gender differences – insisting on taking to the wheel on a huge Standard 20 or the organisation’s Jeep while she made the driver sit at the back. She was a person who loved to build conspiracy theories. Her favourite was a theory that anybody who put on too much of weight had turned corrupt! However, none of these came in the way of her professional engagement.

Of course, the most enduring memory of Shashi was when she had invited us all for a get-to-gather on the occasion of her 60^th birthday in late July. It was one of the most gracious events that I attended, with Shashi full of life, eating a full meal and delivering a great thankyou speech to all her friends whom she valued very much. When I heard her passing away 10 days later, this was the picture that emerged and got etched in my memory. It was as if she was waiting for this occasion to bid all of us a goodbye.

If Shashi is not as well known as her counterparts and has not been honoured with the usual Padmas and the Magasasays it is because she worked as a loner, worked for effect rather than publicity, was happy to be in the background when others celebrated success of her work as their own. It was not that she did not enjoy the spotlight, it was just that she did not work for it. If she is unsung and unheard of today in the sarkari co-operative circles, it is just because she worked more for principles than for structures. In losing her we have lost one of the best advocates for the spirit of co-operatives. And in her I have lost somebody would be my talisman on the correctness of a decision. When I heard that she was no more, I wrote to some of my batchmates: In knowing her I had gained a tough boss with whom you could argue, fight and still smile. In her death I have lost a mentor, guide and a dear friend.

I still feel her presence…. she is somewhere around. Possibly this is what I could call the spirit of Shashi. That spirit is with me!

© M S Sriram |

‘Practice’ to Theory: The Evolution of Strategy

2011-01-15T16:59:00.015+05:30

[A shorter version of this review was published in Business Standard]

The Lords of Strategy [The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World]

Walter Kiechel III

Harvard Business Press, 2010

pp.347. Price Rs.995.

Writing a book on history of business is not a fancy that many have taken to. This is not glamorous for academics as it does not fetch much visibility and consulting opportunities. Therefore to find a well-researched and well-written book on history of strategy is refreshing. The book also gives a flavor of the overarching themes that the corporate world was engaged in the last five decades. Having picked the theme, how does one make it interesting for the reader? This is possibly the fundamental difference between a seasoned journalist and an academic. Kiechel makes the book engaging with remarkable aplomb.

The first aspect in getting this across is to make it personal, replace references with anecdotes, remove painful footnotes, and use a simple and straight language. He weaves the strategy story around four personalities and their organisations. This is the style that Michael Lewis adopted in his recent book The Big Short which was about financial sector crisis. Three of the personalities Kiechel talks about are with consulting practices and the fourth is located in the Mecca of business – Harvard.

What hits us hard in this book is that the frontier contribution about business came neither from cutting edge innovative businesses themselves nor from the academics putting out their grand models. This is a story of somebody in-between – in the consulting practice – having to constantly remain in business and thus show results for the theorization and at the same time not having the pressures of having to publish esoteric stuff in ‘A’ category academic journals – desperately seeking tenure. History indicates that consulting firms were not translating models handed out by the academics into action. Instead, they were reinventing themselves to remain relevant, pushing practice and building models around that. They were putting ideas across in their own pamphlets not waiting for an academic endorsement.

While understanding costs, and assuming that experience of working in a particular product will drive down costs, got the honorable status of a strategy, it is also some sort of dark humor that the period of ascent of strategy [driven by the understanding of cost data] coincided with the loss of cost and management accounting as a discipline in the academic world, particularly with the accounting fraternity. Over a period of time costing and control systems have actually shrunk in terms of popularity and offering in the core in MBA curricula!Through the stories of the lords of Strategy Bruce Henderson of BCG, Bill Bain of Bain& Co, Fred Gluck of McKinsey and Michael Porter of HBS, Kiechel takes us through the evolution of the thought, how strategy was conceived to be different from the annual planning exercise and how it fundamentally changed how corporations looked at their business following a single pursuit: how do we carry on and grow the business with greatest amount of efficiency. The paradigmatic shift that occured in the first phase of strategy – though articulated as obsession with costs/efficiency and a riding on the experience curve, in spirit it the shift was actually towards organized use of data as a competitive weapon.

Given that consultants as a class are usually seen with disdain, somebody parasitic who live off the clients – as caricatured brilliantly in Sidin Vadukut’s recent book Dork, this book not only debunks the myth and demonstrates how the consulting firms, led by Henderson pushed the frontiers to build the theory. Even in the section where Michael Porter is featured, Kiechel reveals how it took time for Porter had to face resistance to establish himself as an insider in the erstwhile Business Policy course in HBS and get his ideas through.

While BCG used this in the growth share matrix to place the entire portfolio of a corporation in a measurable and actionable format – holding a mirror to the corporation, Bain took it further where not only the mirror was held, but also offer a customized implementable solution – the mirror being an instrument in a beauty parlour. It is interesting to note that the early version of the growth share matrix was expressed in the form of financial service products – bond for the celebrated cash cow, savings account for the star, mortgage for the dog and wildcat for the question mark [p.58]. The growth-share matrix that emerged was a killer idea that continued to evolve.

The ultimate endorsement for the cutting edge work in strategy evolved by the early practitioners came as the academic world embraced the models with BCG Matrix, McKinsey’s 9 Box matrix and even Tom Peters’ and Waterman’s 7S model, all finding place in the academic curriculum at some point or the other with all seriousness and rigour, being applied to case analysis and discussions.

While the book traces the quirks in the four dominant personalities and how they went about their business, it also traces the dominant paradigms of management thought in the past half century. We can see the movement from using data to understand costs, gaining efficiency [translated as reduced costs, and a competitive weapon to win more customers], to the consultants delivering measurable value [Bain], to benchmarking performance with the stock market. Once Kiechel is through with the four towering personalities, he then quickly deals with the others who come in and disappear on the horizon – personalities like Tom Peters, Waterman, Prahalad, Hamel, Mintzberg, Senge and so on. The fact that what they propounded does not engage the attention of either the reader or the author might be because of the fact that none of these formulations seem to have withstood the test of time.

The larger set of questions that the book subtly raises are about the relevance of consultants and the models they propounded in the context of the new era where businesses are run on a different set of rules. Kiechel engages with two issues that the personalities did not consider in their formulations. The role of capital and the role of people. While the BCG matrix propounded that the cash cows will fund the stars and the question marks, the effective means of raising external capital for even more accelerated growth was not fitted into the matrix. Same is the case with people oriented strategy. While the consulting firms themselves seem to have had a people oriented strategy [ultimately the assets of the consulting firm were taking the next elevator], this was possibly not adequately transferred to the clients. With these perspectives coming, the corporate world looks more complex.

The decade of 90s laid excessive focus on the capital structuring of the corporate. With the maturity of the stock markets, complex instruments coming in, the retail investor edged out through complex considerations that left the spreadsheet specialists to act on behalf of both the informed investor [wealth management?] and the lay investor [mutual funds] there was an increasing decoupling between the entrepreneur and the supplier of capital. If we look at the earlier decades, while the basic model was to have all the factor providers as fixed pay off agents and the suppliers of capital being eligible for all the residual claims. The underlying assumption was that risk capital came bundled with entrepreneurship. However, with leveraged buy outs, private equity and venture financing gaining more currency, we find that the suppliers of capital and the entrepreneurs were decoupled. The entrepreneurs [who possibly did not have their own capital, but had capability and ideas] getting compensated not only through a fixed pay offs [managerial compensation], but were compensated through sweat equity and other sophisticated instruments that gave them a share in the upside of the business. This business model moves the primacy away from capital towards ideas. These ideas seem to work faster, quicker and in more concrete terms in non-capital intensive services sector. Thus none of the models propogated by the four towers was appropriate.

The second fundamental change was that the business itself being fungible. Divisions could be sold, chopped and peddled. A company like Dell could be termed to be in the business of selling computers, but basically could be a logistics firm. A company like Proctor and Gamble may aim to increasingly “outsource” its product development [p.323]. This fundamentally changes the way we look at a corporate and its function. In this changed environment, would the consulting practice be in formulating models or the core would be redefined as facilitating deals? From the days of Hendersen where the function was in pushing the froniters of how businesses to run to being a part of the ‘conspiracy’ in deal making the role had fundamentally changed. Not only do the firms get entrenched in the internal workings, but also consider “regulatory capture” as a valid approach to taking businesses to the next frontier. Take this passage from the book:

“The Firm’s ability to insinuate itself into local elites drives its competitors slightly berserk with envy. In their eyes, McKinsey partners seeking to open a new office arrive in town bearing letters of introduction to the local corporate gentry from their counterparts elsewhere, satisfied clients typically. Somehow, given their backgrounds and polish, the partners are soon invited to join the most exclusive clubs. They play golf in such environs. They being holding small dinners, perhaps at the club, perhaps in their swank homes – just a few congenial people like yourself, to kick around some issues we may have in common. They become active in local not-for-profits, almost certainly at the board level. And mysteriously, the son or daughter of a local corporate chieftain, attending business school far away, may find his or her interest in joining the Firm as a junior consultant heartily reciprocated.”[p.258]

The consulting practice that gave us a new paradigm in management thought now gets business possibly not through a superior thought process but through a process of “networking”. Suddenly Sidin’s book no longer looks like a spoof.

In a way [and possibly rightly so] Kiechel remains loyal to the four personalities who lord over the book and not to the firms that they set up or headed. He does discuss their successors – both the persons and the ideas but does not seem to be bullish about these being lasting. He does talk about the concept of the raison-d’etre for a corporation to exist through two quotes:

‘I’m saddened and offended by the idea that companies exist to enrich their owners. That is the very least of their roles; they are far more worthy, more honourable, and more important than that.’ [Michael Hammer, p.323]

‘On the fact of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy. Your main constituencies are your employees, your customers, and your products.’ [Jack Welch, p.324]

In the process of moving from manufacturing set up where the basic concepts of strategy emerged, towards a dominant service sector, we have seen the horizons shrink. The service industry has lesser capital deployment, works on the power of intellect, has lesser entry barriers both in terms of capital and infrastructure. The ideas are emerging from that paradigm.

However, we have to realize that the logic of a service industry. The service delivery cycles produces results that are not only measurable but also quick, thereby shrinking the business horizons. When ideas that emanate from the service industry with shorter horizons are employed on more fundamental businesses like power generation and distribution, the result will be Enron. This is the danger that Kiechel alludes to when he discusses the role of strategy in the light of the global financial crisis. He leaves us with a pessimistic note on the role of strategy in future. Clearly as a person who is documenting the history of strategy he possibly is not into theorization himself. But when we think what this book tells us – it is the shrinking horizons of the corporation and the resultant behavior to convert as much into measurable cash as possible. In this situation both Hammer and Welch [quoted above] look horribly outdated. However, what they said is possibly more relevant and current than ever before.

All in all I found this book to be a delightful read, thought provoking, and written with a journalistic flair that escapes the traps of an abstracting academic. It is time for us to pause, re-look at the four towers [Charminar!] that shaped strategy and see if the logic of how they were doing their work is still relevant, albeit in a different context. We certainly do not want the comic Sidin to be prophetic and prescient.

© M S Sriram |

Practice and Theory: The Unexpected QUESTions to Vikram Akula

2010-12-09T22:54:00.009+05:30

[A Shorter version of this review was published in Business Standard, 09 December 2010]

A Fistful of Rice: My Unexpected Quest to End Poverty Through Profitability

Vikram Akula

Harvard Business Review Press, 2011

pp.191. Price Rs.495.

[With a bonus reference to Assessing Microfinance: An Investigation of Whether Microfinance Reaches the Very Poor, by Vikram Akula, PhD Dissertation submitted to University of Chicago in 2004]

This is not the best of the times to be writing about Vikram Akula’s book. He is still hanging on a roller coaster that he got on to in 1998 and has seen the world turn topsy-turvy around him. For somebody who has been living life of a celebrity for the past few years, the party was planned well: There was a blockbuster IPO, the quiet period had ended and with business processes well in place, he would have moved on a book promotional tour before differences arose with his CEO Suresh Gurumani [whom he acknowledges rather warmly in the book] leading to Gurumani’s sacking and the regulatory cyclone hit the state of Andhra Pradesh, where his operations were concentrated.

While one could argue about the ideological position that Vikram takes in the book about how best to serve the poor, it would be very unfair to use his story to make a case against the model of microfinance he practices. However, what would be of interest to us is how this thought process evolved in Vikram’s life. Why does he call his quest as “unexpected”, if that was what he believed in right from the beginning? For somebody who says “I bought a one-way plane ticket to Hyderabad and packed a single gym bag with clothes. I wanted to travel like Mahatma Gandhi – no unnecessary attachments, no excess material goods….” [p.20], to a recent interview where he says.. . "I've made a tonne of money… more than I ever thought I would make in my lifetime and my kid's lifetime combined….” is a long ideological journey indeed.This is not the best of the times to be writing about Vikram Akula’s book. He is still hanging on a roller coaster that he got on to in 1998 and has seen the world turn topsy-turvy around him. For somebody who has been living life of a celebrity for the past few years, the party was planned well: There was a blockbuster IPO, the quiet period had ended and with business processes well in place, he would have moved on a book promotional tour before differences arose with his CEO Suresh Gurumani [whom he acknowledges rather warmly in the book] leading to Gurumani’s sacking and the regulatory cyclone hit the state of Andhra Pradesh, where his operations were concentrated.

But the book is an incredible story of Vikram Akula’s journey from a comfortable New York to rustic Narayanakhed. For somebody who has had a rather comfortable life in New York to come back and re-discover his roots and to work in trying circumstances, fighting a difficult terrain, hostile bureaucracy, insurgency of the Maoists, and local politics certainly has not been easy. For those who believe that Vikram was an overnight success, this story is indeed an eye opener that it took almost a decade and a half of uncertainty and hardship to and even a brush with personal bankruptcy to achieve what he has. To pick up an idea from Muhammad Yunus from the not-for-profit arena, to struggle around the implementation aspects and suddenly to be recognized as the face of Indian microfinance, [while people like Ela Bhatt and Vijay Mahajan remained in the background] – much before SKS achieved scale is no mean achievement. Vikram has worked hard, very hard to be where he is.

Vikram uses his internship with Deccan Development Society [DDS] to lay the foundations for his argument of a scalable commercial model of microfinance. The argument is that the poor have no time for lectures on empowerment, and while they care about education and health initiatives, they also want to get on with life here-and-now [p.43]. This argument is similar to the one that has been extended by Shafique Chowdhary of the extremely successful microfinance initiative ASA of Bangladesh. The evolution from an inefficient all round developmental intervention of DDS to a focused efficient single point intervention carried out by SKS is understandable. Given that the arguments of providing access to financial services to the poor is a laudable business; that this business is less exploitative and provides access with dignity, and is completely voluntary in nature, why is a person like Vikram amidst many controversies?

The answer for this also lies in how the book is constructed, and also on how Vikram’s other writings are constructed. Vikram uses Foucaultian discursive approach to discuss the dominant discourse in microfinance and dismisses the existing models in his thesis submitted to University of Chicago. Using that approach, we could try to understand the text and subtext of Vikram’s book. While the book starts with a woman in a purple saree asking a life changing question as to why she is not getting microcredit while being poor, it ends with a woman showing off her colour television, thanks to SKS not only giving her successive loans, but also inadvertently creating a job for her son.

With her water buffalos, and a home front kirana store her poverty is eradicated and mission accomplished. Or is it?

For instance let us take this excerpt from the book: “Often, when we started …. people decided to test us by willfully not paying. But we instructed our loan officers not to leave the meeting until the repayment came in…. This had a powerful social effect. The entire village would realize there was some issue…..And that person would lose izzath – lose face. Losing face is a fairly devastating thing in a village context, and people will do anything to avoid it.” [p.76] something that ensures repayment and discipline could also be termed coercive if one crosses the line. Clearly there could be a whole debate on where the elusive line is. Vikram does offer a solution for borrowers who faced hardship, but the solution lay not in a pro-active action on the side of SKS but an action that gave the community a lesson on co-operation on how they should bail each other out in case of difficulty, while there is no mention of what SKS would do pro-actively in case of a default.

We could also look at another instance where the loan taken ostensibly for purchase of a goat was kept to buy food. His lieutenant tells the customer “Buying food doesn’t generate income, so you’ll be no closer to getting out of poverty that way. Either buy a new goat, or give us back the loan money” [p.82]. How does his organization expect people out of poverty when they cannot even buy food, but are expected to run an enterprise? The contradiction that we see in this instance has been the pattern of contradictions that Vikram has had to live with. This is where the dots in his discourse lose the connections.

The third interesting discourse in the book is about interest rates where Vikram says “… we actually could have charged much higher interest rates than we did, while still significantly undercutting the moneylenders. But our goal was not to be extractive; it was to make enough profit to cover our costs and fund further growth..” The numbers of SKS as of 2009 and 2010 does not seem to reflect the benevolence in pricing. Of course, if the market can bear it, there is no need to show benevolence in pricing, but to constantly reaffirm the aspect that efficiency gains were passed on to the customers certainly need closer scrutiny. The hard fact that comes out is that the proportionality of transfer of reduced costs to borrowers is not in sync with the gains accruing out of increased efficiency.

So, are we quibbling about the claims made in the book without having an appreciation of what the SKS model is delivering? To be fair to both the promoter and the organization, SKS has indeed shown how a cookie cutter model of microfinance, inspired by Starbucks, McDonalds and Coke could scale and work. It has reached more clients than many of its competitors, scaled fast and shown the potential to hold out. It certainly is not the most profitable [Spandana and Share turn out better numbers] and its yield ratios are also lesser that the two [indicating that it is somewhere in the middle of the exploitative scale, with organisations like BASIX being even less exploitative!].

But we have to realize that this model is hardly justified by the discourse that we get in the first half of the book. The first half of the book tries to look at the clients in their eyes, peep into their hearts and tries to live the life of a client, by using participatory research methods to find out when agricultural would pick up, the wage payment pattern and employment days [p.72]. Having started with methods that were client centric, what made SKS shift to the model where he is obsessed with the idea of cutting meeting times using stop watches, village routes being scheduled on a single road [p.103]? Great management idea, great gains in efficiency, better bang for the buck.. but does not answer the question that the woman in purple saree asks in the beginning of the book.. What happens to the poor families who do not fall on the SKS highway? This is a contradiction that seems to haunt SKS throughout the book.

The move of SKS from client-poverty focused model to an investor-prosperity focused model is rapid. It is so rapid that the stories of several clients committing suicides because of coercion, is brushed aside as clients who had not defaulted to SKS but must have borrowed from rogue MFIs. For a person whose life changed because of a question asked by a woman in a purple sari, seventeen client suicides should have led to a deep introspection and review of business practices. But the SKS response is like the style of the book: more assertive and less reflective.

The contradiction in the life of Vikram Akula will appear even more stark when we do a reading of his PhD dissertation “Assessing Microfinance: An Investigation of Whether Microfinance Reaches the Very Poor” where he almost slams the for-profit models, while maintaining that the double bottom line is important for this activity.

Let us look at this quote from the thesis:

“As for the reasons why microfinance does not reach the very poor, there are three factors. The first is emphasis on financial self-sufficiency which leads MFIs away from the very poor. The second is group liability, which leads the moderate poor to exclude the very poor, who have a high risk of default. The third is the strict repayment schedule and tough penalties for default, which lead the very poor to exclude themselves.

“The first of these three features – the goal of financial self-sufficiency – is the biggest barrier. The problem arises because for an MFI to be financially self-sufficient, it must increase its total loans outstanding…. One easy way to achieve a higher loan outstanding is by increasing the size of the loans…

“So the desire to achieve financial self-sufficiency is a slippery slope to a movement away from the very poor. This is done in two ways. MFIs end up working in less poor regions or working among less poor in a poor region.[p.24]

The dissertation continues to examine the declaration of the Microcredit summit of 1997, which wants to target 100 million of the world’s very poor families with microfinance for self employment, which Vikram finds “incorrect and outlandish” [p.36]

Vikram in his thesis offers a solution to the problem of not being able to reach the very poor by offering the SKS model as a counterexample of microfinance, an experiment that reaches the very poor while having achieved operational self-sufficiency [profits are not mentioned here]. In offering SKS as a successful example, he does caution that with scale the organization might lose focus from the very poor including a candid admission that some of the later branches the ratio of the very poor has indeed reduced [p.116]. However he elaborates as to how a drift could be avoided and the commitment – espoused by the founder/leader has permeated through the incentive structures where the staff lose their entire incentive bonus for the month if they fail to achieve the target of getting all the 90% of the incremental clients from the category of very poor [p.117] and how this applies not only to the field officers, but up the hierarchy.

The thesis itself raises a larger moral question of a conflict of interest. How could a person study a problem and then turn around and offer a solution in an organization that he has promoted and has been heading? To attribute the success to his own leadership skills is at best preposterous. How can a person be his own evaluator and use that to gain a doctorate? Somewhere down the line we find that the University might have erred in permitting this methodology from a pure point of a conflict of interest [notwithstanding the issue that the methodology could be rigorous]. When Vikram uses the word ethical position vis-à-vis the allotment of the second round of capital, it does not come out with a sense of conviction to these values. Or possibly we do not understand the concept of conflict of interest at all. Everytime an issue is thrown at him, the response ranges between his ethical or moral stand to a legal stand. I suppose, SKS and Vikram are legally correct in what they are doing. Let us grant that and then look at the larger debate on the moral fabric of the person and the organization the person heads.

Unfortunately by the time we come to his book of his “unexpected” quest this entire discourse is lost as he moves into the Google territory where he talks about providing access of his client database to players like Metro cash and carry, Airtel, Nokia, Bajaj Allianz, Cavincare and Wipro…[p.165 of the book] to sell their wares on a win-win-win model – where the client, SKS and the commercial establishment all win.

This is not only a huge and unexpected transformation from a young professional who came in the quest of working for the poor, a young professional who questioned the traditional microfinance models and their lack of focus on the very poor, a young professional about whom Vijay Mahajan says “we [Mahajan and Vikram] have differed over several things over the years but we still share a warm relationship. Earlier he thought I was too commercial and now I think he is too commercial.” [Interview with Forbes India, August 10, 2010].

There is a very honest attempt by Vikram to justify his model of work as an end in itself of portraying a successful business. In this the book does a great job. Vikram has a flamboyant style of writing that is convincing. However, there is a huge connect that is missing between the dots… What happened between December 2004 when Vikram submitted the thesis which in its tone and tenor would have ripped the current day SKS to shreds and 2006 when he returned and changed the face of SKS remains a black box. That is the unexpected turn in his life and it would have been great to know why Vikram moved to this extreme commercial model. There must have been some pressing reasons for the transformation of Vikram Akula and I suppose the microfinance community and the world at large would have greatly benefitted it Vikram had been candid and reflective on this, rather than be assertive.

I end this review by looking at the cover of his book. It is titled “A Fistful of Rice”, the picture shows two palms full of rice, a classic mismatch that is endemic to Vikram and SKS. Is it delivering more than what he is promising or promising more than what he can deliver? The choice is for the reader, or should be left for history to decide.

© M S Sriram |

Tata Group: My Essay

2010-09-19T07:18:00.009+05:30

I just finished reading a rather ordinary book “Tata: The Evolution of a Corporate Brand”. Ordinary because the book looks very promising with a foreword by Ram Charan and appears to provide insights into what makes Tata the business house what it is. It is neither fully academic in its approach nor adopts a popular model. The central approach of the book has been to work with a series of anecdotes to broadly argue whether this reinforced the brand Tata or not. However what is important in the book is that it does evoke some emotions and as one is reading the book one is able to largely relate to the brand TATA in more ways than one.

Like the author of the book who confesses that he is positively biased towards the brand, it would be appropriate to state upfront that I myself have been a Tata beneficiary and have a great deal of admiration for the group. Witzel almost indicates that Tata is almost the most ethical business house in the country, by showing evidence as to how a junior officer put some customs officials in the anti-corruption net and an instance of Tatas continuing to offer funding to Trinamool Congress as a part of their “apolitical funding” to all parties inspite of the problems at Singur. Instances of allegations that Tatas paid off ULFA in Assam is brushed aside in a paragraph without much discussion, the bias clearly showing in favour. So, the downside of Tatas that is discussed is the scandal that happened in Tata Finance and how they came out of it, including at some stage not opposing the bail for Dilip Pendse the then chief of Tata Finance because they thought that 15 months in prison during trial was enough and the rest of the legal battle could be fought without opposing the bail. In a way he is projecting the Tatas as somewhat sophisticated robinhoods. While there is a great deal of admiration for the group and what they generally represent and the principled stand that they usually take, it may be difficult to accept that sort of a clean sweep generalization. To the author’s credit he does indicate that they as a group are not infalliable, but the view, as he himself confesses does not even try to be balanced.

There are two aspects to the TATA business that is important to be distinguished and discussed separately. The first aspect is something that is very unique to the TATAs on how their ownership is structured and the activities that the group is able to carry out as a result of this structuring. The second aspect is about how the individual commercial companies themselves behave and how the group dictates and shapes their behavior. The author does not very clearly distinguish between these two activities. Yes, it is true that both add to the brand value of the TATAs but it would have been interesting to see what rubs on what.

The first aspect is indeed important. TATA Sons, that has significant stakes in most of the TATA companies is significantly owned by the TATA Trusts followed by Shapoorji Pallonji Mistry and the individual holding of the members of the TATA family is somewhat small compared to the two big blocks of shareholders. That is the reason why it is said that JRD Tata, apparently would say that he is personally not rich in spite of leading one of the leading business houses. Naturally we do not see the Tatas individually featuring the millionaires/billionaires list that is brought out be inquisitive business magazines. The way the TATA group ownership is structured particularly at the holding company level is something of a legacy that they have inherited and future generations would find it hard to reverse what was done by the first two generations of the family. In a way the senior Tatas bound the coming generations to a certain type of behavior – without giving them much of a choice. That the following generations have maintained what was left as a structure was without much of a choice. However the fact that they in their own way positively contributed to the legacy is something that comes out as commendable. In a way, it is indeed important to lay down the DNA of an initiative in a fairly irreversible manner so that it is difficult for the newer generations to screw up the basic fabric of what was intended.

Weitzel does talk about the last decade of JRD and the initial days under the Chairmanship of Ratan Tata where it appears that the group was losing direction, was seen as a company living in the glory of the goodness of the past and was not seen really as a contemporary group keeping in touch with the times. When the holding is owned largely by a set of charitable institutions, the dynamism to keep the glue of the organization in tact therefore comes from the drive and zeal of the person at the helm. The market forces cannot help the unlisted holding if it decides to relax and is not necessarily seen as agile. Therefore as rightly pointed out in the book, we have a situation where the individual entities of the group could have been doing well [as they were listed and answerable to the market forces in general] but the group itself – represented by the holding company not seen as agile and active. This possibly explains why each of the Tata companies was seen as the fiefdom of the star chiefs – be it Darbari Seth, Russy Mody, Moolgankar and the others.

The challenge therefore for the group was and will remain in how the holding company is structured. Before Ratan Tata stepped in and started the consolidation of the Tata brand and cajoled the individual firms using the Tata names to sign up an agreement for payment of royalty to Tata Sons and also come to a common understanding of what a Tata identity means, each one of them were run as outfits that almost did not belong to a group. Even the holding of Tatas in each of these firms was low and the ownership had got very diversified. It was only in the first phase of Ratan Tata’s tenure that through a series of decisions on retirement age, rejigging of boards and consolidation of holdings [and even renaming companies] that the Tata imprint started getting planted on individual units. This phase also represented the sale of some of the Tata businesses and taking stock of the business they wanted to be in, in the longer run. During the second phase of Tata was the phase of high profile acquisitions, launching of a car, planning for the people’s car Nano, and consolidating on the Tata brand name as an aggressive brand that means business.

So when we deconstruct the Tatas in India, the bottomline comes to the businesses and the Trusts. I am not sure that the Tata businesses stand out as extraordinary businesses with a unique Tata imprint. Except for the Nano innovation, most of the businesses run the way any business would. Indica was a disaster when it was launched, and they improved it over a period of time. The service levels at any Tata outlets does not outshine any other competing brands. Yes there is an aura that they are largely ethical businesses, and took a principled stand in Singur [inspite of burning cash] – but I guess it was more a hard nosed business decision than a principled one. Imagine the trouble they would have had on an ongoing basis if they had actually set up a plant in Singur. The fact that they opened shop in Gujarat [in spite of Ratan Tata himself having made some comments about Chief Minister Modi in the wake of the post Godhra riots] shows that when it comes to business, it is not necessarily a moral high ground that dictates the behavior, instead the best interests of the business itself. Therefore there is nothing that stands out as a Tata way of doing business at the consumer end. Your walk in experience at Croma is no better or different from EZone, the landmark store looks huge and disorganized when compared to crossword, and there is nothing that Tata Sky provides as a tata experience [other than Aamir Khan encouraging you to drop out of school!] on the Tata Sky dish business. I own an Indica and have had nightmares everytime that I have got the car serviced. Hardly different of distinct from a typical Indian consumer experience.

However, what does rub off positively on the brand is the work [particularly in me sector] that the Trusts do. They have been involved in some of the most constructive activities across the country, the activities spanning across hospitals, educational institutions, funding voluntary agencies and working in the areas of art and culture in the most constructive way. The trusts are very careful in the way they use their money and do not splurge. I personally have benefitted from a liberal and ongoing grant to study the microfinance sector when I was at IIMA. I have done work for the Trusts and the amount of attention they pay [including the top management of TATAs] to the work of the trusts is noteworthy. Given that many corporate houses do not do organized philanthropy [and possibly splurge on building fancy temples], the way they have put what could have been the personal wealth of the family to public service is something that we need to commend. Somehow the book does not seem to make this distinction between being an ordinary business with flashes of brilliance and an extraordinary group structuring that makes them a very social organization.

The Tata brand therefore is a brand that represents a whole lot of goodness, and not all of that goodness actually comes from their businesses. One thing is certain: They are certainly a mature business group. Apparently people who were in the forefront of protests in Singur were directly or indirectly all beneficiaries of Tata – some were direct donees from the trusts, some [including Medha Patkar] were graduates of TISS – TATA Institute of Social Sciences and as per Wietzel, even Trinamool congress was a Tata donee, and it continued to be one, till suddenly the party realized that it had a conflict of interest and returned the money. That incident is a good enough illustration as to how divorced the commercial and philanthropic interests of Tatas. Unfortunately Witzel tries to attribute the goodness of the structure and individuals on to the group and disappoints on this count.

© M S Sriram |

Governance @ Amul: Some Reflections

2010-09-01T07:14:00.007+05:30

[Published in Forbes India]

The predominant organizational forms for conducting affairs of commerce or development have been restricted to either what the market can provide us – for-profit enterprise or what the state/NGOs can provide us – where the profit becomes subsidiary to a service being delivered. However, we have long believed that the third alternative of co-operatives provides an effective alternative that questions the centrality of capital without questioning the commercial orientation. The fundamental premise on which a co-operative is designed is to shift the focus from capital to turnovers [or patronage as it is referred to in co-operative literature] and assume that if a producer’s collective is set up with pay offs that reward the producers, then the self-interest of these players ensure that they will function as an effective economic organization.

Everytime a co-operative fails a standard reason is attributed: Interference of the State in the management of the co-operative. The co-operative –though designed as an economic organization is often used as an instrumentality of the State to deliver welfare thereby undermining the “economic nature” of the organization. The Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation [GCMMF and brand Amul] was till recently shown as a glittering example of what a producers’ collective could actually do.

However, the recent incidents at the helm of affairs at GCMMF, raises questions on whether the assumption of self-interest is indeed true. Till the time Dr.Kurien was at the helm everything seemed to be moving as per principles, and cracks started appearing soon after he stepped down. Dr.Kurien was no milk producer and did not represent the ‘interests’ of the milk producers in a literal sense – that he did not have a ‘self-interest’ as a milk producer himself. However he did espouse their cause almost like a chief executive who was appointed to do a job that was assigned to him. How a system that ran smoothly; insulated from vested interests; that weathered the storm of liberalization and opening up of the markets for competition; that grew into a phenomenon much beyond the state of Gujarat could show cracks in a matter of a few years indicates the fragility of the co-operative form of organization, thereby raising some doubts on whether it is indeed a credible alternative to the market model.

The question is more intricate than just the junking of the co-operative model in favour of a market model. Unlike the sugar co-operatives [that have variously succeeded and badly failed] which are a single tier structure – with the cane producer directly voting for the board of the sugar processing unit, GCMMF is a federal unit of the three tiered structure operating on a representational democracy. Thus people sitting on the board of GCMMF are the ones who have been elected at the village level, elected from amongst those co-ops to the district union and from there elected to the federation. At the primary level the voting to the post is on a one member one vote basis, whereas at the federal level the votes that a person commands is proportional to the business interests his/her institution represents.

The co-operative form is fragile is essentially to do with a horizon problem. The membership [and thus the ownership] could theoretically be transient – only milk producer pourers could be voting members of the milk co-operative and their capital contribution is incidental. Therefore the cost of exit from the co-operative is at best the loss of an assured buyer of the product. So in the light of an alternative that is attractive, the member could defect. Not only could a member defect to an alternative source, but the member could defect to an alternative profession! There is little incentive to build in long term stakes in the co-operatives. This is well discussed in the theory of capital starvation. At exit, there is no exit bonus and for entry into a co-operative there is no entry load or premium. This is an invitation for free-riders.

The fact that Amul and GCMMF held together for such a long time is indicative of two aspects in the public policy that was effectively used by Dr.Kurien and his team.

The co-operative built its systems and became internally strong in the licence raj era when milk processing and distribution was almost the monopoly of the co-operative/State structure. Post liberalization, the dairy and the sugar, the biggest lobbies in the co-operative sector argued for reservation and effectively prevented the private sector from entering into the heartlands of co-operatives. This effectively made it a monopoly and this helped the cause of funneling member funds for expansion. Given that the organization was farmer owned also helped them raise funds at competitive rates because these funds came bundled with some grants.

On the other hand, they were also able to effectively prevent the State from take-over of individual units. GCMMF never looked vulnerable because it was run professionally and in an orderly manner. There was no scandal that tainted the organization in its history and therefore there was no scope for anybody to touch the organization.

So, what is making GCMMF vulnerable?

Suddenly the glue that held the structures together seems to be wearing out. The people at the helm of affairs representing the milk producers do not seem to be representing the interests of the milk producers. In a similar situation, with a crisis in the leadership of a for-profit firm there would have been an attempt at takeover at somebody who thought that it was possible to provide better management and thus better value to the shareholders. The institution of stock market and the regulator also helps. There would have been enough signals in the market that would have predicted this situation and the movement would have happened early on. The change in the chief executive would have followed the change in the basic ownership structure.

Unfortunately the co-operative structure does not have an exchange where supply rights could be traded. Therefore, the change can happen only through the mechanism of a board room or a general body meeting or through the intervention of the state. There could be no market action that could build a tempo for such a change. A brand built and nurtured over a period of fifty years is showing cracks at the hands of a dozen board members who may not behave in a responsible manner. These board members have only an upside with limited downside. They actually lose no capital, no loss if they lose a source that procures the milk that is produced. It is a zero sum game. The ones who would shed tears at the fall of the brand would be somebody whose livelihood depends on the payments received from the milk co-operative. That somebody is far removed – at least three tiers away – from the machinations. Surprisingly the State has shown restraint in case of GCMMF. However, what are the rights of a milk pourer member at this time? When does his or her opportunity [even theoretically] come to change the management or give a signal to the elected management. Is there a single block of shareholders/members who could influence the way the organization functions?

Unfortunately the answer for the above is in the negative. The question then is whether this is a problem with the basic structure of co-operatives or something to do with the tiered structure of milk co-operatives. When we look at the sugar co-operatives where the entity has been designed in order to achieve almost total alignment – the rights of using the facilities [crushing capacity] with the amount of resources one is able to command [acerage under sugarcane] with the capital contribution [a share is equal to a certain acreage of supply] and the membership being restricted [providing for informal entry load and exit premiums] it seems to be working. In case of milk co-operatives the insularity was provided by a strong and dominant leadership that was committed to the cause. However given the tiered structure, there is a danger of the federal brand losing its sheen and the components of the federation declaring independence [as once Mehsana Milk Union had threatened in the past].

While the co-operative form in itself is an important organizational form, it needs to be tweaked and rejigged to factor the opportunistic behavior of the leaders. The state of the art now does not possibly need a three tiered structure. If there is an effective way of handling logistics and decentralizing the processing capacities, and there is no reason why we should not have single tiered large co-operatives designed in a way that maintains the centrality of the purpose. Over a period the corporate world has shown that “self-interest” of a dominant block of share-holders does not necessarily ensure great governance and therefore if there is a significant learning from the corporate world it certainly should be in ensuring the interests of small shareholders [or dairy farmers] through the process of independent persons on the governance structure. In all these years Dr.Kurien provided that independence of thought to the food major. It is time now that the interests of the dairy farmers are protected not only by those who pour milk, but possibly by those who do not, but are capable of providing management support.

Does Amul have the time now or will it be a brand in history, only time will tell.

© M S Sriram |

Blogging in Kannada: A Personal Journey

2010-08-28T15:17:00.004+05:30

[Times of India, Bangalore, 27 August 2010]

It has been five years since I put in my first post as an early blogger in Kannada. This medium was interesting because this was the first time that there were no editorial constraints on me. I could post something that is short – here and now, and more importantly I could post something that was more than 2000 words. For somebody who would like to elaborate on issues that were to be discussed, this was a blessing as a medium. I have seen the blogworld evolve and progress geometrically since. I have found blogging emanating from unexpected quarters – from the celebrated UR Anantha Murthy who happily blogs, and even uses google buzz to a great extent to eminent poet HSV to journalists like Jogi. I have found some very tech savvy people keeping themselves away from the blogworld. Vivek Shanbhag who runs a successful literary quarterly “Desha Kaala” and might have designed many an IT intervention for Unilever has assiduously kept himself away from this world.

Kannada blogsphere is now as cluttered as any other language. We have bilingual bloggers, bloggers who use English font for Kannada and find blog posts that are good bad and indifferent. The anonymity of blogging helps many of budding poet to post her poem, an aspiring writer to get instant feedback and serious writers to connect to their readers. For long, it was a challenge to take unedited, intemperate, instantaneous feedback on ones writings, but over a period of time, one has realized that the language and idiom of the blog world and even the etiquette of the blogworld is completely different from the sanitized lives we live in the published world.

A dedicated website for kannada literature kannadasahithya.com was in a way precursor for many of us who where looking for Kannada resources on the web. However this site made accessible several serious writings that were not available because the original books were out of print. This was followed up by Sampada – a portal set up by an young IT enthusiast HP Nadig. Sampada had a community of bloggers who preceeded the individual blog addresses that came in later. In addition to Sampada the best writings in contemporary Kannada can be found in a web journal at Kendasampige.com – edited by one of the most brilliant literary minds of our generation Abdul Rasheed. As these resources are getting more and more accessible, I find the need for a personal blog space reduced to posts that are very personal, instantaneous and impulsive.

I personally have used the blogworld as a parking space of most of my serious writings. I have most of my works of fiction parked on the blogspace as it is the best way to connect to people who want access to my older books. Apart from this, I have found places like Kendasampige.com a good outlet for creative writing, which like a literary journal does not have constraints on word lengths.

The greatest challenge for a blogger in Kannada was the use of technology. A good font, a good keyboard layout, an easy way to express oneself in a language that has a complicated script with super and subscripts is not easy. The reason why we have so little resources on the shared space in the webworld is to do with how one can post something aesthetically. Easy templates that are available are in English. How does one have a template that provides the link titles in Kannada – [Archives, Recent Posts] unless one gets into the source and tries to port on the Kannada font. Kannada uses several codes – Unicode/ANSI and depending on when one started and what package was accessible at that time, most of us have a preference that is not standard. So for the uninitiated like me, it is always a challenge to get the font right, the design right and the aesthetics right on the blog, without really tearing my hair apart.

One of the most bizzare experiences that I have had in the early days of blogging was the reverse of what would happen in English. I have found many columnists and writers ‘parking’ their writing in the form of blogs after they have appeared in print. In my case – in Kannada, I thought some of these writings did not fit into a regular newspaper/magazine feature, but were serious writings which I wanted to share. I put them on to the blog and for a while I would find that Kannada newspapers would pick up something from my blog to be published as a feature in print. I did have a sub-editor call me once to say that I have not posted anything for a while and therefore s/he is unable to pick one of my pieces as a feature – and they had space for the Sunday supplement…. I guess we have moved on from that era where sub-editors used to surf the blogworld to fill in the features section of Sunday supplements.

© M S Sriram |

What is Wrong With Micorfinance in India?

2010-08-28T12:08:00.009+05:30

[Published in Forbes India]

Growth at a scorching pace

From people having a sling bag on their left shoulders and a KVIC kurta, microfinance industry has moved upmarket either to suits or to fabindia kurtas. The sling bag is replaced with a net book on the right shoulder. In about a decade microfinance has moved from helping the poor to access finance to an interesting business at the bottom of the pyramid. This paradigm shift, happened with the entry of funding initially from the silicon valley and then from the people who funded and fuelled the growth of silicon valley.

In various ways it is a curious mix. Somebody from the Silicon Valley would typically be an entrepreneur who started small, scaled up fast, used the asymmetries in the market and logically and legally became rich. Many of these entrepreneurs were first generation entrepreneurs and did not forget their roots. It was logical for them to invest their surpluses into the business of doing good. However, their own success and growth experience dictated that while they do good, they should also do well. Doing well translated into a good business plan, targets and also growing at a scorching pace.

It was well when the base was small. There were several 100%s in the microfinance sector. The growth rate was in excess of 100%, the recovery was 100% and the sustainability indices quickly crossed 100%. Voila, we had found a magic mantra where the poor could be served, we could look good and put “eradication of poverty” as our mission statement and of course lead a comfortable life with the decent margins that we got. The alternative sources that were funding the poor were charging much more than us and that made us look like messiahs.

The problem was that we were dealing with people and not processes and systems. This involved group formation and dealing with behavioural pattern of people. But we got addicted to the heady growth target. And when we chase targets without a logic, we cut corners. We became cut-throat in competition and we lost a sense of balance. There are enough signals for us to push the pause button.

Multiple lending

Is there a bubble that is being created? Are most of the microfinance institutions chasing the same customer? Are we pushing the customer – the poor woman into a debt trap? Would this lead to suicides? It is possible to be alarmist and press the panic button? We have to realise that these are not issues of today, but issues of the yore. When an MFI lends to a family that is indebted to a moneylender, there is already multiple lending. In 2005 when I was doing fieldwork, one of the microfinance heads told me – “we have made our processes simpler: if the potential borrower has already passed a group recognition test of a competitor, she is eligible for a loan from us”. It could be interpreted as leveraging on the social capital built by others, or as multiple lending – the choice is yours.

The question is not whether there is multiple lending. The question is whether the lender knows the absorption and repayment capacity of the borrower. It is impossible to know this if we are doing a group meeting in 20 minutes and moving on. It is impossible to address this when we have standardised products and offer a higher loan each cycle. Our credit officers are trained to be robots following a process mechanically and are prohibited to think. Therefore multiple lending is a problem of the MFIs. We clearly do not know our customers enough, and do not have the time to know them.

There have been moves to have a credit bureau to address this problem. Is this not a joke? What will a centralised database covering Ganjam and Ernakulam, Chennai and Ludhiana tell me better than what my credit officer can tell? Every organisation operating in the area knows the other. We have asked our credit officers to chase targets. If only we ask our credit officers to treat this money as their own and see if it is worth lending to the client; if only we allow our credit officers to think..

Reading the signals wrongly

There was a crisis in Krishna. We read it as a jealous government programme trying to get back at us. Imagine we wanting to help the poor and the state wanting to be jealous because they also wanted to help the poor? This was a crackpot zealous set of people who just wanted to shut us up because we were immensely successful. Then there was Nizamabad. We said that this is communalisation. How could this happen to a secular business like lending to the poor. Then Kolar, and Idukki. This is not a localised response. People of different orientation and different backgrounds are getting upset with our business. We can have a micro argument for each one of these and be satisfied with “I am the best and nobody understands me” syndrome. Where are we going wrong? Is there something in what is happening?

In Krishna, we suddenly decided that we could afford to reduce interest rates and continue with life as usual. Does that mean that we were charging more? How do we tread the fine line between trying to seek “what the market can pay” price and not appear greedy. The reason why we should not appear greedy is not because we should not make money and lead a comfortable life, but because we have positioned ourselves as institutions that work exclusively with the poor and towards the eradication of poverty and empowerment of women. If that is the positioning, we should not be seen as seeking excessive returns from the poor to lead a lavish lifestyle.

The signals in Krishna, Nizamabad, Kolar and Idukki are about the mismatch between the lofty objectives, our target clients on one hand – and the amount of returns and overnight wealth we are getting – on the other. These are larger signals. We need a macro response and not an isolated, insulated response. We should be seen as “responsible” lenders and be seen more aligned to the larger public sector banks rather than be called white collared moneylenders…

Good boys in bed with bad

The microfinance sector in general has a false sense of solidarity. The good boys constantly stand up for the bad boys in case of a crisis. This is a peculiar syndrome. If there is bad name for microfinance on account of a bad egg, it affects us. Therefore if there is an organisation we do not like, we still support them because it might affect us. So the good boys think they need to protect the “sector”. The good boys think that they are using the bad boys to build the numbers and show how big and influential they are, and the bad boys are shooting under the cover of good boys.

It is time that some of the leaders of microfinance stood up and called a spade a spade, or something similar to a spade. We are afraid to raise questions about “successful” and “powerful” people because it might affect us. While that is a good short term view, it is going to his us badly in the long run. We hope that if we form an industry association and evolve a code of conduct the entire problem would be solved. It is just a matter of getting together, putting our heads together and making pledges about being transparent, non exploitative and treating the poor client with dignity. Unfortunately we do not say this before we admit somebody to the association. Why can we not say that unless we are already adhering to the code there is no admission to this club? But no, we live in eternal hope that we will reform our mal-adjusted juvenile delinquents.

We keep their company when we meet the regulator, we ask and even plead with the bad boys to be with us when we meet the ministry. We want to show that we are united. United for what?

Is there hope of a correction?

The poor are smart, sometimes smarter than the people who are lending to them. They have learnt the art of juggling the impossible, struggling for everyday life and therefore they know every trick in the trade that has been used and not used. If we think we are taking them for a ride, let us pause and think. If the MFI gives the sense to the borrower that it is unscrupulous, the borrower will take the MFI for a ride sooner or later! The day they reach a tipping point where they think enough is enough, they will default. Neither coercion nor any group mechanism will work. It will not work because we would have already put them into a debt trap and this is the only response they have. Since they have no exposure with us and we have all the exposure with them, it is us who will collapse not them.

There are talks of self regulation and passing a bill. Self regulation is an oxymoron. I should show responsible behaviour and I have regulated myself. Period. I do not need a peer group to regulate my already good behaviour. Therefore it is a question of intent. If I want to be responsible, then no law will prevent me from being good. Regulation is needed to deal with the deviant behaviour. Therefore regulation is not preventive, it is only a framework to deal with an event after it happens.

The industry has to auto correct. I do not think there is any other way. MFIs may have a cascading collapse, in places where the competition is unscrupulous and intense. I think we should not lament if a MFI collapses. Nothing can grow at the rate at which MFIs are growing, particularly in the financial world. It is all a question of who is the sucker who exits first when the going is good.

© M S Sriram |

Finding Fault with Microfinance; Finding Fault with Fault Finders

2010-01-28T08:19:00.006+05:30

What’s Wrong with MICROFINANCE

Edited by Thomas Dichter and Malcolm Harper

Rawat Booksellers/Practical Action Publishing, 2007

pp.271. Price Rs.795.

Introduction:

Malcolm Harper is a well known figure in the Indian microfinance circles. He is known for being enthusiastic, ever willing to go to field, break the language barrier and interact with the poor, and return to the host organizations to ask some probing questions. He is also known for his rather sarcastic humour and therefore it was indeed surprising that all his earlier writings about Indian Microfinance were in such a positive spirit. However, the current book edited by Harper and Thomas Dichter [who also asks tough questions as a consultant] is asking the right questions and bringing to the fore the questions that we always brushed under the carpet in the hope that the euphoria of the so called success will numb all valid criticism about the much hyped microfinance industry.

The book is divided into three broad parts – the first talking about clients, the second about institutions and the third about expectations from microfinance. It has a large number of authors and papers, mostly from the practitioners of microfinance who are giving an ‘inside’ view of the negatives of microfinance. There are also a few papers by academics. I shall discuss the book in a thematic format.

Savings and Credit: The Chicken and Egg of Microfinance

Thomas Dichter basically comes from the school that has been arguing consistently that the starting point of microfinance is possibly not debt, but savings and therefore raises the basic question on how the global microfinance industry is organized. If we look the world over, what we know today as microfinance is basically debt based – be it the Grameen model, the Latin American model or the programmes undertaken in the African continent. In a way it is only the Indian self-help group [SHG] model that fits into Dichter’s argument of savings first.

Hugh Allen also argues about the need for savings products in the same spirit as Dichter, citing instances where the poor are even willing to pay for the services of safe-keeping of their savings and thereby pay a reverse interest. While this service is not available, one wonders if it is a valid criticism against the microfinance [or microcredit] industry – particularly in the sections pertaining to clients and institutions. This argument largely belongs to the “expectations” we have of these institutions. The point is simple – we need to ask the question as to whether the existing microfinance models are performing a function that is sorely needed by the poor; whether they are doing the function in a manner that is efficient while giving dignity to the poor. If so, why are we hanging the microfinance institutions for what they are not doing – just because it is important to have savings and we expect institutions to deliver that product? The problem possibly does not lie with the microfinance institutions, but rather in the policy and the legal framework of the respective countries that do not allow savings products to be launched. Therefore, this aspect needs to be highlighted and brought to focus in a manner that it attracts the attention at an appropriate place – an instance of bad structuring and editing of the book!

Where does microcredit take the poor?

This question is like the protagonist in the film “Gods Must be Crazy” looking for the end of the world to throw the Coke bottle in order to protect his tribe! Dichter’s question is on the growth of the microcredit model itself. Does the growth of microfinance put the ‘poor’ into a debt trap? It is indeed an interesting conundrum. Dichter citing the evolution of the sequence of growth and credit in economic development, argues that credit has usually followed growth and not spurred growth. While one could take up issues on this line of argument, it might be useful to look at the dichotomy of what credit does with a small illustration:

A few years ago, Spandana a microfinance institution – then operating out of Guntur, Andhra Pradesh introduced a product called a dream loan. This loan was to help the borrowers to buy a consumer durable product at prices less than the market price [because Spandana would source them in bulk]. The first product introduced under this was a water filter which was followed by items like a pressure cooker and a gas stove. Spandana was hailed as an innovative organization for being creative in thinking. The argument was that water filter gives the families clean drinking water, reducing the incidence of disease and possibly increasing the number of working days and income days. The pressure cooker reduced drudgery and released the women to do more productive income generating work. The gas stove had similar arguments coupled with LPG being touted as a ‘clean’ fuel. Dichter does not deal with this constructive side of ‘consumption credit’. However, having started this line in a year Spandana went several steps ahead and had [possibly] the largest super store in Guntur with around 3000 stock keeping units ranging from soaps to refrigerators, cots to cement, bicycles to jewellery. Now, questions were being raised as to whether the organization was actually promoting consumerism and driving the clients down on the ‘slippery path’ of debt that Dichter is worried about.

On the same lines there is an interesting and introspective piece by Kim Wilson on how Catholic Relief Services moved away from the seemingly attractive poverty solution of microcredit towards more direct intervention like school programmes for children. Wilson brings out in the limitations of microfinance in providing an overall solution to the poverty problem and also the limitations on the impacts. While Wilson argues that savings based microfinance models are better, she possibly does not see a huge role for external agencies to peddle credit if the savings based models indeed existed. She is on the one hand arguing for community based models that challenge the role of a traditional as well as a new age moneylender and at the same time highlighting the limitations in the impact that the credit based moneylending can provide.

Managing Expectations

These limitations are the ones that Frances Sinha also highlights in her chapter on impacts. While there is overwhelming evidence [including that of Sinha] that the impacts of microfinance could be limited on other aspects of the lives of the poor, we continue to examine as to what microfinance could do to end domestic violence, prevent bigamy, end sexual harassment [p.79] and so on… Looking for these relationships, and lamenting about them could be as far-fetched as looking for a box office hit on a Friday morning following a particular team’s victory in a Twenty-20 match!

In similar vein Paul Rippey reflects the constant syndrome of a solution chasing a problem – applying the models that have been touted as successful to new environments. An interesting fall out of one such approach is caricatured in his paper where he talks to a loan officer who argues that the clients should get no more than three loans, because he believes that “after three loans the clients are so poor that it’s really not fair to lend them more money” [p.110].

Structuring of Microfinance Products

Harper has two papers, one that discusses the groups in microfinance and the other that talks about farmers. Group methodology has turned out to be quite attractive in microfinance and is fairly widespread at least in the Asian context. It is not that groups are a necessity. The African and the Latin American models have individual lending and even when they are joint liability groups, the way they operate is only by providing a social collateral rather than meeting at a place for transaction aggregation. While Harper goes into how much it might cost for a person to transact through a group; and whether at higher levels groups are needed and argues for a laddered approach he does not ask the obvious. Why are groups focused on women? Why is it that when microfinance deals with men usually it is at an individual level or as a joint liability group? Similarly when Harper talks about microfinance and farmers, he talks about the intrinsic return on farming and whether farming can service microfinance interest rates in a sustainable manner. He talks about microfinance being focused on women without meaningfully engaging with the question as to why men/farmers are on the fringes of microfinance.

A possible explanation for group-based microfinance being women oriented might have something to do with the slack time that the women might have, the opportunity cost being with a group rather than at home might be negligible and it might have something to do with the gender equations in the traditional rural family systems. Unfortunately neither Harper, nor Frances Sinha who deals with the issue of limited ‘empowerment’ impacts talk about such a possibility. Similarly Harper does not seem to see the point that the existing microfinance models [Surely there could be exceptions that prove the rule] are generally about one bullet outflow in the form of loan disbursement, frequency of meeting which includes regular weekly/monthly repayments, regular financial transactions [savings, insurance] and no moratoriums. Farming is about multiple outflows in lumps – preparing, sowing, fertilizing, transplantation, pest and weed management and harvesting and a bullet lumpy inflow at the harvest time. Clearly microfinance as is understood and farming are moving in different directions and therefore there is little surprise that farmers go to traditional lending institutions that understand agriculture. Therefore, instead of asking the question as to whether microfinance has not understood the logic of lending to farming, Harper seems to ask the question about profitability.

Harper talking about profitability of the client seems to make immense sense. However as we read Harper, it is clear that he has somehow crossed the line to talk about livelihood finance. It is a very thin line that divides the world of “consumption credit” and livelihood finance. Harper actually does not seem to observe this line, while in a later paper in the “Expectations” section Vijay Mahajan seems to bring this out more sharply by looking at the limitations of the microfinance models as is practiced today. While Harper is looking at whether the underlying economic activity is in a position to service the loans while talking about farmers, Mahajan points out the five major assumptions made by microfinance practitioners that do not help in sorting out certain type of financial services needed by the poor. These are basically the supply side assumptions made that credit [particularly microcredit] will be a silver bullet that solves the poverty problem of the poor, by making them successful micro-entrepreneurs in extremely profitable businesses and thereby the microfinance institutions could also become profitable and all can live happily everafter.

Both Harper [indirectly] and Mahajan [directly] ask the question of whether microfinance institutions as they grow and deal with diverse needs of the clients actually have to reinvent their delivery models to provide a solution for a possible problem, rather than peddle a solution in search of a problem!

It is in the same spirit that we need to read a rather positive paper by Imran Matin et.al on how to unleash the true potential of microfinance by imagining microfinance more boldly. Matin et.al use the examples of process innovations to look at the issue differently. In a way the paper by Matin et.al is not only looking at what is wrong with the current models, but also has some practical examples on what could happen and thus is on a very positive note.

Prabhu Ghate on the other hand picks up the Andhra crisis to examine the fall out of the inward looking aggressive growth of microfinance. His basic argument is that something that grows out of sync with the rest of the economy might have a honeymoon for a while, but eventually will generate suspicious raised eyebrows. We have seen this happen elsewhere in the dotcom bubble, the stock-market bubble and the various ponzi schemes in the financial circles. But still we are deluded to believe that microfinance is a super innovation that could have a CAGR of 100% or more. The effects of such a growth as Ghate identifies should be seen elsewhere and in this case comes out as a high handed state response.

Susan Johnson and Namrata Sharma have a somewhat positive paper on structuring of microfinance delivery mechanisms and how to ensure that group based microfinance is not hijacked by a few prominent leaders. Given that the tone of the book is in finding fault, this positive paper looks out of the place, though it is indeed an interesting paper and worth a notice.

Big Names, Small Impact

Finally I do not understand why a paper by David Hulme [where the abstract seems to be lengthier than the paper] and another by von Pischke is doing in this compendium, though I can guess. David Hulme is a well known authority on microfinance and had done some cutting edge work on impacts. However, given the chatty nature of the book with hand waving conclusions it would have been difficult to put in a paper of such research intensity. Therefore the solution is possibly was to pick up a small random piece so that you get him on to the author list. Same is the case with von Pischke – his piece is based on a talk picked up for the book where he merely described the institutional typologies of microfinance than actually comment on what is wrong. It appears that both these towering figures are there in the book more for tactical purposes than for the content. Similarly an essay by Ellerman on the fallacious thought processes in the microfinance models and by Rahman on what is wrong with microfinance in Bangladesh are both, an obvious laundry list of what could go wrong with microfinance. Again I believe that these papers are in the book more for tactical reasons of putting the issues in perspective rather than for the intrinsic worth their contents.

In addition to the above there are three other papers in the book including the one by Richard Myer who writes insightfully about methodologies of measuring impact of microfinance and two other pieces which do not thematically fit in.

Final Word[ict]

What is wrong with the book is similar to what is wrong with microfinance. The editors have found a catchy title – it would sell well because it has the potential to bring out all the negatives of something that is being touted as an ultimate solution to poverty. It is motivated writing. However, but for a few exceptions, the book fails to recognize that there is a thin line that divides the positives and negatives of a concept like microfinance. This is because, the stream of argument is generally premeditated – a conclusion in search of an argument.

For instance examine this piece: “The data was collected from 215 microenterprises… the sample is not of course representative of all non-farm microenterprises…. failed businesses were not studied, because they were not there to be studied…[p.88]” “This is only a small non-random sample, and the methods of data collection and analysis were not necessarily consistent. Indian cases predominate, but this many not be unreasonable …. All data were obtained from farmers’ own recollection, rather than from… any other more systematic records…. There are many reasons why the data may be inaccurate, but the errors are equally likely to have been positive or negative, and there is no reason why the returns from farming data would be any less inaccurate, or more understated, than the returns from non-farm enterprises. The orders of magnitude are probably reasonably correct, however, and readers should be able to confirm…..[p.90]” These are the words of not a practitioner but an academic. These are the words of the editor of this volume. I guess more need not be said about where this book is coming from and where it is going.

Moving from Journalism to Constructing a Novel: Kota Neelima's Death of a Moneylender

2010-01-12T07:39:00.008+05:30

The book Death of a Moneylender is a refreshing change in Indian English writing. It is unfair to stereotype Indian English writing as westward looking, but over a period of time we see five distinct streams of writing in English.

One strand is popular writing but representing the elite, but not quite literature - the books churned out by the likes of Shobhaa De and Chetan Bhagat.
The second strand is that of writers like Aravind Adiga, Arundhati Roy who clearly write with Indian roots, but one gets the feeling that their audience is much more global and thus their local stories are also adequately globalised.
The third strand belongs to writers who are truly global in their outlook and incidentally locate themselves in India - Amitav Ghosh and Vikram Seth.
The fourth strand seems to be that of Indians with passport from elsewhere - writing about India and Indian experience either with nostalgia or with a touristy wonderment.
The fifth strand possibly are Indians writing possibly for the local audience - writers who could easily have been Bhasha writers,but accidentally happen to write in English. I would put KR Usha, Shashi Deshpande in this category and for a good measure add Kota Neelima whose book I read recently into this category as well.

The book in question "Death of a Moneylender" should have been in the news much more than it has been, it should have had wider set of reviews and possibly discussions around it. However, in the era of news almost always being obsessive about "Breaking" News, the media possibly does not have the time or "bandwidth" to discuss something that is away from the urban sensibility, something that does not look "sexy" or something that deserves a bit of reflection, research and patience. In this context, it is indeed interesting to read this novel set in the context of print media. It was indeed a welcome change to look at something that is so subtly reflective of our contemporary times.

Neelima's novel starts off in a Newspaper office in New Delhi which receives the news of the death of a moneylender. This is not a normal death, of a normal person. This is the death of a moneylender, and his body is found hanging by the lamp post in the village centre. Clearly this is sensational stuff. It does make a good copy and therefore the newspaper finds it necessary to collect more details. It is therefore important for the journalist who has been assigned this beat to collect as many details, analyse the situation, report and draw the attention of the readers. In the process the journalist would also be looking for recognition for himself and a possible (or necessary) pat on the back from the bosses.

The novel that starts with the news of such a gory death goes on to examine several contemporary issues without much of a melodrama. The beat to cover this story is assigned to a young journalist Falak. Falak is a reporter who is ambitious and is in a hurry to climb the journalistic ladder. He has already got the necessary success in his current assignment, but is willing to stretch himself for the next kick upstairs. His old possibly ex-friend who is a journalist with another newspaper is the one who constantly reminds him of the difference between being a good journalist and a successful journalist. She almost appears like his conscience throughout the novel. For Falak it is a challenge to continue to be successful, while pining to be "approved" by this friend. But the lady does not see any dilemma in being good and successful. She believes that if one is good, success is incidental. However Falak is somewhat frustrated and impatient on this count.

The novel is glued together around the death of a moneylender. The fact that somebody is trying to investigate the reason behind the gruesome death is reason enough to keep the reader engaged, but Neelima uses this intelligently to weave several issues around this basic episode. For instance, the question that is often asked is that while we hear about farmer suicides, how many times do we hear about the suicide/death of a moneylender? And when that happens, why does this news hog disproportionately more column centimetres than that of farmers? Where is the balance in the reporting ethic of a newspaper and what twist do you give to such a tale? Neelima seems to ask all these questions intrinsically without actually verbalising them.

As Neelima opens up the internal contradictions and dilemmas of a journalist, she intelligently slips in issues pertaining to the basic issues haunting agriculture - economics/profitability of farming, the tensions in the relationships within a village, various issues emanating from the caste and class relations. Stories which the journalists possibly encounter in their daily life, but cannot narrate in their journalistic limitations of space and time are unpeeled in front of us.

There is a fundamental image that most of us carry about village moneylenders - that they are bloodsucking hoodlums who exploit anybody who comes their way. Therefore when there is news that a moneylender's body is hanging by the lamp post, this could be an indication of a bloody revolt. Therefore the story of such a death is something that will catch the imagination of a reader and this in turn could help us to look at the various facets of rural life. In unravelling this story, Neelima also helps us to re-examine the stereotypes we have in us - not only the stereotypes of moneylenders, but the stereotype of village life itself.

While Neelima has mastered the art of story-telling, I am not sure she has mastered the art of constructing a story. Possibly that might be one reason why the novel has not attracted as much attention as it should have. She seems to somehow believe that each one of the issues that are picked up should reach a natural conclusion. This urge to tie up the loose ends hampers the overall narrative. Possibly this might be the difference between somebody who basically writes fiction and somebody who has come into the world of fiction from the disciplined world of journalistic writing. A journalistic piece usually looks for an immediate solution, a current reality and a quick sense of accountability. However a novel usually does not have the necessity to have such a nice, digested capsule for the reader. The reader of a novel is typically willing to engage for a much longer time with the novel. Therefore it is indeed possible in this format for the writer to unravel the various aspects of a characters persona. While Neelima is relatively successful in bringing out Falak's personality with all the dilemmas and contradictions, her other characters are somewhat one-dimensional. For instance we get to know the fact that the moneylender who was hanging by the lamp post was not actually evil, pretty early in the narrative. So why did he have a gruesome death? While we do get the answers towards the end, this answer looks naive. And therefore one wonders if Neelima - through her character - has actually achieved the effect that was indeed intended. The character of the moneylender [though dead] just does not evolve in the novel, even though attempts are made to bring out his personality through reminiscences of various people - the moneylender in the end turns out to be somewhat of a one-dimensional character.

The subtle message that runs throughout the novel is that if a moneylender who generally was doing good could meet with such a tragic death, worse could be awaiting the other exploitative ones. This also makes a good headline. But Neelima does not engage with the collaterals of such an underlying theme. None of her characters even engage in alternative fall outs that could happen from this episode. Thus the richness of the un-intended fall outs is totally ignored and the ending revolves around the binary of good and bad, truth and fiction. The complexity of life is not necessarily a problem with a Yes and No answer and thus this novel stops at being a good novel without growing into a great novel.

As I was reading Neelima's novel, I realised the importance of construction in a good narrative. Irrespective of the lack of narrative maturity and flamboyance, the novel is of great importance in this era of breaking news, in the era where the visual media delivers judgements much before the courts could even examine evidence. This brings out the basic tenets of journalistic work ethic - that a story is to be analysed, examined and presented in a manner that reflects the events as they are unravelled. The novel does attempt to go beyond the regular framework of journalism and bring to the fore more serious issues and therefore should have been in the news much more than it has been. However, I guess Neelima will draw much more critical acclaim if she is able to effectively overcome the obvious limitation of a journalist and grow into a natural novelist.

Understanding Gangs

2008-06-07T20:23:00.003+05:30

Gang Leader for a Day [A Rogue Sociologist Crosses the Line]
By Sudhir Venkatesh London: Allen Lane [and imprint of Penguin Books]
2008. pp. 302. Price: Not Specified

I bought this book in Sankar's in the Bangalore Airport, before the HAL Airport closed down. The book looked promising, and in a way it lives upto it. The book hovers between serious academic work and popular writing; it ends up raising more questions than providing answers. I am sure that was the intent of the author. The book certainly merits discussion and larger debate.

This book is all about Sudhir setting off to understand urban poverty as a graduate student in the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago. Clearly, his first entry into the homes is in a typical research scholar mode, a clipboard carrying a questionnaire, with the list of homes that are to be contacted from a list generated that could be methodologically accurate, but he quickly proves the futility of this sort of work. No, he does not ridicule the methodology, he does not take potshots at the survey methods, but the sub-text of the book indicates that a broadbrush survey method possibly straitjackets something that could be very complex, and thus, the solutions or policy interventions based on such methods might actually turn out to be counter-productive if the nuances of the issues at hand are not clearly understood. While he does start his book by discussing the division between the quantitative oriented researchers and “ethnographers”, his initial entry point to the ghetto is with a structured questionnaire.

While Sudhir’s first brush with data has a touching sub-text and helps us enter into the homes, I keep wondering if he actually carried the questionnaire he describes in the book or he is just dramatising the event to get the readers a flavour of the complexity of the study by taking a rather extreme simplistic position.

For instance when he enters the apartment building, the questionnaire he has starts with the question – “How does it feel to be black and poor?” [p.14] with a multiple choice answer “very bad, somewhat bad, neither bad nor good, somewhat good, very good”. If this was indeed the questionnaire that Sudhir took to interview people, the futility of such a questionnaire is quite obvious. It does not take a knife wielding gang member to say “Fuck you!... You got to be Fucking kidding me…..” though the choice of words amongst the academic community would be much more civilised, without much of a change in the underlying sentiment.

While his interaction with JT a couple of pages later helps in unpeeling the layers of the issues involved in understanding any community through the same questionnaire, I would shudder to think that a graduate student actually goes around with a questionnaire drafted thus with a five point Rensis Likert scale!

Possibly this is indeed a caricature of the survey method questionnaire. But yes, this certainly is a good entry point to the myriad world that Sudhir enters. See the exchange with JT [one of the main characters who helps Sudhir to gain entry into the gangs and helps him understand the insider’s perspective] [p.16]:

“How does it feel to be black and poor”?

“I’m not black” he answered looking around at the others knowingly.

“Well then, how does it feel to be African American and poor?” I tried to sound apologetic worried that I had offended him.

“I am not African American either. I’m a nigger.”

……..

“Niggers are the ones who live in this building” he said at last “African Americans live in the suburbs. African Americans wear ties to work. Niggers can’t find no work.”

This of course is the first encounter which teaches Sudhir that even when you do a survey, you need to understand how to frame questions and how to articulate them. Clearly this experience possibly was enough to put Sudhir out of the survey mode and move on. But what is remarkable about him is the experience he has that day, where he is threatened and almost killed, detained for the night, and advised that he can “understand them people not by asking silly-ass questions but by hanging out with them”. Any researcher would have scooted at this opportunity to get back to the warm confines of the University and changed the topic of research after a life threatening experience.

However, Sudhir goes back to JT the next day to tell him that he wants to hang out and understand them, thereby proving Stephen Dubner right. Dubner writes in his foreword “Sudhir Venkatesh was born with two abnormalities: an overdeveloped curiosity and an underdeveloped sense of fear”, both of which might be possibly true because one cannot imagine the situations that Sudhir has been in, and come out of.

Sudhir enters the Taylor homes in 1989 and the book recounts a series of incidents all the way up to 1996 when he finally decides to move on, with a Fullbright Scholarship, out of Chicago, thereby bringing his association with the residents to a natural closure. Ironically that is also the time that the Chicago Housing Authority decides to bring down the Robert Taylor homes, and thus the community with whom Sudhir had spent the seven years is also expected to move on, to a new area, and find a newer market and a newer community and work with new challenges.

While there is widespread poverty and squalor, it is not clear as to why the marginalised communities get into the type of work and life that they lead. If we are looking for answers for this question, the book rightfully does not provide any answers. In this case it is as if drug peddling and petty crime comes naturally for them. It is not that they do not have alternative vocations. Within the community you still find people who fix cars, people sell stuff, settle squabbles and deal with grocers and people who provide all sorts of ancillary services to the “gang”. While there is a fair amount of fiction that romanticises the way gangs operate, it appears from Sudhir’s book that such fictional accounts are not far from reality, except that they possibly are not as glamorised in real life as in fiction.

It is evident from the book that gangs like Black Kings operate very much like a hybrid of a corporation and the state. At one end there is a well defined hierarchy of people in the drug peddling business – starting the foot soldiers who sell the stuff all the way up to the people who supply it, including a fair description of Sudhir’s contact JT’s elevation in the hierarchy. JT seems to be somewhere in the middle of the hierarchy and since that is the level Sudhir has access to, the perspective we get is restricted largely to the level of JT in the hierarchy and we do not move upwards. The only occasion we get to see higher-ups is when Sudhir is provided access to a “gang party”, but that portion does not turn out to be very insightful.

However, we do get a fair perspective of the line below JT, which includes a myriad of people, some involved in the gang and some providing peripheral services. Not strangely it also includes a few policemen who are also entrenched and are from the “community”. To understand the “community” better, it is possibly also important to ask why so many people are a part of the system? Are they around out of choice? Would they want to move out? The answer for this is somewhat mixed. But this answer is quite important for external “community based organisations” making “interventions” in the lives of the people in such ghettos. If we get the tone of the book right, these interventions are seen by the community as a free lunch to be taken as and when available, while continuing to lead their own life on their own terms. For instance there are conversations where it is evident that some of the members of the “community” are not happy, but they say “I mean, you’re stuck. These niggers make your life hell, but they are family. And you can’t choose family…”[p.89]

Sudhir captures the dilemmas of people entrenched in a given state of affairs. There is this eternal dilemma between working to avoid starvation and getting through school. In a series of questions which instead of Sudhir, Ms.Bailey from the community asks, and makes Sudhir answer, there is an obvious conclusion. Sudhir’s rhetoric to Ms.Bailey about research that indicates “..if kids can get through high school, they have twentyfive percent greater likelihood of escaping poverty..” [p.149] to be futile.

For within the ghetto, the Taylor homes, there are poor, there are people eking out a living and making ends meet and there are also people who have risen up the hierarchy in that segment, owning Malibu cars, which are in turn washed by somebody else in the settlement, without any financial return because they are bartering their “protection” by providing this service – A surrogate for taxes to be paid for the well being of citizens.

The motto of the place is not “how” the problem is taken care of, it is more “whether” a problem has been taken care of, methodology be damned [p.164]. The exchange on whether the methodology is also important leads Sudhir to a roadblock, where out of exasperation he says that it is “an awful way to live”, for which the response is that “Now you are starting to understand…. May be you’re even starting to learn”. Well the learning is not only for the author Sudhir, but much of it is for the reader as well.

Sudhir writes with a great sense of detachment, possibly now that he is far away from action and in the safe confines of the University. He offers little by way of analysis, but just narrates a story, leaving the readers to draw their own conclusions. The style of the book is that of a dispassionate narrator of a series of events. The series of pictures provided by Sudhir, his episodic narration of his experience in the Robert Taylor homes is good enough for us the piece the story together.

The book is interesting for the fact that, very few research would have had this privileged access to write such an account from the gangs who live in “communities” [and do not like these being called projects] which house an interesting world of drug peddlers, petty criminals and law breakers who operate in a well oiled corporate structure, which has its own hierarchy, promotions, rivalry and market shares!

The book also raises several issues pertaining to the ethical behaviour of researchers and what one should do in various instances. The behaviour the researcher is put to test in several occasions, some knowingly and some very unwittingly. For instance when we academics go into the field as researchers, we are usually going with a position that there is a community out there to be studied. Little does Sudhir [or any other researcher] realise that when he starts his work that he himself could be carefully studied and used by the community. In this case, given the vulnerabilities that the gangs suffer from, Sudhir is constantly being watched not only by those who have provided him access to the settlements, but also by every person with whom he is interacting. Inadvertently Sudhir ends up taking sides on a couple of occasions [or is perceived to be taking sides, or being an “agent” of JT], and also falls into the trap of squealing on some of the underlings of JT to him, without actually realising that he was squealing. His own notes that he makes are being carefully examined by the people who are feeding him with the information. Therefore valid questions could be asked as to how objective a “participant” observation could be. Where does participation end and observation begin? And as far as the community is concerned, where does sharing of data end, and pretention begin.

While these issues are not clearly articulated by Sudhir, he does articulate several other dilemmas for which there are no straight answers. When studying the gangs what happens if he is questioned by the police? Is he obliged to reveal the information? What happens if he knows in advance that the gang is planning a killing? How does he acknowledge the time and energy that the people have provided him so that his research can progress? Should he pay them? Should he make a positive intervention? Should he use his knowledge and get State sponsored interventions and direct them towards the community that he has studied, or should he dispassionately look them as “subjects” or “cases” and move on in life? While some of these questions pertain to the legality of operations and whether he is breaking the law of the land, several other questions pertain straight to the ethical dilemmas in research, and the desirable relationship between the researcher and the researched.

While one wishes that the views of Sudhir was more explicit, so that one could engage with the author, the book does not suffer badly because the views are not there. The style is quite engaging and the questions are constantly popped up for us to think about. This is also a good way of bringing a serious piece of academic research into a popular fiction like format. Sudhir needs to be complimented for that.

Ela Bhatt and SEWA: A Personal Essay

2008-03-26T12:33:00.012+05:30

When you have spent a large part of your life in Gujarat it is difficult not to come across, meet and admire two very divergent personalities who have done so much for the state and the country. I have already written about Dr.Kurien who revolutionized the lives of the poor dairy farmers, and whose work largely affected the rural populace of the state. Ela Bhatt or Elaben as she is fondly called is an antithesis of Kurien. She is hardly seen, very soft spoken and looks frail. I have never seen her raise her decibel levels, never seen her thump tables and she looks like a woman who would not even harm a fly. But she is made of steely resolve and has been steadfastly working with the women of Gujarat for the entire part of her working lifetime. Oxford has recently published her memoirs “We Are Poor But So Many”. Like Kurien’s book “I Too Had A Dream” this book talks more about her professional life than her personal life and gives an insight into the life of an activist, who never appeared to be so. In a way the contrasting styles of their leadership is also evident in the way I connect to them. I have been a distant admirer of Kurien, and I guess he would never recognize me even though I spent years in an institution that he headed. With Elaben I have always had a personal rapport and she has always been extremely courteous and kind to me – to the extent of inscribing – quite underservedly - “Dear Shri Ram for your continued guidance, Regards, Love” when I asked for her autograph on the book. Of course, I do have a letter written by Kurien inviting me to a workshop with a signature as a memento for his autograph!!

Elaben started her life as a young lawyer working for a trade union – Textile Labour Association. Throughout her life, her husband Ramesh Bhatt, who was an academic in his own right provided her the support and guidance, and possibly acted as an alterego, as a friend with whom she could check out her ideas and as a pillar of support. This comes out very evident in the book which is dedicated to Rameshbhai. You can see the genuineness, the nervousness and the steely resolve of Elaben when she narrates her early experiences with TLA and the legal profession “My early days in the labor court was tense. The slightest comment about my clothes or my short height would upset me, and I would begin to stammer. There were hardly any women in court…” and as she proceeded, in several of the forums she would be the lone lady, possibly supported invisibly by thousands and lakhs of women but indeed it would have been a difficult fight.

This is something I can identify myself with from a totally different perspective. While I was working on my book on microfinance, I had the occasion to visit Sewa Bank several times and during one of the visits I kept talking to Jayashree Vyas, the Managing Director of the bank on the importance of the flow of information that should be available on a periodic basis, in an understandable manner. Jayashree thought it was a good idea for me to talk to her staff and there I was in a “board room” of Sewa Bank trying to address several women who could understand only Gujarati and could manage with Hindi. I was trying to infuse the concept of management to them. The most destabilizing part of this all was, that this was the first time I was addressing an all women audience, the board room was nothing but a series of mattresses, pillows and floor cushions laid out and I was supposed to speak at least in Hindi, if not in Gujarati. I came out and told Jayashree that I now fully empathise when some woman says that it is difficult to be in an all men gathering. I just could not pull myself up and the attempt to handle that session was indeed a disaster. [The only other time I felt destabilized while teaching was a class room of CBSE School Principals, predominantly women, very articulate, having ticked many a parent off in their long careers. These women gave me feedback not only about the session, but about my diction, body language and the use of examples!!]

To put Elaben’s work in perspective it is important to recognize the constraints under which SEWA operated and continues to operate. She says: “..we had trouble registering labour cooperatives. Our rag pickers’ cooperative was suspect because they did not manufacture any products; the midwives’ cooperative was asked why delivering babies should be considered an economic activity; the video producers’ cooperative was denied registration because the directors, the producers and the sound and camera technicians were illiterate…”[p.17]. Her art is in organizing women workers of diverse vocations, bringing them under a single banner, fighting for their rights and also providing common services to them, while they continued to work in their respective unorganized sector. A trade union where the woman was “self-employed” was possibly an oxymoron, but the need for them to get together was recognized early and working in this uncharted territory was what set Ela Bhatt apart from all her contemporaries.

Elaben has been a recipient of many awards and honours, the Magasasay Award for community service, the Padmashri and Padmabhushan award, a stint as a member of the Rajya Sabha, a doctorate from Harvard and Yale, and surprisingly the businesswoman of the year award from Economic Times and Business Standard. However, every time there has been an award, Elaben has never gone to the venue alone. She always has had one or two or more women from the community that she has been working with tagging along. This is the usual strategy that the SEWA family adopts. Infact not only have the women attended such functions, many a time they have even walked the ramp. Their embroiders from Kutch and Banaskantha have worked closely with designers from National Institute of Fashion Technology and some of them had no hesitation in walking the ramp with their ethnic clothes. What better way to bridge the gap while making a style statement!!

On the board of Sewa Trade Facilitation Centre which markets the ethnic embroidery based work of women, are a crowd of a Professor, a couple of people from SEWA family of executives, but more importantly a few women, who possibly cannot read the board papers, but ask probing and basic questions. Is this a way of empowering women, or is this the way to educate the executives about ground reality? I have never been sure, but I guess it works both ways.

It is this liberation which the SEWA family provides, shows that life out there is no different than elsewhere and bridges the gaps seamlessly. The only other experiment where I see women liberated is the Velugu programme of AP Government, headed by a committed civil servant Vijayakumar. In village after village, the women who are a part of the Velugu Self-Help groups greet you with a hand shake. This hand shake is symbolic, but a stroke of genius. By one hand shake, you have first removed untouchability, made the poor women reach out to men and bridge the “us and them” “rural and urban” gap easily. In contrast, for instance, I have never seen Kurien even acknowledge the support he has got from the community and his team. [This should not be misread as belittling Kurien’s contribution, but more as a contrast in styles].

The offices of SEWA are simple, somewhat like Elaben, her white Khadi saree and the private autorickshaw in which she used to move around in Ahmedabad. I am not sure if this was symbolic, or just the way Elaben is made. She has never made a virtue of austerity. Infact even as Elaben was moving about in the autorickshaw several of her executives would move around in Jeeps, possibly all these dictated by necessity rather than as a style statement. It is likely that Jayashree, Merai or Reema would have much more of field travel to do, at more frequent intervals than possibly Elaben. However, it was striking to see her come in a grey coloured autorickshaw to attend the board meeting of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad [IIMA], where she has been a soft spoken but firm member reminding the board and others of the fact that it was not just a “Business School” but a “Management Institute” – a distinction made by the founding fathers of the Institute starting with Vikram Sarabhai and Ravi Matthai. The Institute possibly benefitted from a constant reminder from Elaben to not lose focus on the social sectors which needed management support as much as the business houses. It is hard not to bring Kurien into the discussion while the issue of board membership of IIMA is being discussed. Kurien was on the board of IIMA and like Elaben kept reminding the Institute about its need to be committed to the rural and undermanaged sectors. However, when he found that the graduates of IIM were not joining the sectors that needed them most, he did what Kurien would do best – went ahead and set up a Institute of Rural Management. This possibly was the felt need of the co-operatives, but never articulated. Kurien was able to think and respond to unarticulated needs. This would possibly never happen with Elaben. Even if she got the idea, she would possibly throw it around and wait for the community to really feel that this need was indeed there and they were willing to put their resources into it. In that sense, we need both styles of management to bridge the gaps that are ever widening between the haves and the have nots.

Very much the way SEWA’s offices are Spartan, its staff were also largely drawn from the community. The language of communication was always Gujarati. I remember once that one of the newly appointed marketing experts of the Trade Facilitation Centre, a well qualified urban educated girl with good insights was making a presentation to the board on the plans for the ensuing year. She was very gently reminded by Reema the Chair of the organization that she needs to speak in Gujarati so that the board members like Puriben and Mahtabben from Banaskantha and Kutch had to understand. When the girl told that it was difficult to speak in Gujarati, and even Hindi was rusty, she was clearly told that the next presentation had to be in Gujarati. It possibly was a message to the other independent members of the board as well, but it was not lost on the girl. She did indeed make the next presentation in Gujarati. In case of the other pompous board members, whatever they say is parallely translated into Gujarati, never leaving even the women out of the process. They needed to know what we were doing with their lives. All these were values imbibed into the SEWA family by Elaben. Every person was important, and every decision was to be taken by taking the community into confidence. For instance why has SEWA been restricted as a Women’s organization? One has never seen Elaben in the gender brigade shouting for the rights of women. Rather she is seen working for the cause of the poor first, and within the poor, the women. She says “Initially, I was open to the idea of men joining our union struggles, because I felt that they would lend more strength to SEWA’ however, the women emphatically refused. They said they would feel inhibited with men around, and they believed men would dominate and create tensions.” So the consultative process that Elaben has adopted has helped her to build stronger all women trade union movement.

Unlike Kurien’s institutions which are marked by great buildings, fine ambiance and slick management, the institutions set up by SEWA look like neighbourhood buildings, provide the beneficiaries the confidence to move in and transact. For instance, on building a great sixty acre campus with individual rooms for the students with manicured lawns all for rural management education Kurien once retorted “Kings do not grow up in pigstys and you – the students of Rural Management – are my Princes”. On the other hand SEWA bought up office space for its bank SEWA Bank in a posh Sakar building on Ellisbridge in Ahmedabad. The bank’s offices are rubbing shoulders with upmarket Bank National des Paribas and Kotak Mahindra Bank. The story goes that the others business houses occupying the building complained to the builder that the “dirty and noisy” women customers of SEWA Bank spoil the ambience of the building. SEWA Bank had no qualms in opening up a side entrance to their women and insulate their own premises from the rest – thereby making their own women more comfortable.

A typical day in SEWA starts with a multi religious prayer and then it shows that the women are extremely comfortable socializing, shouting and exchanging notes while transacting their business. It is afterall how they are when they are at their trade, be it selling vegetables, picking rags or stiching clothes. Naturally this work ambience had people from the community working, at salaries that the community could afford to pay.

For a long time, it appeared that SEWA had an allergy to hire professionals [as it is understood in the modern day]. There were hardly any MBAs or the English speaking, powerpoint savvy youngsters in ties and jackets. The culture was that of trust, community involvement and lifetime engagement. If one looks at the second generation chief executives of all the organizations that Elaben has been instrumental in establishing, they have all been with her for a long time. Each one is a great manager herself, but have all been a part of the team – Reema who gave up her civil service to join SEWA family, Renana Jhabvala of Sewa Bharat who apart from her own merit, by just being in the family she belonged to could have chosen any alternative career, Merai who can have a meal with Bill Clinton at the same ease as spending a lifetime working on health related issues, Jayashree a Chartered Accountant who decided to shed the image of an Accountant to become a community banker, Vijayalakshmi who heads the Friends of Women’s World Banking, reveling in the fact that she was able to get ten urchin like kids from the slums to eat in the upmarket Green Park Hotel in Hyderabad as a part of a review meeting, and Jyoti who herself started as a Beedi worker and eventually became a English speaking general secretary of SEWA. The list goes on.

Nobody noticed that when Kurien was having his battles with Amrita Patel - the person he had groomed to take over, Elaben had quietly slipped out of the operational management of the SEWA group of institutions. There was never a succession problem in SEWA, never did people realize that Elaben was not there and never did people feel her absence. However, when you look at the SEWA family today, Elaben is hardly there except as a motherly figure giving guidance when sought and lending a shoulder in the unlikely event of somebody wanting to cry on it. She is there when she is wanted, but the transition has been more professional than any other organization that could be run by the “certified” professionals. So indeed their allergy for the “professionals” has not affected their functioning in any manner.

While Elaben has never been at the centre of any controversy, it is not that she had not had her unpleasant moments with the powers that be. In the post earthquake disaster mitigation programme, SEWA had a big run-in with the government. A reason attributed to the difference with the government was that SEWA was supporting a large number of women who belonged to the minority community. It similarly had an issue in 1981 when there were riots protesting reservations. Then, Elaben writes: “Communal harmony was a union issue and a feminist issue. It was fundamental to our existence” [p.15]. This stand took the women away from the Textile Labour Association – forcing them to chart out their own path. As usual Elaben’s friend and counsel Rameshbhai suggests that she look at it as an opportunity rather than as a set back. Writes Elaben “At the time of the break from TLA, SEWA had 4,900 members a small co-operative bank, an office building, a rural centre, one vehicle, and a few typewriters. But we also had a ten year history of organizing” [p15-16].

The growth of SEWA and its activities have been in response to the needs of the members. Today SEWA Bank is recognized as one of the pioneering institutions of microfinance in urban India. What we need to realize is that this institution was set up by the community, far before the word microfinance was coined, and at least three years before Yunus went to Jorba to discover the Grameen model. Elaben writes on how the bank came about being: “At a SEWA members’ meeting at Naranghat in December 1973, Chandaben, a used garment dealer from Poori Bazar, asked me, “Ben, why can’t we have our own bank?” “Because we have no money,” I replied patiently. “You need a large amount of capital to start a bank!” “Well we may be poor, but we are so many,” Chandaben replied..” and so they went ahead and started a bank.

It has never been difficult to get through to Elaben. I do not know who her secretary is and when wanted her appointment, she herself would immediately respond on phone as to whether she was available at a particular day and time or not. I had invited Elaben for a dinner meeting with our students as a part of one of the courses. During the interaction, one student asked in typical management style: “Madam, what were the goals you set out for yourself, how much have you achieved and what do you consider your failures”. Elaben looked back and said “I never had goals. I do not think there are achievements against objectives. That is not how I looked at work. I just see this as a process. This is the process of living, and there are always interesting pieces of work to do. Therefore there is neither a sense of fulfillment not desperation. We just keep working to make lives better.” There have been several occasions Elaben has invited me for a lunch or dinner at her place. I have never gathered the courage to accept the invitation, hopefully I will do it soon. It has been an honour to have known Elaben, interacted with her in person and seen and heard the unseen and unheard.

From Credit to Finance: The Maturing of Grameen Bank

2007-06-05T05:35:00.000+05:30

This post was written for Economic and Political Weekly. It was published in the issue dated May 26-June 1st 2007. I have also cross posted it in Kannada on my blog which can be found here.

The Poor Always Pay Back: The Grameen II Story
Asif Dowla and Dipal Barua
Kumarian Press, Connecticut, 2006
pp.296. Price not specified.

There is substantial interest across the world about Grameen[2]. With the Nobel for Grameen and its founder Muhammad Yunus there is an enhanced interest in its operations. It has now become an icon in the targeting financial services to the poor, drawing attention of development practitioners and venture capitalists alike. While much has been written about Grameen by scholars, the new book on Grameen is a narrative from within. The authors - Dipal Barua is the Deputy Managing Director of Grameen and Asif Dowla a former student of Yunus and an integral part of the initial Grameen team. Therefore expectations from the book are not about a balanced critical view, but more as a narrative of the changes that have happened in the past few years.

This book is to be seen in conjunction with two other narratives from within - The autobiography of Yunus “Banker to the Poor” and a set of case studies “Jorimon and Others”. Both narrate the early days of Grameen. While “Banker to the Poor” talks about the convictions and experimentations of Yunus in in the evolution of Grameen, “Jorimon and Others” indicates the problems that Grameen would eventually face. Unfortunately, when a program is successful, the proponents fail to read the sub-text of their own writings and will have to be woken up with a jolt from a slumber. The jolt admittedly came “After the devastating flood of 1998, when two-thirds of the country was under water for eleven weeks, the bank was facing repayment problems in certain areas. Although 80% of the borrowers were repaying on time, 20% became irregular in their repayment”[p.xiii]. While Grameen responded to this jolt, the contours of change were not widely known.

Another jolt came from an article in the Wall Street Journal by Daniel Pearl in November 2001, which shook up the Grameen. The article appeared from a place where Grameen had gained its legitimacy – the western world. It was a jolt because Grameen was on a high at that point after the Global Microcredit Summit in 1997. The summit put microcredit and Grameen on a Global map, with the likes of Hillary Clinton and the Queen of Spain lending their name and presence to endorse the microcredit movement. Pearl’s article highlighted what the book now acknowledges - that there were significant bad loans and they were being rescheduled. However, the book surprisingly does not even make a passing reference to this article which triggered a hot debate on most of the development listserves and also called for the entire correspondence between Pearl and Yunus to be put on the Grameen website.

In “Banker to the Poor” Yunus talked about how they perfected the Grameen methodology. Starting from the initial experiments in the credit market by extending loans Jobra village it was a long learning curve that Yunus and his friends went through. It is evident from the book that there were significant design flaws initially, and there was indeed uncertainty about the most effective procedure for loan recovery. Eventually the essence of Grameen was distilled in two simple and essential elements of banking – the frequency of contact and discipline. Frequency of contact gave early warning signals about the state of borrowers and discipline took care of any possible default. Given that the formal credit system was in a mess in Bangladesh, it was quite natural that the antidote provided by Grameen was extreme. They went overboard on both these elements – contact established through weekly repayment meetings, and discipline established through a zero level tolerance even for a possible genuine default.

That is why we find angst in the borrowers’ voices even when it is recorded by insiders of Grameen. The angst is about starting income generating micro-enterprises to service and repay the loan. It is about the fear that one may not be able to live up to the exacting standards of discipline of Grameen. The stories of Sakhina or Fuljan in Jorimon and others clearly echo the fear of inability to repayment and thus wanting to be away from the clutches of Grameen. While the Indian self-help groups leverage intra-community trust as a surrogate for documentation and physical collateral - reducing transaction costs and increasing compliance - the Grameen system possibly used social collateral in a coercive manner[3]. Thus, symbolism of the Grameen had aspects that reinforced discipline, censure of people who deviated and in the recitation of pledges. Grameen turned out to be a credit treadmill that made it difficult for people to get off because you could never be a member of a group unless you were a borrower.

This system worked as long as the failures of the underlying micro-enterprises were isolated because the group as a whole was able to absorb the losses and move ahead. There was a critical mass of people who kept this treadmill going. However, the flood of 1998 changed the rules of the game significantly because a large part of the borrowing population suffered a collateral damage. The group mechanism was bound to crack and affected the credit treadmill significantly.

Grameen II was a response to the issues that the original design would have faced at some point in time. Grameen reacted to a situation while it could have pro-actively looked at its model, when there were widespread criticisms about it operations from the outside world. But when they did respond they did so very creatively. This was only after the flood hit the books of Grameen. Grameen II as a model turns the original assumptions on its head and moves ahead towards a proper banking system.

While Grameen may like to claim that its borrowers have become sophisticated over time, their needs have grown, their absorptive capacity is better, all these calling for a change in the methodology, there is more to it than just the borrowers becoming better. Under Grameen most of the risk costs were transferred to the borrowing groups by having in-built mechanisms like compulsory savings and group tax. This took care of minor defaults and unforeseen blips in the borrowers’ cash flows that put the repayment of an installment to risk. It allowed Grameen to keep its books clean and show little default – though there could have been a larger default not captured due to the cushioning mechanism provided by the system. The Grameen loan products were all similar – having a pre-specified interest rate irrespective of the purpose, an equated weekly installment and a fixed interest rate, thus taking the fungibility argument to the extreme. This helped Grameen to keep its systems simple, administer its programme efficiently and replicate it widely.

Grameen II is actually the story of the organisation itself maturing and moving ahead. It might be the result of some issues that they had to grapple with – the borrowers - including the likes of Jorimon - becoming sophisticated over time. In such a situation the following questions are relevant:

· What does Grameen do with borrowers, who can no longer be classified as poor? Do they let them out of the system or grow with the customer and offer diversified and sophisticated financial services? Data indicates that 58.4% of Grameen borrowers have moved out of poverty on the basis of their ten indicators [p.43]. Thus a majority of the borrowers are not “poor”.

· What do they do when borrowers think that meeting once a week and undertaking the pledge is too transaction intensive and they no longer have the time-slack to attend such meetings?

· What do they do with increasing need for resources to cater to larger customer base – the traditional sources of donor money not designed to keep pace with a commercial level growth?

Obviously Grameen had to attend to this issue on a priority basis. It was also clear that Grameen was becoming a significant player in the overall market and it had to adapt itself to the rules of the markets. If it did not, then it would be at the cost of always having entry level customers while those graduating from the Grameen would move on to the formal commercial institutions. Indeed this is an aspect captured brilliantly by Maheshwari[4] in her study on older self-help groups in Ajmer. She finds that members who have been entrepreneurially successful find that the group is unable to meet their requirements and form something called ‘companies’ – self-liquidating groups that rotate savings and credit for an annual cycle with much larger amounts of payments than what an average SHG would do.

If Grameen adapts itself to the rules of the market, the only caveat then would be to ensure that it does not suffer from a mission drift and remains knitted to its original objective of servicing the fringes left out by the formal system. Grameen II is a brave attempt at trying to reorient and redesign towards the markets – by being almost like a mainstream bank, while continuing to focus on the poor. The book argues that while the key features of Grameen II are different in terms of design and delivery of products, the essence of Grameen is retained by its organizational structure where the borrowers continue to be share holders and also have significant presence in the governance system of the bank.

In Grameen II we can see that the system of checks and balances are more sophisticated. The group concept has been abandoned. There is more of self-insurance through a compulsory savings account instead of group collateral. Unlike the group tax in the old model, where a good borrower possibly ended up compensating for the default of a bad borrower, in Grameen II the borrowers save for themselves. There is scope for withdrawal of personal savings accumulated, provided the borrower is not having a “bridge” or a “flexible” loan – a euphemism for default. There are checks and balances within the system that deals with each customer as an independent entity with their own transaction history. However, the importance of Grameen II is that continues to looks at the customer as an integrated unit rather than classify them as borrowers and depositors. This linkage on the lending side honours discipline in a sophisticated manner. The frequency of contact is still maintained through group meetings. However interesting aspect is the change is the seating pattern in the meetings. Earlier the seating pattern used to be like a file formation. Now it is in the shape of a horse-shoe more in the nature of how board rooms are designed in large corporates. This indeed is a powerful symbol that indicates how things have emerged over a period of time and gives a commentary about the transition. There are other initiatives that address the loan risks – including a loan insurance that takes care of losses due to deaths. We see that as Grameen gets more sophisticated even their risks are being integrated with the larger demographics rather than being absorbed at the local level. These risk mitigation products are also offered for subscription on a voluntary basis rather than pushing it as a compulsory precondition.

Grameen II also represents the maturing of Grameen from a micro-credit organisation to a microfinance organisation. Not only has Grameen introduced savings as a measure of loan risk mitigation, it has also taken care of capital build up of its borrowers. Thus one sees that there are newer products that aim at long term capital build up including a pension scheme. The customers also have an opportunity to buy mutual fund units and thus participate in the capital markets.

The other paradigm shift in Grameen II is that they have also started accessing non-borrower deposits. This is the ultimate acknowledgement that the institution has indeed become a bank. This means Grameen would have to come in for a greater regulatory environment as public savings would be involved. However, this aspect actually almost completes the picture of an institution that would be providing well rounded financial services, with a focus on the poor and not just a micro-credit treadmill.

This indicates that Grameen is on a steep learning curve on its second phase. With the Nobel in their kitty they have to remember that they would be watched even more closely – both by skeptics and admirers alike.

The story of Grameen II on how the transition was actually implemented is documented in detail in the book. Given the new global interest in microfinance this book would certainly be an important resource book not only curious academics interested in design of organizations and sub-systems, but also for the practitioners of microfinance to introspect and reflect on the second phase of the growth of microfinance movement in a “mature” market like Bangladesh. Possibly it is time for Grameen to rightfully use its name “Grameen Bank”.

[2] The term Grameen in used in literature to mean both the organization – Grameen Bank as well as the methodology adopted by them. In this essay we use the term Grameen interchangeably to refer to the institution, the methodology and the philosophy, while we use the term Grameen II to represent the current model used by Grameen Bank.

[3] Sriram M S [2005]: “Information Asymmetry and Trust: A Framework for Studying Microfinance in India” Vikalpa 30(4). pp.77-85.

[4] [4] Maheshwari, Neelam (2004): Access to Credit: Determinants for an SHG Member. New Delhi: PRADAN (mimeo).

Umberto Eco-Logic

2007-05-19T11:20:00.000+05:30

One of the most fascinating writers I have read in recent times is Umberto Eco. He stands really apart - be it in his newspaper writings which are often humourous and offer a here-and-now opinion or in his serious writings on linguistics and semiotics. I have not got to read too much on the linguistic side, but did read a fascinating piece on deconstruction years ago. As a novelist again he brings in many dimensions that a normal novelist would not bring in. Weaving a story around real life happenings and historical research, making it interesting and at the same time not making it sensational is an art in itself. Therefore, when one reads "The Name of the Rose" [and its companion on how he wrote the novel], one can clearly see how different it is from something like Da Vinci Code which also pretends to draw a lot from history. Clearly the difference is evident when we read these books together. It is also possible to just keep browsing parts of Eco's novels. The passages themselves sometimes make profound sense.

His recent book "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana" is something that I took a long time to read. It has travelled with me over the past few months and it was always fascinating to re-read several of the parts of the book that I had already read. Imagine a story that starts with the protoganist suffering a peculiar memory loss. He remembers books, historical incidents but has forgotten who he is. He has to re-build his memory using old books, records, comics and albums and almost trying to re-live his childhood. Imagine if this period was a world war period. Imagine re-living history in the present.. the sense of time between a retrospect and present is so well woven that it suddenly lends itself to a totally new look at history. The concept of this book itself is so fascinating that it is actually signature Eco. I do not think anybody could have thought of such a fascinating idea, and even if one had thought about it, pulled it off with such scholarly elan, and a rare sense of humour. The book starts off by Yambo trying to discover himself. He is a dealer of antiquarian books and is said to be a tireless reader. Look at this exchange between Yambo and his wife:

"....Did I read much?"
"You are a tireless reader. With an iron memory. You know stacks of poems by heart" [Reminds me of my friend Diwakar]
"Did I write?"
"Nothing of your own. I'm a sterile genius, you used to say; in this world you either read or write, and writers write out of contempt for their colleagues, out of a desire to have something good to read once in a while."

The detail with which Eco allows Yambo to re-build his life is amazing. Everybody seems to know what his tastes are, what he likes when he goes to his usual restaurant, but he himself is unsure. Therefore he says

"If stracciatella was my favourite, I can see why: it is excellent. Discovering stracciatella at sixty is quite pleasant. What was the joke Gianni told me about Alzheimer's? The great thing about it is that you're always getting to meet new people."

Imagine the tribulations one has to go through after losing memory. When he meets his old time assistant Yambo wonders what sort of a relation he had with her. Did he have an affair? How is he expected to treat her. She has been trained all about the art of dealing in antiquarian books, now would he have to learn it all afresh from her? Whose judgement would you trust if you find a rare book in valuing it? Here is an expert who is a novice or we certainly do not know if he remembers this part of his knowledge or not. For instance, Yambo’s assistant introduces a Shakespeare’s first folio in the catalogue for a ridiculously low price, just to see if he could figure it out [p.261]. Is that to test him, or to test the limits? The details that come out in the process are really fascinating.

Yambo, in order to re-discover or re-construct his personal history moves to Solara where he has an ancestral home. There are a collection of books, magazines, comics that he can resort to – some that relate to the times of his own life and some really antique. For Yambo, nothing is contemporary or immediate or experienced, all these are either a part of the memory or are and exercise in refreshing the memory. I guess there is much more to this book than just being a novel. In order to understand all the dimensions provided by this novel, it possibly helps if one is familiar with the context that Eco brings in, familiar with some of the landmark events and it would immensely help if one were an antiquarian book dealer. I am sure Mr.KKS Murthy of Select Book Shop will find common cause with Eco. Even without that contextual knowledge the book could make a fascinating reading and that is what I am revelling in much after finishing the book.

He spends more than a week on an attic in his old house in Salora, reading several books of childhood. Eco weaves these books, their publishing history, the meanings that they would have lent at that time and interprets them as he is rebuilding his character’s personal history and making it more contemporary. Obviously being an antiquarian book dealer, the dates, the edition numbers and the physical quality of the book itself is very important. In the process Eco also gives out several pictures of books and pamphlets of those times, probably from his own personal collection, to give the reader also a feel for the “look” of the material drawn from history.

At one end he is trying to rebuild his memory with external sources – a fascinating paragraph deals with looking at atlases over time and map out how geography itself is changing [p.112]

“I leafed through the atlases: some were quite old, from before the First World War, when Germany still had African colonies, marked in bulish grey. I must have looked through a lot of atlases in my life – had I not just sold an Ortelius? But some of these exotic names had a familiar ring, as if I needed to start from these maps in order to recover others. What was it that linked my childhood to German West Africa, to the Dutch West Indies, and above all to Zanzibar? In any case, it was undeniable that there in Solara every word gave rise to another. Would I be able to climb back up the chain to the final word? What would it be? “I”?

At the other end [quite literally so] Yambo tries to rebuild his past through immensely personal experiences –

“.. I was seeing my own shit for the first time. I was now calling it shit, which I think is what people call it. Shit is the most personal and private thing we have. Anyone can get to know the rest – your facial expression, your gaze, your gestures. Even your naked body; at the beach, at the doctor’s, making love. Even your thoughts, since usually you express them, or else others guess them from the way you look at them or appear embarrassed…. Shit however is not… And since my shit at that moment must not have been all that different from what I had produced over the course of my past life, I was in that instant reuniting with my old, forgotten self, undergoing the first experience capable of merging with countless previous experiences, even those from when I did my business in the vineyards as a boy. [p.86]”

Then there are these fascinating moments in the book – what happens when you are trying to rebuild your memory through books and move away from the Homers and Flauberts and move to Stevenson. Afterall, Yambo is trying to build his childhood memories. Do they really need to be rebuilt? When he narrates some stories to the children, his wife Paola gets somewhat worried:

“If you are doing that to entertain the kids, that’s one thing, but if not, then your’re identifying too much with what you’re reading, which is to say you’re borrowing other people’s memory.[p.163]”

This of course is a matter of concern!!

There is a method in Yambo’s madness. He is trying to reconstruct his childhood in a fairly organized manner. So we get a chronological sequence of events from his past, being interpreted by him in the current. Not only do we get the chronological events of the past, but we also get an analysis of the events of the past, with a current re-interpretation. He says

“I decided to proceed using the historian’s method, subjecting evidence to cross comparison. That is to say, when I was reading my books and notebooks from the fourth grade, 1940-41, I would also browse through the newspapers from the same years and, whenever I could, put songs from those years on the record player.[p.179]”

So it is not surprising to come across material that is pro-Fascist. With the hindsight of history, suddenly Yambo reads between the lines to make more meaning from the archival texts. In a sense through Yambo, Eco is indulging himself in re-reading the history and giving a valid reason to do so and a more valid reason to take his readers along.

When you try to relive the history microscopically, you then notice not only what is happening on the war front, but more subtly on the cultural front. For instance Kundera talks about how street dogs were systematically killed following the Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia in his Book of Laughter and Forgetting. He says that this might not be a significant event from the point of view of history, possibly not even important from the point of political science, but certainly an important anthropological event. The organized culling of dogs was to put the fear in the minds of the citizens and it was indeed a well thought programme.

We finid a similar incident when Yambo is browsing through the comics of that age. He says that starting December 1941 a transition started happening in the comic strips that appeared in the newspapers.

“Since it would clearly have been difficult simply to dispatch a platoon of SS or Blackshirts to occupy New York, we had, for several years already, been waging war in comic books, from which the speech balloons had disappeared, replaced by captions beneath each picture. Then – as I must have seen happen in various comics – the American characters simply began to vanish, replaced by Italian imitations, and in the end – and this, I think, was the last, most painful barrier to fall – the famous mouse was killed. The same adventures continued as if nothing had happened, but from one week to the next, without any notice, the protagonist ceased to be Topolion and became a certain Toffolion, who was a human, not a mouse, although he still had four fingers, like all Disney’s anthropomorphic animals, and his friends, though also humanized, continued to go by their original names.[p.234]”

From comics Eco then moves back to geography – it starts with atlases, but he then examines his philatelic collection to understand history better. Obviously he moves much beyond text and is deeply looking at all other symbolic elements in reconstructing the history of that period. His own memory be damned, we sometimes feel thankful to Yambo for having lost his memory so that all these boxes can be opened up afresh once again.

As you are getting more and more amazed as how history is being re-interpreted, you are in for some dark humour. What if this is not happening in Yambo’s life at all? Suddenly there is a doubt [p.307] that this might actually be happening after his death! Look at this passage:

“Then I must be dead and the afterlife is this calm, dull zone in which I will relive my past life eternally, and tough luck if it was terrible (that will be hell), otherwise it will be paradise. Oh, come on! Say you were born hunchbacked, blind, and deaf-mute, or that the ones you loved died like flies around you, parents, wife…. Does that mean that your afterlife will be nothing but the repetition, varied but continuous of all you suffered in your earthly life?”[p.308]

But as the book ends there are more and more questions that Eco poses before us. As I mentioned the dark humour above, there is a basic doubt as to whether Yambo was indeed ill, he indeed lost his memory or was this all a myth. For instance [in page 423] when Yambo is in high school he hears a powerful voice

“What you shall see, feel free to write it in your book, because no one will read it, because you are only dreaming that you are writing it!”

– So what is Yambo trying to recollect?

“But who can say that everything I remembered in the course of this sleep really happened? Maybe my mother and my father had different faces, maybe Dr.Osimo never existed, not Angelo Bear, and I never lived through the night in the Gorge. Worse, I dreamed even that I woke up in a hospital, that I lost my memory, that I had a wife named Paola, two daughters, and three grandkids. I never lost my memory, and some other man – God knows who – who by some accident finds himself in this state [coma or limbo], and all these figures have been optical illusions…..”

Facts or dreams? Does this all sound like a Ramanujam poem?

The book opens up immense possibilities of narration – the ways of telling a story. For a person who would be interested in the craft of story telling this could be a treasure house of possibilities. It weaves history, geography, experience, memory, hallucination, dreams all into the text opening up various possibilities for interpretation. At the same time, what struck me about this entire narration was about the futility of the form “Autobiography”. Possibly all autobiographies are some dreams of the past; imagined experiences; and an amalgam of truth and imagination. This possibility sometimes opens up the immense potential of the written word, and sometimes highlights the futility of it all. I keep going back to the book for the brilliant passages here and there, and clearly Eco has unseated Kundera as my favourite writer!! As a footnote I should also add, this is possibly one of the rare novels that has a full fledged list of references – the only link to reality of the printed word!

As I end some quotes from the book which I enjoyed:

“Try to picture it: some guy appears to Moses, or actually he doesn’t even really appear, a voice comes from who knows where, and then Moses goes and tells his people that they have to obey the commandments because they come from God. But who says they come from God? That voice: ‘I am the Lord thy God.’ And what if he wasn’t? Imagine if I stop you on the street and say I’m a plain clothes carabiniere and you have to pay me a ten-lira fine because no one’s allowed on the street.[p343]

“No actually I do believe it was God. I’m just saying he used a trick. He’s always done that: you have to believe in the Bible because it’s inspired by God, but who tells you the Bible’s inspired by God. The Bible. See the problem?[p343]

“It’s simple, it just never occurred to anyone before: God is evil. Why do priests say God is good? Because he created us. But that’s precisely why he’s evil. God doesn’t have evil the way we have a headache. God is evil. Maybe, seeing as he’s eternal, he wasn’t evil billions of years ago. Maybe he became that way, like kids who et bored in the summer and start tearing the wings off flies, to pass the time. Notice how if you think that God is evil, the whole question of Evil becomes crystal clear.”[p.351]

Elephant Shit and Tiger Pugs: A Trip to K.Gudi

2007-05-06T21:20:00.000+05:30

After our trip to Kabini last year, we decided that it would be a good idea to explore more jungles and more of Jungle Lodges and Resorts. Our experience with JLR in Kabini was extremely good and therefore the expectations built around this trip were high. We knew the usual routine and this place was highly recommended by the ever enthusiastic Mrs.Ramu at the JLR office in Shringar Shopping Complex in Bangalore. So we were back at the JLR office trying to find a date when the accommodation was available.

As usual Mrs. Ramu was very friendly. Since we had used the JLR facility once we were supposed to be loyal customers and were eligible for a 10% off on the sticker price for the trip. We had to indicate the dates in which we traveled last time. Unfortunately for us we did not remember the dates, but Gowri was clear that we had booked the last holiday on the day Rajkumar passed away. This was good enough to trace our booking history from their database to claim the discount. We just took the available dates on which accommodation was available.

Like last time, having booked JLR our next task was to find out if there was anything else that we could add on during this holiday. We had two alternative routes to the K.Gudi camp. One was to take a road via Kanakapura Malavalli BR Hills and reach K.Gudi. This was supposed to be a shorter route and on the National Highway. However we were advised against it as the road was said to be in a bad condition. If we had taken that route, enroute we could have possibly stopped by in Shivanasamudra – again the guide books told us that there would be no water April-May was hardly a season to travel in this area. The next dilemma was to see whether we would hire a car or whether I should venture out to drive myself. Last time, this was not an issue at all – neither did I have a car, nor a licence. However this time there was a relatively new car, and equally new licence and some enthusiasm. The driver I had hired had recently disappeared after working for two months. Gowri and Arjun’s confidence in my pulling out a long journey was not too high, but somehow I was keen. In this dilemma we called up Vishal of Skyway – the agency which had provided us a car for the last holiday. The idea was that we would hire a car if it made sense – that there would be more to this holiday than K.Gudi. Vishal told us that it would be difficult to port on any other site from K.Gudi.. at best it had to be Mysore. So the decision was almost made – it would be a stand alone trip and in my mind I was clear – I would drive. So it was Vishal’s loss and my gain!! So I started the confidence building measures of driving – made a trip to Hosur Road to look up a friend who had come to attend to his mother admitted in Narayana Hrudayala, and from there all the way to hosur, drove the narrow roads of Mahalaxmi Layout and Vidyapeetha and I was all set, brimming with confidence for the long haul. We decided to take it easy as far as driving was concerned – no night driving and no speeding. Overall we would take it cool and not rush through anything.

We started on the Friday morning at around 6.00. Stopped by in Mandya for a cup of coffee, and visited relatives in Mysore and had breakfast. We had a small mishap on the way – I hit one of the pack of dogs that were crossing the road. None of the dogs appeared injured but my fog lamp broke. In Mysore I was able to show Hardwicke High School where I studied 9^th and 10^th classes to Gowri and Arjun. While Gowri feels that Mysore has changed a lot, I do not find that the pace of change in Mysore is as bad as in Bangalore. I could also see the house that we stayed in – in Vidyaranyapuram in tact and as it was. It is a fairly laid back city with a lot of old buildings and greenery all around. We had a sumptuous breakfast and moved on via Chamarajanagar to KGudi. The road throughout was okay, except for a stretch between Nanjangud and Chamarajanagar where it turns bumpy for 4-5 kilometers. Of course the road is narrow and one has to be careful while driving. From Chamarajanagar it is decent but started deteriorating as we entered the Jungle. After making an entry at the foot of the hill we moved up the winding route to K Gudi. Apparently no traffic is allowed on that route after 6 pm as it is dense forest area. .

Arjun was getting a bit tense as we were getting past the check in time of 12.00. Not a big deal actually since the only activity after checking in is lunch. The safari comes in much later. As we had been to Kabini, we knew the general routine. I was asked to park the car near the office and we had to take a long trek towards our log cabin. Unlike Kabini where they have three types of accommodation – the dormitory in the main building, cottages and tents, in K.Gudi they have only two types – tented accommodation and log cabins. We had chosen a log cabin – which was further away. There are three log cabins and many tented accommodation. Our cabin was named Chamundi. The tented huts are all named after birds found in that area. The accommodation was decent – a stairway leading to a room with an attached bath and a small sit-out. We were warned to be careful about not leaving food items around and there were several monkeys that may be interested in having a look at the eatables!

K Gudi was significantly different from Kabini. For one, it is located on the higher reaches, deeper in the jungle and rightfully called a wilderness camp. There seems to be a small settlement, some forest department quarters, a forest guest house and a small post office. Electricity is supplied only between 1830 and 2230 in the evening and for about half an hour in the morning through a generator. Otherwise, they put up hurricane lamps on the pathway and near the entrance of the cottage in the evening and hand us over a torch. We also had brought a heavy duty torch with us. This was very useful. The beautiful building that we saw at the entrance belonged to the forest department, with JLR having a good modest office. The staff were courteous in general but we got the sense that they were not as professional as in Kabini.

After checking in we freshened up and took a walk. The one thing that made Kabini more interesting was the existence of water. This was in the thick jungle and waterbodies were few and far between. Having a backwater of a dam, or a stream is quite a different experience. The Gol Garh with is trademark JLR was the place to eat. It has lesser tables. Around Gol Garh we had the nets to climb up and also a tree house. But both these were more difficult to access than Kabini. Arjun had a go at the tree house, but could not gather himself to go all the way up. The hammocks were also a bit narrow. In general we felt that KGudi was a step brother of Kabini. We had a quick lunch in the Gol Garh and lazed around for a while. I caught up with some sleep on the hammock having driven the car for 6 hours.. slowly realizing why every car driver goes in for a snooze when he is not driving. The safari was at 1630 after a tea at 1600Hrs, again in Gol Garh. Unfortunately we cannot avoid benchmarking this place with Kabini. In Kabini there was a detailed briefing, but nothing of that sort in KGudi.

KGudi expands to Kyatadevara Gudi. There is a very small temple of Kyateshwara Swami as if to justify the name. This seemed to be maintained well, but not much of activity around the temple. It almost looked like and extension of the JLR properties! At 1630 we left for the safari. Our driver-cum-naturalist-cum-guide was a guy named Thapa. We later had a chat with him and discovered that he was from the Army, a Nepali from Dharamshala. His Kannada was possibly a shade better than my Nepali!! Given that I know no Nepali, that does not say much. But he was quite good at getting along. As we started off the journey, he stopped by at the Forest office to report the number of people and cameras which I found a bit strange. We were only 7 persons for the day. Apparently a large group that had booked had withdrawn at the last moment and the entire place had only 3 families for both the days.

The route that Thapa took us was nice. We say many Gaurs during this trip. While in Kabini we saw Gaur only once, we not only saw many, but had ample opportunities to take photographs as well. Gaurs in KGudi were like Elephants in Kabini dime-a-dozen. Apart from the Gaurs, there were a few elephants but given the thick growth most of the time the elephants were not clearly visible. In Kabini because of the water we were able to have a clear view of the elephants. We could see several spotted deer, and a couple of wild boars. Infact wild boars were visible even from the camp itself. We spotted barking deer several times but could not take a photograph. They are very agile and just sprinted the moment we stopped by. Thapa did not seem to be keen to take us deeper in the jungle. We went by routes that we could more or less recognize. One of the streets that we traversed several times during our stay was Muradi Raste – three feet road, which was really a narrow patch. This was quite a contrast to the Nooradi Rastes [hundred feet roads] we have in several towns!!

On return there was the usual film show and campfire. They gave us very good pakodas and tea. Since not many families were around and none of us seemed to be keen on the campfire, that was given a go by. We had a look at the documentary on how Ullas Karant has been working in the Nagarahole jungles at tiger research. KGudi does not have a fully stocked bar and only beer is available. This fact was highlighted in the Outlook book as well so people who want to have something harder than beer would have to carry the stuff themselves. But the other soft drinks were available. There was a TT table at the JLR office and I had a go at it with Arjun for a while.

Back in the room, it was time for us to get our batteries charged. Surprisingly mobile signals reach this place. So it was an exercise of transferring the photos from the camera to the laptop and charge the mobile and the laptop batteries. At 2230 the lights were switched off promptly. That experience was a bit eerie for Arjun. The sky was clear and the moon was somewhat bright so it was indeed a good picture. JLR people let their elephant loose for grazing through the night. Since this elephant had a bell tied to its neck, we could hear the sound deep into the night. While I dozed off Gowri and Arjun apparently saw some Sambars and wild boars from the window. This experience was indeed that of a wilderness camp. Actually the look around after the lights are switched off is quite an experience and one really gets the feel of being in the middle of the jungle.

The next morning we had a choice of either a trek or a safari. I had twisted my ankle a few weeks ago and was not confident of pulling off a two hour trek. Arjun was keen to get deeper into the jungle and Gowri also was keen on a safari. So we were back on a Safari in the morning. One problem with the vehicles in K Gudi are that they are covered on the top which restricts the view and also the ability to take photographs. This is a bit of a pain especially in a terrain like K Gudi. During this safari we were able to see more than Gaur. We were able to spot a pack of wild dogs. Again those were difficult to photograph and apparently not an easy sight. The resort maintains a small register of Sightings in which Tigers, Leopards, Sloth Bears and Wild Dogs are listed, not the usual wild boars, spotted deer, barking deer Sambar and Gaur. These were the animals we sighted most of the morning. Thapa stopped by near a small puddle and showed us tiger pugs indicating that a tiger was somewhere there. We followed the track and it was evident that he was not pulling a fast one on us, because we could follow the pugs on the dry earth along the path. But our luck was restricted to seeing these pugs. Having exposed to this new technique of spotting animals by their footprints we started focusing on the ground rather than outside and the sightings were tons of elephant shit.

This was a satisfactory safari, but I got the sense that we did not go in a different route. I reckon that a different route would not guarantee a sighting, but still we would have seen some other part of the jungle as well. The trip to Dodda Sampige was not on schedule, because the forest department had apparently withdrawn permission to get to those areas. So, after a prompt 2 hour sojurn in the jungle we were back at Gol Garh for our breakfast. This was followed by a short elephant ride and a trip to BRHills. The drive was not very good because of the quality of the road. On the way we met a family that was driving down in the opposite direction who needed some assistance to get past to the Chamarajanagar side. They were clearly tense that they were driving through the jungle and were not sure what would happen if they sighted some wild animals. Here we were, craving to see some and there they were a family of nervous wrecks who seemed to regret every moment of having taken this road. Apparently these roads are deliberately kept in a bad shape so that it is not used as a pass through. Since this was on the main road, we did not expect to see any animals, but we were still able to spot deer, a serpant eagle and a huge snake that crossed the road. The other end of the road was the office of Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra, a very respectable NGO run by Dr.Sudarshan. However, this was not an occasion for us to stop by. At some point it would be interesting to go and understand the work being done by Dr.Sudarshan with the Soliga tribes of this area. The BR Hills temple looked run down, and hardly impressive. The deity was good, but the surroundings would do with a lot of face lift. But one could see the penetration of Coke with a hoarding even on the drinking water facility outside the temple!! One of the peculiarities of the BR Hills temple is that there is a huge footwear for the lord. Apparently the deity is expected to take a walk in the jungle whenever it fancies him and therefore these Chappals are kept for his use!! These are also replaced occasionally. I just wondered why they should be styled after the Kolhapuri variety, most unsuited for a walk in the jungle!

The next rest of the day was a repeat – safari in the evening and a film show on cobras followed by dinner. No campfire again, because not many of the 7 persons were interested. In the evening however, I chatted up with some of the staff there just to understand what made this place different from Kabini. It appears that there is an underlying tension with the forest department and they have severely restricted the access that JLR can have to the jungles. This is somewhat surprising given that the forest department is one of the promoters of JLR. Apparently the DFO by name Raju is quite strict about the timings and the access areas. The access to Dodda Sampige is cut off essentially by the forest department.

While it is difficult to assess the real reasons – including some valid ecological reasons, the sense that we got was that the forest department was jealous of JLR. The staff of JLR get a decent amount of tips because of the heavy tourist traffic. So there is a income mismatch. In addition, the forest department seems to be leaning on JLR for their guests asking JLR to provide food, which they resent. This tension is something that affects not only the tourists who pay through their nose, but also the business of JLR. Afterall the forest department is a partner in this project and therefore there needs to be a good co-ordination not only at the top, but also at the field level. K Gudi is really a dense area but if staying for two days means transversing Muradi Raste twenty times, then it is not a great idea from a tourist point of view. This opinion was not isolated but expressed by several people in JLR.

We then had a long chat with Thapa, because I was curious as to how he landed up in this place where he claimed to have been for around 10 years. Apparently the army connection brought him here and he thinks that the income is good, he gets a decent pay and decent tips. He has two daughters and has a house built up in Dharmshala – he visits his home [in army style] once a year. He has apparently served in Srilanka and Congo and thinks this is real peaceful life compared to that. I had my kick as a person interested in banking when he volunteered to tell me that for a long time remittance of money to his family through MO and DDs was a problem, not only due to the cost and time involved, but also sometimes in tracking the missing amounts. He now says that he has an account with State Bank and he can directly transfer money to his family thanks to what bankers call Core Banking Solution, where branches are all interlinked.

We moved out of KGudi after a sumptuous breakfast. On the way back I stopped by to take a photograph of the KGudi post office. We often talk about the power of the postal network, with over 150,000 outlets claiming them to be a powerful last point access even in the remote areas. I just wanted to flag the effectiveness of the access. A look at the size of the premises and the fact that the services were available according to the timings of the Bus from Chamarajanagar was enough to indicate that the number of outlets we claim as final touch points could be exaggerated. There was a similar post office in BR Hills as well. We quickly drove down to Mysore and had lunch in what was earlier called as Southern star. I got caught by the policeman for taking a left turn near Ramaswamy Circle on a relatively empty road.. apparently that is declared as a one-way street!! Of course he was kind enough to let me off when he confirmed his hunch that I was an outsider. After lunch we went to the Indica showroom to get the fog lamp fixed.

We spent the day in Mysore and left in the morning. Had coffee at the highway coffee day outlet near Maddur and had a flat tyre in Chennapattana. So the journey was quite eventful with complete driving experience. We reached Bangalore in time for lunch. It was a good holiday, but in terms of professionalism and overall experience I would rate KGudi 7/10 with Kabini getting a 10 benchmark rate. Hopefully we will check out the other jungles the next time around.

Vanuvati Smiles!

2007-03-16T07:58:00.000+05:30

It is not often that I get to read books written for children. The last I tried to read patiently was the Harry Potter series, which, honestly I believe is engaging but bad fiction for children. The idea is not to get into the merits of fiction for children, but basically to try and understand what would be construed as good children's fiction. I read the book "The Simle of Vanuvati" written by friend Harini Gopalswami Srinivasan recently, and this took me back to the questions I had in my mind. Harini's book is interesting in many ways. It tries to blend bits of history, archeology and adventure into a narrative that is quite engaging.

Obviously the first thing about fiction for children is the simplicity of narration and also the simplicity of the theme. As a kid I was addicted to the Enid Blytons essentially because of these aspects. Possibly a good book for children should have all the things that the kids day dream about. That would include superheros who grow up from ordinary folks that one can identify with, people seen in pure black and white without multiple dimensions to a personality. Afterall, for children you are a good man or a bad one and very rarely be both at the same time. However, if one is writing a thriller with some suspense element in it, then a good man can ultimately turn out to be bad or vice versa, but at a given point in time the position is clear. More than anything else I guess the book should come to the point fast. If I reflect and think about the books I liked as a kid, they were all about the aspirational dreams for an adventure, a comic but stern character like Inspector Goon, a pet, disapproving parents, rebelling kids - who eventually were proved to be correct, lots of forbidden [or rationed] food like chocolates, pastries and a great and happy ending.

Harini's book has all these thrown in for a good measure. As far as language goes, Harini gets into the skin of these youngsters easily - the conceptualization of the type of music they like, the type of expressions the kids and the setting is perfect for an adventure story to unravel.

The story starts in 2500 BC a fine setting for what should be seen as a novel that moves into an archaeological site later. It moves a few centuries to 712-14 AD very quickly before settling down in almost the present 1998. While the two stories rooted in history creates enough curiosity about what could be in store for us when I finished reading the novel I was wondering whether it was indeed a good technique to have these two smaller stories. As adult fiction I can understand that one might want to put such stuff in the beginning to later cover some complex grounds and meanings that would be open to interpretation. However, if a kid were reading it, s/he might get impatient becasue these seem to be two unconnected stories and it is a while before Vanuvati the doll/god appears in the third time phase. For a children's adventure book, I thought the action happens very late in the book.

Not only does the action happen late, the mystery is solved without too much of a complication. Harini does not provide credible alternative suspects before concluding who the culprit is. For instance I would have thought that the character of Prajapriya Devi was not developed to the potential and this character could have been made more integral part of the plot. Instead, she fleets in and re-appears in the story towards the end. In stories involving crime, one would be looking for a great motive. The way the book is constructed, one would assume that Vanuvati would turn out to be a very precious find that would fetch crores and stealing it in itself should be a good enough motive. However towards the end we find that there is a treasure hunt that is going on, and except for Creek the American who is looking for the treasure, there is nobody who is aware of the possibilities. So when the kids get on to investigation, actually they are not solving something in an organised manner but just stumble upon the criminal, the motive for the crime all at the same time. I would have thought that the entire mystery would revolve around the idol and that was a bit of let down.

The other thing one is not sure of, till about the end of the book is the age-group of the kids. Only when we come to the last time phase do we get an inkling of what their age at the time of adventure could have been. Leaving this to imagination is a bit dangerous because we are not sure what is the inherent capability of the kids, and how much they have surpassed it in being super heros.

In spite of the above issues that I have flagged or flogged, I found the book really enjoyable and I am sure my son would love it more than me. Possibly I am looking for more than what ought to be in a children's book - I am no longer a child and need to be in that frame of mind to appreciate books written for much younger people.

For those who want to buy the book it is available here.

Before I end, I reproduce one of my most favourite quotes from Singer about why he writes for children. If you see that and what he has written about the expectations of adult readers from their writers, you can then discount all that I have written above!!

Extract from Singer's Nobel Banquet Speech

"Ladies and Gentlemen: There are five hundred reasons why I began to write for children, but to save time I will mention only ten of them. Number 1) Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics. Number 2) Children don't read to find their identity. Number 3) They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. Number 4) They have no use for psychology. Number 5) They detest sociology. Number 6) They don't try to understand Kafka or Finnegans Wake. Number 7) They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff. Number 8) They love interesting stories, not commentary, guides, or footnotes. Number 9) When a book is boring, they yawn openly, without any shame or fear of authority. Number 10) They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions."

Game Theory, Myopia and Gandhigiri

2007-03-01T16:23:00.000+05:30

I have been reading a remarkable book by my friend Prof. V Raghunathan. The book is lucidly written and tries to put a complex concept as game theory within the reach of a non-technical person by using everyday examples. It is a book that is introspective about being 'Indian' and our essential behavioural patterns analysed with the backdrop of Game Theory. Ultimately the essence of behavioural patterns is all tempered by the outcomes of a certain action. This book not only tries to understand the behavioural patterns under an expected reward scheme but also exhibits an anguish about the general civic behaviour. While these two appear unrelated the art of Raghu's writing is a brave attempt to link these two.

Raghu constantly asks the questions as to why we are the way we are. Why do we constantly jump queues, why do we constantly cut corners, and why is there an apparent chaotic or non-disciplined behaviour in our approach to things. This chalta-hai attitude is what he tries to examine in the book. The book - typifying an Indian trait - asks more questions than it answers. Obviously the answers to these questions are not simple. If they were, they would have been found by brave and intelligent Indians long before. The answers to an extent are systemic and we have learned to live in chaos. Therefore we can see that this is more a book of anguish than anything else. The book is about here-and-now behaviour than behaviour about the longer term.

For instance, Raghu's example of exporting sub-standard goods that fetch a high return on a given consignment at the cost of future orders is something which most small time businessmen would be happy with. Obviously if we treated each transaction as a terminating transaction and not a point in the continuum then it is evident that we would try to maximise the return on that particular deal rather than look at maximising long term returns. The concept of game theory is all about the outcomes and how these expected outcomes temper behaviour. Is this rational behaviour? Well, it is if we look at the transaction as a single transaction, but it would be suicidal not to look at it from a long term perspective.

Obviously the antidote to this is that all of us behave in a ethically and morally acceptable manner. We unfortunately do not live in such an Utopian world. If that were the case, the world would have been such a boring place to live, with everybody quite clear on what the outcome would be. It is not without reason that a noted writer in Kannada said that there is no fun in heaven - only solitude, while you meet a whole lot of interesting people in hell.

While the book raises several issues at the transactional level - more to do with general norms of behaviour its reference to strategic issues like stockpiling of nuclear weapons is only in the passing. Obviously this is a clear instance of taking preventive measures in case the counter party shows deviant behaviour - essentially stemming out of mistrust and from being unsure of the action/reaction that the counterparty would take. The admiration Raghu has for the western world is more focussed on transactional issues. These pertain to jumping queues, maintaining orderly behaviour, better traffic sense and so on. Clearly on those, we Indians as Raghu rightly points out are very weak on regulation.

But that does not explain the differential behaviour within India between say Mumbai and Delhi. In general I have found that the traffic rules are obeyed more in Mumbai, lane discipline is maintained and people stop at red lights. Part of it might have to do with regulation. But I guess a larger part of it has to do with the transactional price Mumbaikars have to pay if there is a traffic jam. Mumbai is a city that cannot pause and thus traffic has to be orderly. In Delhi there is not only general level of aggression in all walks with a "Jugaad" attitude, the price for a delay can be easily explained away because most of the time one is not involved in the level of commerce as in Mumbai. Possibly a part of the explanation for tempering of behaviour is to do with pay offs - are we in a monetised commercial world where pay offs are tangible or are we in a world of fixers where pay offs are not really tangible. Thus as in the western world, even in places like Mumbai the cost one pays for deviation in the west is so high that transactionally it makes great sense to follow the rules than cut corners.

Remarkable about Raghu's style of writing is that he brings in everyday issues into understanding the complex concepts pertaining to game theory. It could be about airport queues, highways projects, train compartments or even paying speed money. Indeed he laments somewhere that we possibly are the only nation that pays a bribe to pay money to the government [referring to transfer of titles and stamp duties to be paid]. But is this all about game theory? I wonder sometime whether the linkages between the concepts that Raghu is elucidating and the examples are somewhat weak. However, it really does not matter as Raghu puts in a disclaimer that this book is not a serious research book, but a potpurri of ideas. And of course these ideas are presented very well. For an academic, Raghu has a very simple style of writing which makes these concepts applied to everyday happenings. While the language he uses is generally formal he constantly uses the term 'squealers' which does not jell well with the language used elsewhere. He certainly does not use the word 'sucker' and in general uses a formal language. So the squealers stand out as a sore thumb in the narrative.

As I was reading this book I was reminded of two unrelated things. I remember that another friend of mine Sanjiv Phansalkar had written a remarkable book on how small industrialists manage their business and why they remain small. The arguments extended by Sanjiv are also remarkably similar to the ones used by Raghu. Sanjiv, however does not use the game theory framework. Both these gentlemen put forth the essential argument that in being short sighted and in looking at each transaction as a terminating transaction, one is being myopic and loses a chance to look at the bigger picture.

For instance a typical attitude of a small industrialist is to try and maximise returns on any 'investment' they make. I have taught in training programmes designed for small industries and we constantly see that they are fishing for 'value for money'. Thus these are the only category of trainess who get bothered about the quality of the biscuits that are served, they are the only ones who come to faculty who are considered experts for 'tips' and photocopy enormous amounts of literature from the library. What they do not realise is that the 'tips' given by experts are generic in nature and may not be appropriate for a specific instance. It might be better to look at a consulting assignment where the 'tipper' is held accountable. This leads the firms to look at ways of avoiding payment of taxes, payment to creditors, creating an aura about themselves by driving fancy cars and hiring people because they are "trustworthy" and 'inexpensive'.. Obviously the output will then reflect the defects in the inputs. Sanjiv argues that if they ever reach a stage of being big and hitting the capital market, they actually do not have much to show by way of a balance sheet, because firms have got spawned a large part of the transactions are done in cash and a credibility trail is not established. Obviously the payoffs using Raghu's framework come in over the longer run, but one survives on a day to day basis as if there was no tomorrow. Thus, I personally think that these two books go hand in hand as they argue that one needs to expand time horizons and certainly show non-strategic behaviour at least at the level of transactions, so that long term relationships and trust could be built.

The other unrelated thing that came to my mind as I was reading the book was Munnabhai's Gandhigiri. When we look at the methods used by Gandhi, it is very clear that he never betrayed anybody about his expected response. Gandhi's response was non-violent, non-compromising and persuasive. In Munnabhai at places we see a deviation from the basic tenet that Rajkumar Hirani is trying to propogate. For instance, the movie has an instance where Munna wants to keep an old man happy by ensuring that the old man's son comes in with a birthday cake to the old-age home. The son is not interested and Munna does not use his Gandhigiri to convince the son. He uses brute force [though he talks about using Gandhigiri to his girlfriend!!]. Obviously if we look at it from Munna's point of view, Gandhigiri would have taken long and there was a deadline to meet. Therefore deviating from the expected behaviour to here-and-now behaviour might become necessary.

The problem with our society as Raghu identifies is that we seem to resort to this here-and-now behaviour a bit too often, and that is what makes our society chaotic in general and interesting at times. However, Raghu's book compels us to think and interrospect. It certainly makes us wonder "why we are the way we are". It awakens our guilt. Does it compel us to action in embracing non-strategic transactional behaviour? Does it lead us towards Gandhigiri? Well.. The last comment I would like to make is that it would have been nice if Raghu had picked up one or two instances of long term strategic behaviour and examined it in this frame. Why is it that the traffic rules are observed in general in the US, but as a nation US actually behaves like a "well connected rich politician's son" in world affairs. Why does it jump the line without recourse to United Nations in instance after instance? Possibly thoughts for Raghu's next book.

Hyderabad: Integration?

2006-12-10T13:43:00.000+05:30

There has been a fair amount of literature about how Hyderabad was integrated into the Indian Union, much against the wishes of the then Nizam and without ascertaining the wishes of the people of this erstwhile Deccan state. Of course the mainstream view is fairly well known - that the Nizam of Hyderabad was being difficult and given the strategic location of Hyderabad in the heart of India, it was not practical to even think of annexation with Pakistan, nor was it possible to have Hyderabad as an independent state. Thus the Police Action initiated by Sardar Patel and the eventual integration of Hyderabad State into India is hailed as one of the Iron Man's achievements.

However there is a strong school of thought - represented by the Hyderabad Historical Society - that in trifurcating the erstwhile Hyderabad State on linguistic lines was not one of the smartest things to do and most of the problems pertaining to communal harmony, and the question of underdevelopment of Telangana [and Marathwada region in Maharashtra and Hyderabad-Karnataka region in Karnataka] was a function of the break up of the erstwhile Hyderabad State. One significant book on this subject is Omar Khalidi's Hyderabad:After the Fall.

When I picked up the book "From Autocracy to Integration" by Lucien D Benichou I did that with a fair amount of expectation as it was supposed to have focussed on the political developments of the decade 1938-48 a period when most of the action happened in the run up to the integration of the Hyderabad state into the Indian Union and later its trifurcation on linguistic lines. While Hyderabad integrated itself with India, the state disintegrated!! The blurb was quite a teaser which said: "The book centres around the question of the nature and popularity of the annexation of Hyderabad. It also explores the question of whether this was the only way in which the transition to popular rule could have taken place. ..."

While the author seems to be asking the right type of questions, he does not make a very forceful arguement on the alternatives that could have been possible.

While there was much action in the decade that led up to the declaration of Independence of India, Hyderabad state was not fully integrated with the freedom movement led by the congress. The citizens of Hyderabad were badly divided and congress was not a big force to reckon with. The most significant congress leader of that time was Swami Ramananda Tirtha. There was little satyagraha and civil disobdience seen in this region.

The reasons could have been complex: The region was still ruled by the Nizam. While muslims were a minority in the state, the elite amongst them occupied positions of power in the government. The language of the court was Persian, and there was a widespread use of Urdu. In addition to the elite that were attached to the royal family [including the Paigahs] a large number of hindu zamindars owed their allegiance to the Nizam. While it is not clear whether they were in general happy with the rule of the Nizam, what is clear is that they had fair amount of powers and privileges which they would lose if autocracy was replaced with democracy. In addition to these two forces of the muslim nobility and the hindu elite, we also had nationalists like Swami Ramananda Tirtha trying to mobilise people for the freedom struggle. And this freedom was not only being sought from the British, but also from the Nizam. There were two other groups that were very active at that time - the communists [largely hindu by religion, though there were people like Makdoom Moinuddin with them] who were seeking liberation from the so called tyrannical rule of the Nizam and through him the zamindars - and were also opposed to the non-violent passive methods of the congress. There were Razakars, a small group of primitively armed volunteers who had largely aligned with the Nizam. However their basic alliegance was to the Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen a militant group that played on the islamic identity of the people.

While Benichou's book does a good job of getting archival research and putting it together, I was somewhat disappointed with the quality of analysis. The book drifts with a series of incidents that happen in quick succession and Benichou does just the job of a dispassionate chronicler. It is not clear if there was a popular support to have Hyderabad as a single province - which is what the blurb hinted at. It is however clear that the major nationalist party was confused as far as mobilising people was concerned. The congress was fighting the British and the visible face of rule here was the Nizam. Therefore most of the methods and aims of the struggle were irrelevant in the context of Hyderabad. However, there were issues. The congress was largely represented by Hindus with clear linguistic identities of the three regions. It appears that the younger elements were not happy with the moderates - thus sections of congress breaking into Andhra Mahasabha and Maharashtra Parishad. Even the Andhra Mahasabha broke up with people like Ravi Narayana Reddy moving towards the communists.

On the other hand, the Maharashtra Parishad was also having its own divisions. For instance it is said that on the one hand sections of the congress were demanding that the Marathwada province of the Nizam's dominions be merged with United Maharashtra on achieving independence, there were dissentions within the Dominion itself with people like K S Vaidya and Narasing Rao [known to be congress moderates] indicating that the territorial integrity of the Hyderabad State had to continue even after independence. So it is not clear as to whether there was a unified will of the people aspiring for a Hyderabad State [with or without the Nizam].

In fact Benichou says something to this effect as we proceed with the book:"[In the context of the Cripps proposal] the future of the State took precedence over the [II World] War issue, and revived all the communial and political divisions. In the main, moderate Hindus remained silent, but the extremists asserted that Hyderabad should be absorbed into 'greater and democratic India' while Ittihad Muslims demanded the retention of the State as a separate 'independent entity"

Even after independence, before the police action one sees confusion. It also appears that while the communists in Telangana were being supported indirectly by the Congress, though they did not have a common cause with the congress. Benichou says: "it seems illogical that the Government of Madras should have given aid to the Communists who were the avoved enemies of the INC and that the Government of India should have turned a blind eye to this 'anomaly'. The compelling explanation, however, is that it was known in Delhi that the Hyderabad Congress by itself was divided and weak... and the communist activity in Telengana was therefore the only alternative means left to weaken the Nizam's regime.."

While the book generally postulates various possibilities as an alternative to the hurried "Police Action" and the high handed annexation of Hyderabad to the Indian Union, Benichou does not base his arguments on whether these were plausible at all, whether there was some strong undercurrent of a unified view on how the integration had to take place. The argument of Benichou is that if it was left alone like Goa, it would have eventually got integrated with the Union, because there would have been little choice. Hyderabad could not annexe with Pakistan due to its geography, and the same geography would come to the aid of ultimate integration with the Union because it would not only be landlocked, but surrounded by the Indian Union from all sides.

Benichou however, hints that the Nizam possibly failed in keeping his subjects with him in the later stages. He was seen as getting more and more influenced by Majlis [a fringe element at that time], was secluded and did not have much contact with the people. Osman Ali Khan was in a way a contrast to his predecessor Mehboob Ali Khan who was called the "beloved" of the people and enjoyed good rapport with with all sections of the society. While literature indicates that the moderates in both Hindu and Muslim communities articulated the mulki feeling "Hyderabad for Hyderabadis regardless of communities", unfortunately this got the most vociferous articulation from the Majlis and the Razakars. Possibly that was the political undoing of the unified Hyderabad state within the Indian union.

The trifurcation of the state was lamented by several people. Most of the icons of unified Hyderabad state got marginalised due to this and all the regions of the erstwhile Hyderabad became peripheral regions in the respective states they were integrated into. The roots of the Telangana movement can be traced possibly with the trifurcation. At least in Hyderabad, there was dominance of the people from coastal Andhra who could use the 'official language' Telugu much better and got into the administration in a big way. Mulkis on the other hand were formally trained in Urdu - this did become a handicap and also resulted in unemployment. In retrospect what was written in 1952 looks prophetic:

Apart from suspensions, dismissals, retirements - forced and voluntary of the officers and men of almost all the Departments, there has been a attempt to retrench in the name of efficiency and because to aid the new personnel, instead of Urdu knowing staff, persons with knowledge of English and other regional languages were required.
It is obvious that henceforth the doors of thes Departments [that were taken over by the Indian Union] would be closed up for the sons of the soil, who are already at a discount and opened wide...
Another outstanding feature of the present change-over and integration ... would be instead of having its own income on the lines evolved hitherto, Hyderabad would have to depend on Subventions and doles from the Centre for carrying on, not only the day to day administration, but also for its nation-building activities.

The tone of despair is evident because before the Indian Union acceeded Hyderabad, they had their own ruler, had their own constitution [idiosyncratic and weak but it was internal] and their own systems of representation and governance. All this was integrated into a larger learning model of the Indian Union, not only forcibly, but also by cutting and dividing the region and annexing them to a linguistically similar, but culturally alien region.

The only disappointing point in this book is that it does not get any radically new material to the table, nor does it get any radically new interpretation of the archival material. However, it was indeed good to get back to this issue once again.

Nobel Thoughts on Microcredit

2006-11-01T06:52:00.000+05:30

As I watched, I could see the smashing of ancient rules, the shattering of traditional canon. I could see subversion. Here is what was being subverted:

The belief that poor people are helpless people;
The belief that women are most helpless of all;
The belief that poor landless people are terrible credit risks;
The belief that poor people cannot co-operate, cannot plan ahead, cannot decide for themselves, cannot manage or service a loan;
The belief that the best form of economic development is aid for massive, centralized projects undertaken by the state

If old beliefs were made of pottery, the floor of the Grameen Bank would be littered with broken shards.

Peter Goldmark
President of Rockefeller Foundation

The peace prize for the year has gone to Muhammad Yunus [and Grameen Bank] who was instrumental in subverting the banking system over the last few decades. Yunus has been unconventional, broke the banking rules, but at the same time created his own rules. This has not been without controversies, without a fair share critics and also without a few eyebrows raised as to whether this was indeed such a revolution that deserved the coveted prize. There have been some political commentators who have tried to link both Pamuk and Yunus together as being moderates and therefore this price being seen as a subtle message to the Islamic fundamentalists. Firstly fundamentalists do not take subtle messages. Secondly taking that line of argument is at best an insult for both the works of Pamuk and Yunus, because what they have created merit such a recognition irrespective of which part of the world they come from and what their religion is.

I have been personally delighted at the news, because this was the first person with whom I have had a direct correspondence to win the prize! There are issues with the design of Grameen and as an academic I keep raising those both inside the class room and outside in my writings. However, when it comes to the whole body of work by Yunus I only ask one question. Is the world in general better off because of Grameen. My answer to that is a thumping yes. That is reason enough to celebrate.

There has been enough written about Yunus, his experiment in Jobra village where he started with $27 as the first set of microloans and how his methodology impacts the way poor are dealt with as customers. He treated the poor as “exclusive” customers [partly because they were excluded from the banking system, and partly because of his faith in the essential capability of the poor to grab opportunities when they were made accessible to them]. However, what we need to remember is that the so called Grameen Methodology that appears simple, can be replicated the world over and can be scaled up fast took a long time to stabilize.

There are some great similarities between Kurien and Yunus which strike us at the first sight. For instance, when Kurien was asked to replicate the Anand model of milk co-operatives one of the conditions he laid down to Prime Minister Shastri was that he would like the headquarters of National Dairy Development Board to be in Anand and not in Delhi. This was one way of insulating the activity from petty politicians and bureaucrats. Yunus echoed similar sentiments when an American reporter asked him what he would do if he took over as the president of the World Bank. Yunus apparently said: “I would move the headquarters of the World Bank to Dhaka”. The reasons given to elaborate this were:

If the bank is interested in combating poverty, it has to be in a location where poverty is rampant

If the headquarters are moved to Dhaka, many of the five thousand employees would refuse to come.. this will allow me to ease out those who are not completele dedicated to to fighting poverty and it would reduce costs. Dhaka is less expensive than Washington…”

Yunus has dealt with the donors the way Kurien has dealt with them, on terms that were always beneficial to the recipient than to the donor. On conditions that were dictated by the recipient than the donor. Both have made fund raising into an art where the giver is actually at the receiving end. That could happen only because both were men of conviction, knew exactly what they wanted to do and knew that if the design is right and honesty of purpose is there, resources would flow. Yunus went one step further, by making the operations so simple and replicable that any moron could have imbibed his methodology of having monetary transactions with the poor.

However, we have to remember that the journey to this simple methodology was not without a long learning curve that the Professor had in his passion to make a difference. While he was in US as a student he got active in politics – supporting the Bangladesh liberation movement and generating public opinion in favour of the liberation. On return to Bangladesh he did not start off with microcredit, instead like any young educated person thought that the difference could be made by dissemination of knowledge to the poor.

His first idea was a Three-Share-Farm where he tried to get production from the fallow lands in lean season. The Three-Share-Farm basically would have land contributed by landowners, Yunus himself putting in capital for running a deep tubewell, seeds and other inputs and the share-croppers lending their labour, for an equal share of the produce at the end. While the experiment itself was successful and earned the President’s award, it did not satisfy him, because he believed that it was not really helping the poor, because he found that poverty at the extreme could not help women even to be share croppers. While Yunus continued to teach economics in the Chittagong University, it was apparent that he was deeply dissatisfied with what he was teaching. He has time and again questioned conventional theories which in his view were not working. Possibly the operating principle of cetirus paribus [all other things being equal] commonly applied in Economics was troubling him, as all other things were never equal. So life had to move beyond the classroom Economics, and beyond the three-share farm experiment.

In the meantime Yunus had experimented with his credit programme with some women, and saw a potential for intervention. His idea was that if only one can provide enough push through capital the intrinsic entrepreneurial ability of the poor would help them to stand on their own feet. However, he also realized that his personal experiment would only make a small impact and it needed an institutional framework to achieve impacts on scale. There began his long journey with the banking system – constantly collaborating with the systems and trying to fight from within, and at the same time trying to find alternatives outside the banking system. The first roadblock Yunus hit was that of a collateral. Obviously the assetless could offer nothing as a collateral. The banks were asking Yunus to stand as guarantor, and Yunus was willing to do that because he had faith in the essential enterprise of people. Goodness yes, but also enterprise, because people would return the loans only when they had a reasonable assurance that they would get a further loan in case they needed [and often they did]. Unlike any other trading activity which is a terminating transaction, credit was a series of transactions built on faith and constant interactions. Therefore credit was a relation building exercise – the essence of which Yunus recognized early on. So all that he possibly needed to do was to replace his own guarantee [or reputation] with that of a fellow poor person – for whom it might not be a reputation at a larger level but it was indeed a question of pride. Yunus introduced what is today called as Social Collateral into the lexicon of banking.

Two highlights that dictated the social collateral were the following aspects:

Individually, a poor person feels exposed to all kinds of hazards. Group membership gives a feeling of protection.
Subtle, at times, not so subtle, peer pressure keeps the group members in line with the broader objectives of the credit programme

Therefore it was imperative that the lending methodology followed by Yunus had to have some group formation. This is what ultimately dictates the methodology of operations of Grameen.

Now the methodology of Grameen has been so well perfected that it is replicable almost anywhere, the basic pre-conditions being that there has to be a regularity of cash flows and there has to be enough numbers to form a commune of borrowers. Is this as simple? Are there no issues of default? Are there no issues of harrasement, exclusion from Grameen or are there no downsides to the Grameen model. Obviously there are and I will come to that a little later.

Before that, it is important to see what Grameen and microcredit have done to the poor, how they have fundamentally changed their lives. Whenever there is a high profile programme like Grameen talked about, the expectations are that this is a magic wand that will eradicate poverty, educate people, empower women and make the world a happy place. Yunus himself has been responsible for propagating this view as the single most powerful instrument in eradicating poverty, so much so he has said that a century later we must be seeing poverty only in museums. However, we need to recognize that what microcredit achieves has limitations, but at the same time very effective within those parameters.

It is not without reason that microcredit has been women focused. Micro-credit after all deals with small amounts of money which leads to small enterprises. When we look carefully the amount of credit that is available will lead to a supplemental income. That is because the Grameen methodology expects repayment from the week after the loan has been disbursed. Thus if one has to repay the loan, the money has to come in from the existing cash flows or has to be put in a business that produces a good cash flow from day one. Either way the borrower is a winner, because it increases the cash throughput in their hands and reduces their vulnerability. At the crunch situation a person with a few rupees in the pocket is better off than a person with a credit card because cash is universally accepted as a medium of exchange. [Ever tried taking a rickshaw ride on a credit card?] Therefore one is actually talking of enterprises that are incremental in nature that use the slack in a household. Women are the most enterprising lot to use the slack. Just remember how much our mothers would do in bargaining on a purchase, saving on the expenses by learning sewing and taking on a whole lot of work that men would typically outsource.

Men also suffer from bloated egos that will not allow them to do things incrementally, but would want a big-bang effect. If we take rural India, for instance, microcredit is not designed for meeting the needs of agriculture which has multiple lumpy cash outflows and a singly lumpy inflow. Women love groups. Attending a group meeting gets them out, unshackles them from the bounds of a house. It is liberating because this is an organized and respectable way to interact with other like minded women. Men of course hang out with other men on non-productive purposes in the evenings in places where women seldom frequent. Thus attending a microcredit group meeting is both liberating and [with cash in hand] empowering the women at the same time. This is the limited purpose that microcredit serves at a base level. I am sure there could be several counter arguments as to how life could go much beyond this, but at the large scale these are the guaranteed fall outs of microcredit programmes. This has not been achieved by the moneylender, by the formal institutions or the other semi-formal structures. This is the most significant contribution of Yunus to the society.

I think the other subtle contribution was in the discipline of repayment. As weekly repayments were non-negotiable in Grameen, it forced women to look for activities that gave the year long income. This possibly helped in livelihood diversification and getting small amounts of money on a regular basis. This also helped reduce vulnerability to a great extent. The other larger impacts of microcredit possibly are context specific and in some cases just frills.

But is the contribution of Yunus and Grameen all that hunky dory? What are the downsides of microcredit? It is not that microcredit, and the Grameen model in particular have not been subject to some scathing criticism, both from the development Jholawalas as well as the Wall Street. I will take on the wall street first and later the criticism from the developmentwallahs. Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl wrote a front page scathing piece [November 27, 2001] on Grameen indicating that they were not transparent, they were hiding data and there were repayment pressures. Grameen responded saying that most of the data that Pearl was using was dated, they did indeed have repayment problems following a nation wide flood and they had overcome most of it. What went on between Daniel Pearl [Yes, if the name rings a bell, it is rightly so, because he was the correspondent who was brutally killed by Taliban, a victim of Islamic fundamentalism] and Yunus [said to be another opponent of Islamic fundamentalism] was not as important as to what we learn about Grameen methodology.

Till this happened, Grameen was known as a single product Bank [though they had housing and other loans, all of them followed similar repayment rules] and also as a bank that brooked no nonsense in repayment. In Grameen discipline was above all else. It was seen in not only how repayments were effected but also in the overall organization of the activities. This encompassed the timeliness of group meetings, the orderliness of seating and the code of conduct for the staff and in the 16 decisions that all Grameen members had to recite. One major part of the criticism about Grameen was that if god forbid a member’s enterprise failed, she would be worse off than when she started because there was not compromise on default due to inability to pay. A nation-wide calamity shook them up on the genuine triggers that could lead to a default. Yunus talking about the Daniel Pearl article says:

“Gradually we started noticing that our rules were not appropriate for the borrowers in this situation. We took a long preparation to develop a new flexible system and field-tested it over months. We finally introduced the new system in September of 2000”. This essentially meant that Grameen had made some significant design changes before the article. Unfortunately it was not widely known, but came into sharp focus after Pearl’s article.

Yunus has time and again said that building Grameen was not easy. Reaching out to a large number of poor was time consuming and has warned against rapid growth. Grameen tried out various mechanisms and burnt their hand several times in arriving at the current model. Even now, Grameen is possibly constantly learning. What Grameen did to the business model was that by putting discipline on the top of the agenda, made microfinance fairly risk free. Given the success of Grameen, we find several replicators across the world trying to get the model off the ground.

The other set of criticisms of Grameen come from the fact that their orientation towards enterprise loans excludes people who do not want to do enterprise. There have been some stories where people got into Grameen and with a failed enterprise had to borrow at usurious rates from moneylenders in order to stick to the Grameen regimen. There are researchers who have said that some people do not even join Grameen for the fear of failure. Evidence of this is available in a book edited by Yunus way back in 1982, if only we do a subtle reading. The book Jorimon and Others has several real life biopics of grameen borrowers. While the story is of their triumph the intermediary period of joining Grameen could not have been smooth. I give two quotes from the book:

From Sakhina’s new identity:

…Even this [assurance from others] did not give here too much courage. She went to Shinguria to get the opinion of her relatives. Her mother and sister were terrified at the idea and strongly opposed it. They said “If you take the money and cannot repay it……

…..Granted she took the loan, how would she use the money …?

….Sakhina worried so much before joining the group that she did not sleep for 2 or 3 nights. …her resolution to join a loan group did not solve all her problems. Sakhina’s joining was not an easy task and presented all sorts of doubts in the minds of other members….

…On the day she received the cash she was wild with happiness… but at the same time it created a fear and doubt that made her heart tremble and her throat go dry….. Sakhina silently placed the money in Rahima’s hands and after a few minutes said “I am scared”… Sakhina was so frightened that she kept the fact of her receiving the money a secret…

From the life of Fuljan:

“Fuljan was not a permanent resident of the locality, and on top of that, her relatives opposed her getting a loan. All this created obstacles for Fuljan which caused the long delay in her receiving the money.

At the same time Fuljan was also afraid – “Suppose I cannot pay my weekly instalments? Suppose the loan money is used up in some other way?”

These are criticisms that Grameen has taken in its stride over a period of time.

The only downside of the success of Grameen is that it created several clones, not only in Bangladesh but also elsewhere in the world including India. The replicators [as all replicators do] picked up the outer shell and possibly not the soul. So we have an ASA in Bangladesh which operates the microcredit programme in an absolutely codified and standardized manner, like one would run a poultry farm. Grameen for instance is 96% owned by the borrowers with the Government of Bangladesh having the other 4%. Most of the replicators do not have such an ownership structure. Though Grameen Bank does not distribute dividend and the money is used in further development and growth, theoretically the wealth so created belongs to the poor owners. Most of the replicators in India are privately owned and eventhough they claim that the money is reinvested like Grameen. But there is a potential for skimming away the wealth so generated. This has created immense damage to the image of the original Grameen.

There has been a criticism that microcredit has led to excessive consumerism. It might be true in some cases that replicate the Grameen model, particularly in some places like Guntur in India. But the original Grameen design was that, while it was a credit machine, it was clearly monitored, recorded and used for productive-enterprise purposes. The question several people ask is what is then the difference between moneylending and microcredit. While there are basic and philosophical differences, even discounting all those my own stand is that any day moneylending in the organized space is much better than money lending through faceless entities. If there is an issue, the formal organizations can be regulated, can be called to table and can be engaged with. So anything that happens in the formal space with elements of transparency is much better than the informal sector.

My own appreciation of Grameen is through secondary sources and I have never had the opportunity to visit Bangladesh. However, I have followed the literature on Grameen and have had the opportunity to clarify several issues with Professor Yunus himself. I sent him the first email when the Daniel Pearl story broke out with a set of questions. He responded indicating somebody from the office would respond in a couple of days, but even before his office could respond, I got a second personal mail from him with all the answers. Another instance was when he delivered the commonwealth lecture I had a couple of issues and Yunus was kind enough to personally respond and interact with me on mail. For an extremely busy person, this was quite remarkable. Not only did he respond, but also cared to remember that three of my colleagues from IIMA had visited Grameen a decade and a half ago, when most of the world had not heard of his microfinance model. That was indeed some remarkable memory.

For somebody who was getting to be skeptical about how the clones of Grameen were going about their business in the country and getting to be a little questioning about the original model, it has been good news. Because after the Nobel, I took time to revisit the basics, read up his autobiography and also looked at some of his writings. As I look back, possibly I was drifting in my assessment and the Nobel brought back some really Noble thoughts in me. This certainly is a moment of happiness and a cause for celebration.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Bangalore

2006-09-06T17:08:00.000+05:30

I had picked up Janaki Nair's book "The Promise of a Metropolis - Bangalore's Twentieth Century" quite a while ago from Sankars. It is a well researched book and unlike Narendra Luther's account of Hyderabad about which I had written a while ago, this one is more academic and rooted in the scholarly tradition. For me it is a bit difficult to identify with a single city - Bangalore was the place where I spent nearly half my life - while the other part was spread out in Mysore, Udupi, Hyderabad Anand and Ahmedabad. I also have over a period of time developed a fascination for Mumbai and Delhi where I go often on some work or the other. However two cities that have endured my interest are Hyderabad and Bangalore. Janaki Nair's book is quite interesting - not only because of the serious research that has gone in, but also for making a Bangalorean's memory fresh by putting in several photographs of the city in its various stages of growth.

While the book focusses most on the twentieth century as a time period for looking at Bangalore, it is difficult to wriggle away from either the past or the present continuum. Being one of the the fastest growing cities, a city that had intentions of having a planned growth and also being cosmopolitan for ages, the issues that a city like Bangalore throws up are interesting and diverse. Janaki Nair starts off by looking at two parts of the city - Bengaluru and Bangalore - the older part where the so called "natives" stayed and the cantonment area which was a world of its own. Unlike Hyderabad, Delhi and Ahmedabad, Bangalore does not have an "old city" which is in the walled area and a new city that is more modern. It is just that these two areas grew simultaneously. Therefore it is but fair for the author to make this comment: "For a settlement that has been in existence for over four and a half centuries, the city of Bengaluru boasts of few physical markers or monumental sites as visible signs of its antiquity.." Unlike the Qutb Minar and Charminar, Bangalore's identity is largely drawn by much more modern structures - Vidhana Soudha and the Public Utility Building. Unlike the new Birla Mandir in Hyderabad taking over the pride of place from Charminar in providing an alternative identity to the city, the structures that dot Bangalore are much more secular in nature. [Does that help? I am not sure]. The identity of Bangalore is more as a planned "garden city". So how do we depict this as an icon?

However, Nair does bring in the cultural divide between the cantonment area and the "pete" quite well. The pete part being more conservative, and ethnic. The cantonment part being largely populated by immigrants - largely British, but also an entire group of multi-cultural immigrants from elsewhere in India. Thus while the pete part of it was largely inhabited by Kannadigas with a little bit of Telugu thrown in, the cantonment area would hardly see Kannada - she says

"In the old city area successive waves of immigrants from diverse language and ethnic backgrounds, had settled into a more or less composite culture dominated by Kannada, and in much smaller part, Urdu speakers. In the Cantonment, to which large numbers migrated from Madras Presidency in response to the burgeoning opportunities for employment and trade, a new division of labour between languages was achieved under the dominance of English an administrative language and the language of power. The immigrant majority of Tamil speakers retained their language for domestic and cultural usues. There was widespread use of Telugu and Urdu as well, though the language of the reigon Kannada, was rarely heard in the cantonment area, as labour was drawn exclusively from the regions beyond Mysore."

As such one can see this even in the symbols in the pete area and cantonment. Nair aptly identifies how the streets and localities in the pete area are named - much more rooted in the local culture - with aralepete, balepete, nagarthpete and chikkapete being the names that can be immediately recalled. Consider the other side, which was largly named in English - Fraser Town, Cox Town, Cooke Town... Thus the issue of so-called "outsiders" in Bangalore rooted not only in history, but also in the story of Bangalore's growth. It could be seen as a city with a cosmopolitan culture right from the beginning, or as an occupation of the local space by "outsiders".

But clearly there was a dividing line between the pete and the Towns and the crossover was not easy. The crossover to the Cantonment area for a person from Pete in olden days meant the thrill of alcohol and meat, a forbidden cinema or an outing into the coffee or tea clubs. The pete on the other hand represented a more conservative outlook. However there is one interesting observation that is made by Nair quoting DVG that while in the pete, eating in hotels was a taboo, it eventually became an necessity following an epidemic of plague wherein people sent off their wives and children away from the city. Well, what started as a dire necessity has now possibly transformed into a way of life - with eating out and having a by-two coffee becoming such a functional necessity in the city.

The municipalities of city and cantonment merged to become a corporation in 1949, thereby bridging the divide between two parts of the city - at least adminstratively. Following that, Bangalore somehow became a centre for a whole lot of public sector entreprises, largely promoted and run by the centre.

Two interesting features represent these public sector enterprises - these were not the smoke emitting mills as in Mumbai or Ahmedabad. Instead there were based more on intellect and also represented the modern enterprise in a way. Hindusthan Machine Tools did everything from tractors to machine tools to watches, but it was watches that they were known for. I remember in the seventies, owning a HMT watch was as much a prestige as having a Bajaj Chetak. ITI, BEL and BHEL were not "factories" in the sense that we had known them. Possibly the existence of Tata Institute [or the Indian Institute of Science as it is formally known] did foster some sort of a relationship between the academia and the enterprises. Even IIM Bangalore was set up to cater to the public sector enterprises - and it then had sectoral specialisation in Agriculture, Education, Energy, Habitat and Human Settlements, Transportation and Health. No wonder that the study that Nair quotes most about Bangalore's growth was authored by VK Tewari who was then at IIM Bangalore. Given that all these public sector enterprises were [apart from doing business] largely required to generate employment and were central establishments, possibly hired people from diverse geographical backgrounds - thereby strengthening the cosmopolitan nature of the city.

If all these were state establishments the "son of the soil" pressures possibly would have been much greater. Infact Nair notes this by saying that a regional bourgeoisie was only weakly present. Nair also makes one more interesting observation drawing from Tewari and Prakasha Rao - that Bangalore by passed the smokestack stage of industrialisation which was possibly a reason for the absence of a proletarian culture in the city. Most of the workers of these new industries could be slotted in middle class, having several privileges that a comparitive private sector employee in Mumbai, for instance might not have had. Therefore the nature of growth was also somewhat dictated by the past of

being able to handle the knowledge sector
having the tradition of accepting outsiders and thus an inherent cosmopolitanism that made it easier for multinationals and other knowledge based industries to set up shop here.

The fact that these public sector enterprises came up all around the periphery of the city and the fact that most of them operated buses to ferry passengers, the housing of the employees were spread out across the city. Only certain areas like the Peenya Industrial estate and before that the Rajajinagar industrial estate were earmarked for production purposes. For a while Bangalore continued to have its vast spaces as is evident in the planned portion of Jayanagar and on the edges of KR Road. These spaces are now closing in, and as Nair observes later in the book are being provided more in the private domain than in the public domain.

How is it that Bangalore has an entire range of eating joints on the organised space? When I say organised space I am not referring to the roadside pushcart type of outfits but more of the types which would have a registration and a legal existence. Of all the cities that I have visited Bangalore has the best range - from the cheapest Darshinis to the expensive Pizza Hut types of snack/meal joints. However is there a history in the fact that Bangalore restaurants have mastered the art of providing functional and inexpensive food? While Nair does not refer to it directly it might be the fact that eating out [starting with an early morning breakfast, including a wait at the Mavalli Tiffin Rooms] was quite an acceptable thing and it provided volumes. At the same time, in the Emergency days when there were controls on end-prices at which food could be sold [with the overall quantity and weight specified] most of the outfits may have learnt the art of optimisation of inputs to provide a minimum quality output, thereby exercising tremendous control on costs.

Look at the business that a Darshini does - the service is self-help, no seating and thus the customer is being functional and the food moves real fast. And I also guess that they operate with minimal cutlery because the alacrity with which these outfits in particular and Udupi type of restaurants in general clear the plates just after you have consumed the last spoon of food indicates that they are desparate to take the plates to serve the next customer on line!! There is an interesting discussion on "eating out" that comes in every now and then in Nair's write up - almost as frequently as one has a by-two coffee in Bangalore.

Nair then talks about the movements in Bangalore - also ultimately ending up discussing Kannada Nationalism. What the book does to a person like me is to help me look at connections that are beyond the obvious. Ofcourse being a good academic she does establish most of the connections herself, but spares a few for my kite flying - obviously strong connections cannot be established there. She talks about the Samudaya movement and the personalities that it threw up during and after the emergency. Interestingly while both the leftists and the right wing activists were at the receiving end of the emergency atrocities, it was the left that effectively responded. Samudaya and its offshoots brought in a whole new theatre to Karnataka and did throw up extremely talented theatre personalities. Most of these personalities were rooted in culture and used culture as a medium of protest and education. In a way it could have been the first seeds of Kannada Nationalism that we were to see later, but it was not so.

It could have been because while the left constituency represented possibly multi-cultural "exploited" factory workers the language it used for communication was Kannada thereby opening up the possibility of creating a lanugage based identity. However Nair observes that it was not to be. She says "However, this vibrant and inclusive movement, with its critical style of theatre activity in Kannada faded into relative insignificance by the early 1980s, when language ceased to be the medium through which claims to a more democratic polity could be made." She then goes on to say that the Kannadiga identity crystallised around the Gokak agitation in 1982. The only like that Nair fails to identify is that the personalities that were active in theatre and literature were also active in the Gokak movement. Gokak movement in a way brought people with very diverse ideologies together on the issue of language in educaion. However, the writers and theatre personalities stopped at the footsteps of Gokak movement, while the Kannada nationalists then led by Chidananda Murthy through the Kannada Shakti Kendra took it to the next level, which went much beyond just demanding the primacy for the language but creating a space for the speakers of the language demand economic and other rights. The Mahishi committee that recommended reservation for Kannadigas in joby cementing the position even harder.

While there was clamour for Kannada and the visibility for Kannadigas in the city, firstly led by Kannada Shakti Kendra and later by Kannada Rakshana Vedike - there were other attempts that were being made to see that the City could be managed better. This somewhat contradictory aspect is evident in the constitution of the Bangalore Agenda Task Force by the then Chief Minister Krishna. The BATF in a sense was truly representative of the cosmopolitan nature of Bangalore. Several members of the Task Force were not Kannadigas in the true sense, but they were Bangaloreans alright. The task force showed that like all large capital cities Bangalore was also moving away from localised considerations towards being a City of the country. Similar is the case with Mumbai and to an extent we find Hyderabad also moving in that direction. The constitution of BATF was moving towards identifying the citizens of the city as Stakeholders and thus was weaving a larger web of inclusion. However this agenda was somewhat disbanded when the Krishna government fell. The government that took over had to project a non-metro sort of an image and therefore the programmes could not necessarily be Bangalore Centric. We see that as we move our focus away from Bangalore, we appear to be nearer to the language. Thus the divide within the state is not only Bangalore versus the other parts of the state, but also Kannadigas versus others. However, the Kannadiga versus others fades into oblivion when we move out of Bangalore. Therefore as time goes by Bangalore will be witness to more and more assertion of the Kannada Nationalism. This would get sharper as the economic opportunities increase leading to a polarisation. I had argued elsewhere that when Kannadigas get the opportunities of the new economic boom, they would be seen as a part of a larger crowd without a clear linguistic identity, while the people who would be left out by the way side will largely be locals and thus language would turn out to be a stronger rallying point.

Nair then also talks about the use of public space. Bangalore also has had a menacing growth of temples. I remember as a kid that Netkallappa Circle, the circle near Bunworld in Malleswaram and Sajjan Rao Circle were actually mini playgrounds or parks. A temple has also cropped up in Lakshmana Rao park [near Nanda Theatre], though the encroachment is much smaller to the overall size of the park. And of course the famous temple that has cropped up in Residency Road. However over a period of time several places are now occupied by temples. What starts as smaller places of worship seem to have really grown beyond expectations creating a pressure on other civic amenities. While other forms of usurping of public space could be dealt with if there is a will, it is difficult to deal with issues that touch on faith. She illustrates the instance of how the removal of Highway Anjaneya at Babasanpalya, Ring Road was soon followed by a reinstallation as the number of accidents increased soon after the removal of the idol.

As time goes by and public spaces are being encroached not only by faith, but by the commercial needs of the city, the need to maintain an environmental and ecological balance and the provision of public services is being pushed on to the private domain. Several of Bangalore's tanks have disappeared giving way to concrete structures. Overall water availability is a problem and finding space for a deep clean breath of fresh air amidst concrete structures is also turning out to be a problem. However, the response of the State is oriented more towards forcing private investments where ideally there should have been public investments, and prevention of encroachments. The private investments pan out in the nature of having Sumps with power guzzling motors, captive borewells, restricting the building space in a plot - and asking private properties to have green spaces and in possibly insisting on rainwater harvest systems. Nothing wrong with doing this as a general policy but aren't these technically private investments for the collective folly of successive governments. It would have been perfectly justified if these were done in addition to the prevention of legal and illegal encroachments on green spaces and water bodies. An other unrelated area where private investments are forced is in having invertors for almost every house, because we never know when the power goes off. I have been in Ahmedabad for years and have never felt the need to have a general back up system because the power failure there has only been at an average of once a year!!

Nair then talks about the overall architecture and aesthetics within the city. The entire discussion on what creates an identity for the city is somewhat interesting. However, it could be a problem when there is no thematic continuity. [What is a building like Vishveshvaraya Towers doing in Ambedkar Veedhi? How integrated is the red Atthara Kutcheri with Vidhana Soudha? Or for that matter does the GPO represent an architectural continuity at least with Vidhana Soudha??] Unlike most of the other cities, Bangalore does not have a history of great buildings from the past. The Bangalore Palace has always been in the periphery and too enclosed to make it an icon for Bangalore. Thus, the most visible icons of architecture that pictorially define the city are all modern constructions. This may be just as well.

We are not talking about Jaipur where the area around hawa mahal continues to be maintained with some elements of heritage. I also remember that Quebec City also had restrictions on how its heritage could be retained. Two things in Quebec were striking. You could go on a horse drawn carriage [an eqivalent of a Victoria of Mumbai] by paying through credit card.. this is tradition meeting modernity!! The other thing striking [it was striking because it was not!] was the size of the golden arches of McDonalds on the main street. No, these were not huge, and they did not even have a red background - the signage was like any other shop on the street, restricted only to the top of the entrance. Bangalore could have maintained some of its older streets as heritage zones. The ones that come to my mind immediately are the older portion of Mahatma Gandhi Road, Commercial Street and even Avenue Road which should really be converted into a walk only zone.

The next part of the book shifts to the somewhat controversial topic of Kannada Nationalism - with linguistic identity playing a main role. She quotes DR Nagaraj who identified two streams of Kannada Nationalism - one represented by Alur Venkata Rao which was termed as spiritual nationalism which advocated for an inclusive approach while giving a predominant status for Kannada. The other stream is what is termed as the fear-centred nationalism represented by Chidanandamurthy and Shakti Kendra. We have seen that the fabric of Bangalore is woven with people from different linguistic identities, for a long time. This included a number of non-Kannadiga employees in the big four public sector units. Indeed Nair identifies that the in-migration to Bangalore has been happening largely from the old presidency areas rather than from other parts of rural Karnataka. The fact the Bangalore is a capital of Karnataka makes it sensitive when it comes to language. This ultimately turns out to be a question of occupying the spaces and gaining them from other occupants.

Over a period of time, we have found that issues that do not directly affect the language also are being articulated in linguistic terms. The Gokak agitation was one which received wide spread support both from activists and intelligentsia. But that really provided a platform for the creation of a more militant language identity. This later manifested itself in the Church and extended itself to issues on Cauvery water [which had much more to do with a geographical water dispute, but got itself into language based dispute], telecast of Urdu in Doordarshan. There is also an ongoing issue on the unveiling of the Tiruvalluvar statue in Bangalore with certain give and take with Tamilnadu, and surprisingly this was made to be one of the demands during the Rajkumar kidnap controversy by none other than the forest Brigand Veerappan. While the kidnapping of Rajkumar did not lead to a major riot, the feelings it evoked were no less than that of a time of riot and increased the cleavage between Kannada and other languages, particularly Tamil.

The increasing polarisation between the secular opportunities being provided by the new age economic enterprises, including IT continues on an inclusive basis [including a fair number of Kannadigas], while those who get left behind seem to be exclusively Kannadigas, making it easier to use a visible symbol of Language in agitating against what could essentially be a denial of economic activity and employment. Of course, this is a complex issue and Nair deals with it with poise trying to analyse the counterpoints with a scholarly flair. I myself have written about this in a recent write up in Kannada on a discussion in a literary journal Deshakala.

There is a very nice educative chapter on the gender aspects with some interesting discussion on what she calls as "kineticization" and the entire movement pertaining to the protests of the Ms. World contest that was held in Bangalore years ago. Somehow, this is an area where I would not venture into a great discussion as I feel ill equipped to get into a debate on this.

Nair concludes this wonderful treatise with a critique of the role of BATF and the public-private initiatives. For an old time Bangalorean this was a wonderful experience to be with the book, reflect on how the city has changed, and also reflect upon some very noticeable changes that do miss your eye when one is not reflective. While she has talked about spaces and town planning she somehow misses the point that Bangalore has the largest number of ill conceived flyovers. The Double Road- Residency Road Flyover, the one built opposite National High School amidst strong protests from local communities, the Ananda Rao Circle Flyover and the Underpass near Sangam Theatre. And of course the folly seems to extend to Malleswaram, thereby having an equitable distribution of ill conceived roads all across the city. Possibly she completed the book before some of these actually saw the light of the day!

Having returned to live in Bangalore after a long absence, amidst all this chaos I find that I still can have a decent morning walk in Lalbagh, a cheap breakfast in Upahara Darshini, afford a trip to Vidyarthi Bhavan and reach my workplace without sweating out too much.. a welcome relief from a city that sees 40+ temperatures and no rains. Bangalore is still beautiful and I hope we would be able to save it. After this treatise, can we have a little bit of declogging of Bannerghatta Road please??

Travelling with Che [Motorcycle Diaries - Part II]

2006-08-13T10:09:00.000+05:30

[For those who are fatigued reading my endless travellogue, this is to assure that I am back to books, where I started]

I had written about Motorcycle Diaries in a post a while ago. This was after having read Che's book and seeing the movie. However I chanced upon a companion book to Motorcycle Diaries recently at Sankar's in Bangalore. This book is written by Che's companion in the journey Alberto Granado. Compared to the book by Che, which is rather insipid, this book makes a much more interesting reading. Apparently Alberto was also advising the people who made the movie. Che's book was published in 1967 and Alberto's only in 1978!! That is a long time to be in the cans for a journey that was undertaken in 1951-52. The translator's note says that Alberto had an advantage over Che as he could revise the book and look at the journey with some hindsight. The irony of it all was that the English translation of Alberto's account was published only in 2003. He was possibly resurrected by the film makers and thus the book could also see the light of the day.

The book is insightful and presents a different view of what one perceived from the movie and Che's book. In the movie Alberto is depicted as a happy-go-lucky type and Che as much more intense. The possible reason that it is much more to much more with the future of Che [and the journey seen in retrospect] than his own role and outlook in the journey. Alberto was six years older than Che, had completed his education and was dissatisfied with what he was doing then. He was possibly more mature and ruled with the head while Che was possibly more spontaneous and fiery. These are lines from the introductory part of the book:

"I am not very happy with this state of affairs. An inner voice is telling me to pack a few things and set out to see America. The years I spent in Chanar, with my dream of doing something for the lepers, quelled my desire to seek new horizons. But now that I've been transferred from a place I loved, and where I was loved, and sent to a hospital where everything is cold and calculating, where first they ask whether a patient can pay for tests and only later whether he needs them or not, I need broader horizons.

In contrast Che is still studying medicine. He is daring and willing to take risks. Possibly for Che this was an adventure. When Alberto suggests a road journey to discover the geography Ernesto's reaction is described in the following words:

"I told him my plan, he said he didn't give a shit about the future I saw for him with a doctor who, though brilliant, was trapped in the confines of the medical trade. And with that, Ernesto flung himself into a war dance, whooping and yelling, and the pact between us was sealed...

Clearly the journey was more of a curiosity for Che, while it was much more purposeful for Alberto. For instance in the very beginning of the journey they stay with Tamargo - a friend of Alberto, who was with him at the university for five years. Alberto is greatly disappointed that the person who was active in democratising the students' union is now

"completely absorbed by the loathsome society around him... charging more for lab tests than they are worth.... and seems to take morbid pleasure in going against the dictates of his conscience..."

That does not mean that Alberto does not have a sense of humor depicted in the movie. Take this gem from the book - describing a character he says

"He was a man, but everything about him, his voice, hair, breasts and the way he walked was that of a woman. He must have more Xs in his chromosomes than a mathematics text book.

Though Alberto did not get into guerilla warfare, and possibly was not involved in activism that was evident in his school days, it is clear where his heart was. While his career after the trip was largely oriented towards the service of science mostly in Cuba, the book has enough indications where his orientations were. For instance in one place he says about one Mr. Molina Lucco:

"he wants to go to Argentina - to earn money, he says - but doesn't realise that he'll never get rich with that heart of gold of his, because individual wealth is nothing but exploitation of man by man"

Unlike Motorcycle Diaries, this book has a thick description of their visit to the Chuquicamata mines. It has a good description of their working conditions, their chat with the union workers, the ill effects of working in a mining operation and the pitiable conditions that they work in while the "Yankees" are enjoying themselves with golf courses, special schools and having houses that are not pre-fabricated. So though Alberto sets out on the journey largely as a tour to understand the state of health - largely related to leprosy, he, alongwith Ernesto discovers much more about people and much more than about their health. He says

"Life is a great teacher and shows you more than a hundred books". In a way Alberto's narration is much more reflective and involved comparted to Ernesto's which is much more matter-of-fact.

This book does not seem to acknowledge the $15 story that was there in the movie. Possibly that was a part of the improvisation. Neither does it acknowledge what is shown in the movie as a whore wooing Alberto with the story of Bufeo. He however seems to admit: "The dark young beauty is still raising havoc among the ugly sex with her frequent, daring changes of attire, her cheek, her fluttering lashes. Fuser and I are no exception to the rule. I myself am particularly susceptible to the tropical beauty..."

Both undertook the same journey, one kept inept diaries but moved quickly into hard core action. The other kept deeply reflective notes and stayed on with a constructive role in the field of medicine. But the latter could possibly not have happened but for Ernesto's own actions. The journey had a lasting but differing effects on both of them. Of course Alberto recognises this difference somewhere in the book. In Machu Picchu, after reading a book with Simon Bolivar's letters Alberto tells Ernesto:

"You know what I'm going to do? I am going to marry Maria Magdalena. Since she's a descendant of Manco Capac II, I'll become Manco Capac III. Then I'll form a pro-Indian party, I'll take all these people to the coast to vote, and that'll be the start of the new Tupac Amaru revolution, the American Indian revolution!"

Ernesto looks back and asks:

"Revolution without firing a shot? You're crazy.."

At this moment Alberto remembers what Ernesto had said almost a decade before this incident during the student days while they were secondary school students where Alberto was arrested for holding a protest demonstration along with others belonging to the students' union. Alberto asks Ernesto and others visiting him to organise high school students to give a call for their release. At that moment Ernesto says:

"Go out and march unarmed so they can beat the shit out of us? Not on your life. I'm not going without a piece."

Clearly there was a significant difference between the reflective, silent Ernesto Che Guvera, and the more articulate Alberto. Physically Che was haunted with Asthama and those attacks would make him weak and vulnerable, but that did not break his innate belief in "armed revolution". Ernesto, who after the Cuban revolution went on to become the Governor of Cuba's central bank could have remained there if he wanted, but chose to take to action once again, only to perish in Bolivia. Alberto continued to contribute with his own work, without compromising on the overall sense of equity. This is what he writes [referring to the film] as a note to the English translation of the book:

"But the most important fact, and the real reason that prompted me to include this preface, is that in each of the countries where the film was shot, it was done using local bit players, workers and advisers for each category, thus creating jobs at a time when there is massive unemployment as a result of the neo-liberal policies of those countries' governments.

And a further cause for satisfaction is the fact that all the installations built at Santa Maria - the electricity supply, the meeting rooms, the pathways made of timber, the distribution of running water, all the grid that provides lighting to the village, and all that was built for the film - remain in place for the enjoyment of the local inhabitants, and as a result will enhance the living contitions of each and every one of them.

So it can be said that history once again proves that one should be true to one's principles and beliefs."

No wonder the book is dedicated to Che.

Holiday and Back to Work 6

2006-08-09T16:20:00.000+05:30

This was the last day of our holiday. We had the Dubbare agenda weighing on us, and the entire return was planned around trying to visit Dubbare. I realised that we had almost spent an extra day in the entire holiday - as we had lost time on the way to Coorg at Kushalnagar due to the strike, lost an evening due to the rains and the re-visit to Dubbare had cost us almost half a day. But there were no regrets as we had intended this holiday to be fairly relaxed and partly disorganised. From Dubbare we were contemplating what to do. I was quite keen to spend a day in Mysore for old time's sake - visit the Chamundi Hill and the Zoo if possible. But Arjun was already suffering from the early signs of a cold and we really did not want him to suffer from exhaustion.

We therefore decided that we would just go back, skirting Mysore, visit Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary and move on to Bangalore. The journey was long and we had asked Hemant to switch of the airconditioner for Arjun. It was a bit stuffy and the road between Periyapattana and Hunsur was terrible. As there was lots of construction going on, we were confined to a dirt track. Eventually we reached Belagola, the outskirts of Mysore and had lunch there. There was a sign board inviting us to a restaurant in Belagola. Given the amount of advertisement, I thought that this would be some sort of a up market place. However, when we went in, we were disappointed. It was an okay place, square in shape, with a transparent roof in the centre and fully covered spaces on all four sides. It was more like what we would call a "Thotti Mane" in Kannada, with the central portion almost looking like a backyard. The food was so-so.

From Belagola we went to Ranganathittu. I had seen this place several times as a kid, but I was visiting the sanctuary after a long time. It was a good time to visit. We went in and picked up Arjun's binoculars and went to the boat. The experience between Kabini and Ranganathittu was stark. Both were establishments run by the state, but Kabini looked so professional. Ranganathittu had a problem right from the entry. There were too many people having a picnic, opening up food and littering all over the place. Yes, one may argue the Kabini is prohibitive and possibly should be made more accessible to more people. However, is this always a trade off? Can we not have places that are accessible to most of the people interested but still keep the environs clean? We could see the sta[o]rk difference.

Once we got into the boat for a ride, we could see more of these differences. Firstly there were plenty of life jackets, but none of the tourists were made to wear one. All the life jackets in the boat looked brand new - and had never been used. Arjun grumbled about the safety factor and the need. We also casually asked how deep the water was and we were told that it could be around 80 feet - certainly a fit case for having a life jacket!!

The second part of it was about how our boatman described the birds we saw - in Kabini, the description was complete with it proper zoological name and all associated habits. In Ranganathittu all that we could gather was that "the pink chested bird you see over there has come from Siberia" or "the long beaked bird has come from Germany..." not a good way of getting lay tourists interested in Ornithology. And this of course is one of the best bird sanctuaries in India!!

Ranganathittu has lots of crocodiles and we saw quite a few of them during our boat ride. However the most telling image was that of a crocodile killing a bird. It happened in a split second and before the bird could realise it was trapped by the croc. I somehow could not take a picture because it happened under a thick shade and the light was insufficient.

By the time we returned from the boat ride, it appeared that the boatman-cum-guide was already grumbling and did not seem least interested in his job. This was quite a contrast to Shivanna who was so willing and enthusiastic on the boat.

From Ranganathittu it was back home for us. Gowri wanted to stop by at Jaanapada Loka near Ramanagaram. It was an interesting museum. Unfortunately we were there by around 5 pm and they were keen to close. Again, the museum had all the stuff that a folk arts museum must have but for the small element of professionalism. More people seem to be interested in visiting the Kamat's eatery next door than this. A bit of a tragedy for H N Nage Gowda who had built up this place with such care after his retirement from civil service.

We had a long drive from Ramanagaram. It almost took two hours from Kengeri to reach home. The traffic in Bangalore has become unbearable and we bore the brunt of it after a long holiday. On reaching, it was time for letting our hair down. We decided that we could all go out for dinner, taking appa along. We had a small nice dinner in Inchara at the other end of the town. By the time we were back, Hemant said that he had to rush, he had got the next assignment. He had to go to Vasanthanagar and pick up the next party for a trip to Mysore. He would have one more night out and I hoped he will be able to manage it. For all the professionalism shown by Vishal of Skyway, flogging the drivers did not seem to end. Nobody thought that the driver might actually need a break. Not a perfect ending for our holiday to know that Hemant would be up and awake again... but well the holiday itself had started with Hemant in a similar state.

We have become great fans of Jungle Lodges, so the next trip is to K-Gudi - in BR Hills. Watch this space for a report after October.