The Fast Train, The Slow Train

It's been a long 3 months, but I'm back. It's been a phase of transition- moving from the dusty Kolwan Valley to the churn of Silicon Valley, with trips to New york and Los Angeles somewhere in between. Now I find myself working for the Environmental Protection Agency in Sacramento, in the heart of California, where summer is quickly becoming very unforgiving.
My mind is slowly starting to refocus. That's a good thing, because there's a lot of exciting stuff going on around the State Capitol. The buzz of activity reminds me of the energy in Nanegaon every time the Gomukh jeep hobbled into town. Althoguh the contexts are so vastly different, the sounds of progress are unmistakably similar.
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Working in the world of policy is quite a world apart from working in development. Even though my two jobs have striking immediate similarities- working for energy efficiency, and towards a clean energy future, these generalisms obviously don't capture the huge disparity in mindsets between the two worlds. In India, every situation was character and situation-specific, solutions were prescribed on a case by case basis, and problems were solved through direct communication. In Sac, there is the meta-approach that comes with policy-making, where trends and averages trump specifics and details. There is a sense of reconciliation with the democratic process, and victories, although far greater in scope than their counterparts in India, often feel far less satisfying. It is a really fascinating world, where the pace of progress feels slow, but constant and unstoppable, sort of like a trundling steam engine. I know I'd like to be a part of the policy world some day, but on the face of it, I think grassroots work appeals to me more at this stage.
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Every day, I commute to and from work on the Amtrak- a luxurious passenger train that whizzes through the Sacramento Valley. I try to sit on the upper level, and although recently I've surrendered to sleep on most of my journeys, during my first few weeks I was absolutely entranced by the view out of the train windows. During the short 1.5 hour journey, the train passes through the grunge and urban grittiness of Albany and El Cerrito, the serene waters of the inner San Pablo Bay dotted by sailboats and cargoships, the bridge into the shadowy blue mountains of Benicia, which eventually flatten out into the grassy flatlands of the Sacramento Valley, and the agricultural lands of Davis and Vacaville. Its pretty special to see this much diversity of scenery, and just out the window I saw everything from deer to jackrabbits to horses and sheep.
But the same route is also marked with a very different kind of scenery, the kind that never fails to remind me of the big players in the US landscape- the refineries, generation facilities and research units of big oil, big electricity and big agribusiness. Most people know of agribusiness giant Monsanto's headquarters near Sacramento, and as you roll into Benicia and Martinez, you enter a jungle of electricity generation facilities and oil refineries. As most of my work at the EPA surrounds climate change and the clean energy programs pushed by both Governor Schwarzenegger and President Obama, these sights serve as an alarm that the bubble of Sacramento is just that- a bubble- and the real Green Revolution might take a very, very long time.
It is understandable that for conventional oil and electricity companies, it may be difficult to embrace clean energy and tolerate the costs that come with the new enthusiasm in Sacramento (and Washington) for curbing emissions and cleaning up our act. They are the bulwark that the American empire has been built on for the last fifty or sixty years, so the new changes aren't about re-decorating the house- they're about tearing apart and restructuring the foundation.
What is less clear to most, however, is the role of big agribusiness and the agriculture sector in the campaign for clean energy. The Waxman Markey draft bill- an all-encompassing bill to curb carbon emissions and pave the way towards a clean energy future, is due to go up in the House Agricultural Commmittee, and most expect it to see a pretty tough fight there. But why? The agricultural sector isn't even one of the capped sectors in the cap and trade program to curb carbon emissions. Most of the regulation falls on big industry, transportation and electricity.
All sensible points- but government is where sense starts to melt away, and give way to politics. Most of the Agricultural contention comes from the issue of offsets, which are essentially credits delivered to capped entities in order to meet compliance obligation in return for investment in carbon emission reducing projects elsewhere. Under the proposed bill, these offsets could be used initially for about 30% of a capped entities compliance obligation, and eventually even upto 60%. Considering a carbon allowance market in the trillions- this means a lot of potential money for the offset program- and thus a lot of incentive for various interest groups to tailor the definition of offsets to suit themselves. Here's where the Agricultural Sector comes in. Dominated by a handful of big agribusiness companies, the lobby would like to see most offsets come from projects that are both domestic, and would help agribusiness. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this- unless of course these criteria do not result in real carbon reductions. Or, as some environmentalists claim- they may result in minor carbon sequestrations, but lead to greater Nitrogen emissions, which may be equally bad for the environment.
Unfortunately, most of the time these criticisms fall on deaf ears, as the eventual fate of the bill will most likely hinge on a suitable political compromise, rather than an objective scientific evaluation. Either way, its a good illustration of how something as cruicial as offsets can be blown this way and that by the breezes of Capitol lobbyists.
But I don't mean to sound too critical or cynical. We live in a democracy and it comes with the territory. And that's just the way it goes.
Good luck Waxman and Markey!
-Nikhil

First Rains, Farewells

Yesterday was my last day traveling down the winding road of rubble into Nanegaon. I leave later this week to return to Saratoga, a world apart from India, a universe apart from Kolwan Valley. With all the time I've spent here, I expected to be a little nostalgic. So in the late afternoon, I put my bag aside, and sat out in the porch overlooking the farm.
The chickens had just been released from the coop, and were frantically socializing around me. A couple birds stirred in the trees above, and Sarjaa, the dog with notoriously high BP took notice with the raise of one ear. In the background, I heard the bells around the cows in the shed ring as they nestled into the Napier hay.
And I realized, its really quiet. Even the distant whirr of a scooter engine couldn't disturb the stillness. A swift breeze dove into the trees above me, almost to counter my thoughts. I looked up, and saw the clouds rolling in in the distance.
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While working for Gomukh, I've had the opportunity to not only be involved in the renewable energy project, but also gain exposure to the organic vegetables project. The NGO mode of operations can just like that of a corporation, but at the grassroots level, it can often be like a family. Tasks are assumed and shared, hours are not counted, eating together is a priority, and the line between work life and home life is indistinct. My trips to Nanegaon were thus often like going home.

As the rains came in, I felt this strange sense of excitement. I was excited partly because these would be my first rains in India during this trip- I was worried that I would leave without seeing any. In India, rains have a positive connotation- they mean humidity, the smell of wet dirt, damp clothes, and a welcome cooling. Well, at least positive for me.
But I knew that the excitement was not only because of this anticipation. I think that in an agricultural area, inevitably, the rains mean something much more. It means free irrigation. My own germinating Napier grass aside, being in Nanegaon, I feel like some of the unsaid hopes and desires of the locals rubbed off onto me. Maybe it was the buzz in the air that infused that feeling, as the slow, light drops started to dot the soil. The feeling was magical.

The relationship of the villagers with the rain is also interesting. Rain is revered, but at the same time, seen as a bit of a tease. Even as the clouds rolled into the valley, they insisted that it would be a short rain, a passing sprinkle. It was only when the drops started to splash on our skin that they sprung into action, pulling out tarps and covering their bales of hay.
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When the rain passed, and the clouds started to migrate, we were finishing the work on setting up the digester. Finally, I felt like I was leaving after completing a significant part of the project. This digester had taken a long time to get going.
The sun, which had not quite set yet, was shrouded by the misty remnants of rain clouds, and actually looked like it was rising. The roosters about, and the freshness of the air, created this really amazing pseudo dawn- at 6:30pm. As the dawn gave way to darkness, I looked at the lights in the distance. I asked Jalender dada whether they were the lights of Pune, he laughed and said that they were the lights of the neighboring village.

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As we rolled over the Pirangut Ghat and into the lights and sounds of Pune, I wondered what my next visit to Nanegaon would be like. Change is unquestionable. Being a part of it for the last five months has been special.

-Nikhil

Labor

I don't think I've been back in India long enough to title this post 'Labour'.  American spellings persist. In any case, I recently publicized this blog to more people, and I've gotten some great feedback and responses in the last week or so. Thanks and keep them coming!  Interestingly, I got a couple questions about people who work in the village itself, and although I did my best to answer those questions via email, I feel like there's enough to say about the subject to post about it. So here are some thoughts. 

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A couple months ago, when our project in Nanegaon was in its early stages, a couple of us at Gomukh sat down to discuss the variables which would be included in defining sustainability criteria and making energy calculations for the project.   Land, water, and expense were an obvious few, but what struck me as slightly odd was labor. Mentioned in the same breath as the first few factors, it sounded like a measurable and quantifiable commodity.  The term 'Man-days'; the unit in which this variable would be recorded, added to the feeling that labor was a natural resource like any other on the list.  It didnt sound right. In the months since, I've seen that there is both validity, as well as great incompleteness to this perspective. 

Let's talk about the validity first.  In this great country of more than a billion people, there are a great number who are young, enterprising, and in need of a job. It is a diverse pool of labor, with a range of skilled and unskilled, educated and uneducated Indians.  But it often means that whatever the job, if you are willing to pay, then there's someone willing to help.   If you live in the city, and need carpentry or electrical work done in your flat, you can often find someone to do the job at a cheap rate within the building you live in. If you are a farmer in Maharashtra, you often no longer work your own field, but rather hire nomadic laborers who migrate from the tribal areas, and live in small tents on the fields during harvest season. And if you are an NGO like Gomukh, working on environmental projects in rural areas, much of your on-the-ground work is done by uncontracted, temporarily hired youngsters. It is an accepted fact, an automatic which goes without much saying or planning. 

Now lets talk about the incompleteness. First of all, I don't know about you, but to me, the term labor is slightly demeaning (recent moms...you're reading this wrong). It seems to imply very little value addition, which is quite often not the case. But more importantly, treating labor as a commodity or natural resource is incomplete because unlike other variables, people are a highly non-static, dynamic resource.  Not just in availability and number and other quantifiable indices, but the behavior of the variable is also highly dynamic. 

Now this wouldnt be very important if India was truly the vast labor pool it's made out to be, but in reality, this is a slightly simplistic view.  Labor- people- shift based on job availability, on earning potential, on quality of life, and on a variety of other factors, making it a little less reliable than it is made out to be. 

The situation in the Kolwan valley is a great example of this phenomenon.  Recently, it has been incredibly hard to find labor for Gomukh projects in the valley.  When asked why, the locals will often blame it on a one-off excuse- such as a religious holiday, or the 'baazaar day', or the heat.  Sometimes they'll just say something like "Well, it IS the second Thursday of the month", and you just have to nod your head in understanding, although you know there is nothing special about the second Thursday of the month.   But this belies a larger truth- that the youth of the valley are leaving for the cities. 

Why does this happen? Well, for one, Kolwan valley has a unique problem because it is situated closer and closer by the hour to the amoebic cities of Mumbai and Pune.  The other potential reasons are plenty- factories offer reliable wages, the city often promises a higher standard of living, the huge amount of respect earned.  I believe that the most important reason has to be the lack of meaningful opportunities for advancement, and the boredom in the village. No educated youngster is highly motivated to do hard farm work, especially when they see their parents generation contracting this work out to other laborers.  So unfortunately, while the unedcuated youth fall prey to alcoholism, the educated leave for the promise of the city- making 'labor' a very unsustainable resource. 

Is it a rational move? Not necessarily. The standard of living in the city as a rickshaw driver, as a factory worker, or as part of the informal economy is not high, and I would bet that most people would live longer if they remained in the village.

But at least they're doing something. 

That is why I believe that it is not only rural education which will spur the progress of rural development through locals, but also alongside the creation of diverse local income generating activities.  This will have to be championed by NGO's at first, who would train workers, promote businesses, and set up saving groups and microfinance banks. Eventually, one would hope that the area would be brought to a self-sustainable level. 

This way, instead of the cities sucking away the village's best, brightest, and youngest, some of that hope can be retained locally.  On the macro level, this will also mean that India's growth will happen  in a more inclusive and less polarized fashion. 

Remember the famous Youth that I posted about a while ago?  It's not just a Labor Force, its a Force in a total sense.  It just needs some marshalling. 

-Nikhil

Rural Electrification

After months, finally, I come to the subject which is the crux of my work here. But strangely enough, after being so drawn to the project for all these months, I am at a stage right now where I'm questioning the purpose of my work here. To explain that, let me take a detour for a second and talk about Slumdog Millionaire.

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I saw Slumdog a couple weeks ago, and similar, I think , to everyone else who watched the movie, I was moved by it. What was clearly a feel-good story, somehow left me feeling not so good. The images of the child-trafficking rackets have stayed with me- and even though it is a reality that is relatively obvious in India, the director must be credited for portraying the issue with enough shock value to jerk me and most others out of their seats.

The following few weeks have made me question the fundamentals of "social causes"- which unfortunately must be lumped under this ambiguous category in our world today. This is because some problems in our world have passed a critical point, and now can only be solved by the intervention of responsible global citizens. However, if we must identify these issues as "social causes", are there some causes that command a higher moral imperative than others? That is, can we classify some as more "important" than others? The answer is probably a very subjective yes.

On a less abstract level, it made me wonder if I could be spending my time in India using my capacities towards other, more demanding causes. No, I did not come to India to simply work on social causes...I came here to explore the world of environmental and agricultural policy, and as luck would have it, I am doing just that. However, now that I am here, I can't help but question whether I could be using my capacities towards other goals, comparing the benefits of my work with Gomukh to the benefits that could be reaped if I worked with an NGO combating child trafficking. It is a thought that I have been wrestling with, and even though in all likelihood I will continue to wrestle with it till I leave here, the fact that it bothers me this much tells me that one day, I will definitely use my capacities to work on the child trafficking issue.

But work continues.

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In India, as in most places in the world, electricity is mostly produced through coal and other fossil fuel sources. With the boom of industry in India (and in China) however, it is no wonder that the increased demand for electricity has led it to huge increases in pollution. Additionally, the electricity infrastructure in India is weak, it is heavily reliant on huge power plants (hydroelectric and coal), it suffers from a very incomplete grid, concentrated areas of heavy usage, a highly varied demand, and massive , massive pilferage. For these reasons, over the last 20 years or so, the Government of India established a few ministries (as they often do) to start addressing the problem. These ministries pumped out many plans, many draft policies, all calling for a transition to renewable energy and less reliance on fossil fuels. Of course, these are important initial steps, but regardless, they were very rarely followed up on, especially because of the oil boom of the 80's .

Now that the world has latched on to 'green', and private industry is starting to profit on renewable energy, not to mention the electricity situation in India hasnt gotten much better, there is a true effort to subsidize renewable energy projects and encourage them.

While there are many plans for grid expansion, grid availability doesnt necessarily mean reliable electricity, and certainly doesnt protect from massive load shedding.

So, grid-independent projects have become very important (and more plausible, following the Indian govenrments liberalization of the energy market about 10 years ago).

This is where we come in. We have been working on providing renewable energy for a couple villages in rural Maharashtra, using biomass as our starting feedstock. Of course, at first, any project with the catchwords 'biomass' and 'renewable' sounds pretty green, but this is not necessarily so, and that is something that I've learnt during my time here. One of my jobs is to establish sustainability criteria for the project- that is, make a green-sounding project truly green. It's an interesting task, and its pulled a lot of my MoBio knowledge from college.

Working on the project has also opened my eyes to a lot of the other initiatives in rural electrification that are currently going on. For example, I had the opportunity to visit a tribal village called Wasota, deep in rural Maharashtra. Ironically, it is right next to the Koyna dam, one of the largest hydroelectric projects in India. However, it did not have any electricity, and was listed as one of the Remote Villages, which would have not have any grid access anywhere in the foreseeable future. So, with a little bit of NGO help, the village set up a biomass gasification system, where they produced electricity through the incomplete combustion of firewood.

Today, there is regular access to electricity for the 30+ households in the village, facilitating cooking, studying and many other day to day activities.

India is buzzing with ventures such as these- there is a huge demand for these projects, and with electricity now liberalized (particularly when selling energy back to the grid), the Indian entrepreneur is more than ready to bite the bait, as is the Indian NGO which seems to be thriving.

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However, there are some key issues with rural elecrification. For example- one as simple as, who will own the project once its set up? As I mentioned in a previous post, rural development is not just about bringing benefits to rural areas, but also integrating it into the community. This is Gomukh's main job in the renewable energy project. How do you transfer ownership and day to day management to the village?
Another issue is that of the food vs fuel debate. How do you create enough of an incentive for farmers to grow energy crops, but limit their incentive to enter into large scale monocropping of the energy crop, endangering food security?
And as for financials- how do you make the project economically viable, without making it a large scale project? Most often, to make most of these energy projects viable in the short term, the project requires massive scaling up- often making compromises in sustainability in the process. It isnt easy to fulfill our idea of making the project limited in its scale, only servicing the needs of particular villages. The billing for the project and the collection of payments also pose an interesting dilemma- we want to make the project as professional as possible, yet we want the beneficiaries to be comfortable and able to pay their bills.

While working on the project, we've come up with ideas for many of these issues, and I think that's whats made it all the more interesting and challenging. It also has made me absolutely restless to come back and see how the project has turned out in another 2 years. But until then, if you have any suggestions or ideas about some of the issues I talked about..share!

-Nikhil

Sugar

If you drive through rural Maharashtra and look out your windows, you'll see pretty much one major crop on both sides- sugarcane- and lots of it. A large chunk of India's sugar comes from this sugar belt region. It's a huge cash crop, and farmers growing it have enjoyed the benefits of handsome government subsidies, cooperative factories, fixed prices for the commodity, and the fact that the crop is relatively easy to grow. The results of the sugar phenomenon have been pretty interesting, and I got a chance to see some of them firsthand when I visited Malinagar.
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Malinagar is a little village, in the Solapur district of Maharashtra, about 4 hours away from Pune. As you drive in, you see plots of sugarcane on every side, with the distant skyline dotted with the smokestacks of factories. Aroon, his friend Karthik, and I were visiting my aunt and uncle, who had a farmhouse in the area and were kind enough to offer to show us around the village for a few days, taking us to a couple different places critical to the development of the area.
As we jumped from government hospital to Gram Panchayat to the cooperative dairy, I saw firsthand the patronage politics system so rooted in rural India, which I had only really seen in Hindi films before then. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the sugar factory- the director of which was scripted perfectly- crisp white shirt and slacks, shades indoors, a disinterested tolerating expression, and a crew of cronies at his sides.
With his blessings (literally, we were made to touch his feet), we were able to see the sugar factory. This Sugar Daddy was a classic icon of the problems of the sugar system in Maharashtra.
Sugar was introduced in a big way in the post 1960's green revolution, and with it came the rise of the cooperative movement. Initially, it was supposed to be a good way for farmers to get fair prices and ownership in the sugar that came from the sugarcane they grew. But eventually, richer landowners wrested control of the sugarcane cooperatives, often taking advantage of the poorer, illiterate farmers. While they were reduced to laborers, dependent on whatever price the sugar factory decided, sugar factory owners made money off government subsidies for sugarcane cooperatives.
Meanwhile, from the other side, sugarcane farmers overplanted their fields, and the Green Revolution model of input intensive monoculture left productivity sagging. So the same sugarcane that used to be sold for about INR 1300 a ton fell to as low at 700..and with farmers investing most of their land into the crop, they starting getting into a cycle of debt. There was also a social element involved, sugarcane being a relatively labor non-intensive crop to grow, many of the farmers had more free time, turning to alcoholism and slowly shying away from rigorous agriculture.
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Sugar belt towns exploded because of the sugar industry, but many now suffer the malaise of falling prices. But Akluj showed no signs of illness. This is mainly because of one family- the Mohite-Patils. One of the Mohite Patils is the rural development minister for India..so lots of monye was obviously flowing into the area. Everything had the M-P stamp on it, from the local poultry, to the factories, to the hospitals and chaiwallahs. He was a god. We actually had the good grace of seeing one of the M-P brothers ride into town, with what seemed like a stampede of worshippers following him singing songs, chanting, and falling out of jeeps and 3 wheelers.
Clearly, it wasnt just sugar that was propelling this town.
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Sugarcane has many ends. Of course sugar is one of them. At the local distillery, we saw another- alcohols. A couple months ago, I had talked to Mr. Balu Sarma, head of R&D at Praj, a Pune-based chemicals company. He talked about how it was hard to break into the ethanol market in India, mostly due to the grip of the oil companies on the auto companies. So most of the ethanol that Praj manufactured was shipped abroad. It seemed a bit of a shame that Brazil could basically run its entire country on sugarcane derived ethanol, but in Maharashtra, ethanol was not much of an option.
Here in Akluj, the distillery was producing alcohols mostly for chemicals companies, but they did say that there were plans to expand into ethanol. I have no doubt that these plans are stymied by the same concerns facing Dr. Sarma out in Praj. There just isn't much of an incentive for factories to go into the highly expensive final step of making fuel grade ethanol.
And unlike the US , where rising gas prices have seemed to drive an alternative energy push, or at least an alternate energy debate, here in India the consumer is protectedwith government set oil prices (albeit more expensive than the US). So while innovation in terms of car size and car prices has occurred in the Indian auto industry (Tata Nano), innovation in fuel efficiency and alternative fuels has lagged behind.
*note: While alternative fuels lag behind, alternative energy is becoming more common, and sugarcane bagasse was being used in cogeneration schemes to power the sugarcane factories it came from- a step forward.
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Back at my aunt's farmhouse, we had yet another chai. EVerywhere we went, we were offered chai, and I happily took it. But in most places, it was literally sugar water...so I probably went through 10-15 spoons of sugar a day. Not much for a place literally swimming in it.
One morning we went out to the fields to check out how harvesting was done. There, laborers from inner maharashtra, often from the tribal belt area, had come to cut away the leaves, stack the canes and pile them into bullock carts. I watched in awe..but then someone told me there might be snakes underneath all the residues..so I quickly retreated. I realized that the sugarcane industry is still stuck in a slightly older era, and will need to innovate fast, even in a blessed area like Akluj/Malinagar. It still relies on high water usage, high inputs, and high govrnment subsidies. The cooperative system, is unfortunately, often quite corrupt. And you can't eat sugarcane (the organic farmers argument).
But you can make juice out of it, and we had a tall glass of it when we got back to the farmhouse.

-Nikhil

Gandhi and Development

I know this is a long time coming, but the pace of life here has really started to pick up! Really didn't think it would happen.
It's been a while since I've come back from Dehradun, but maybe its for the better that I didn't update right away, the last couple weeks have given me the chance to internalize the things that I learnt up there. But instead of once again rehashing everything about the trip, I just want to talk about Gandhi and development, in a couple simple points.
1. Small is beautiful. When I first heard the phrase, coupled with other phrases such as 'appropriate technology', I immediately associated it with a reactionary fear- against mechanization, against industralization, against anything big. It took me a while to realize what the concept really meant. The way I understand it now, its a practical strategy to make sure humans dont overstep our bounds. It's a lot easier to interact favorably with the environment, do a public good, and distribute the benefits equitably (in short, function sustainably) when you are working on a small scale...but once you start trying to scale up, then inevitably certain elements of sustainability start to break down. And you start having to make compromises. In that end, it makes sense to adhere to small is beautiful. Although big can promise more efficiency or better economics, there are usually costs overlooked.
2. Swaraj. I think this is a beautiful concept. I took it, as most of us took it, at first to mean independent rule- obviously linked to the indian struggle for independence. But understood more clearly, it translates better as self-governance. Basically, how you conduct yourself. I think in development it is so easy to get carried away and lost in trying to improve the lives of others around you, that you tend to forget that you can't set the world straight without putting your own house in order. And from that blooms the other concept, that once you govern yourself the way you'd like to see the world govern itself (be the change you wish to see...), then that in itself is the most powerful weapon towards engendering change in others. Action by example.
3. Decentralization. This ties in to the concept of 'small is beautiful', but I think it is a more real-world concept. Even in our world today, we see different systems of governance in different parts of the world, each with their own levels of success. Often, when an area is underdeveloped, we put the responsbility on the central government, and try to remedy the problem by heaping even more power into the center.
Although I am a firm believer in the idea that a strong central government is critical for the development of any country, I also am starting to understand that this power must be limited to certain spheres, and to be honest, much of it has to be simply psychological. The idea of a strong, coherent, inspirational central government is critical for a united nation, but much of the actual development in a country must be handled in a more decentralized fashion. "The localization of production must depend on the frequency of its need" Thus the food we eat, the water we drink, and the clothes we wear must be produced locally, otherwise we are susceptible to the ebb and flow of supply that is much too far away to be reliable. For example, if instead of creating large scale energy projects, the government allowed for independent, off-grid local projects, (regulated both locally and centrally), provision of electricity would probably be more consistent. This is particularly important in a country as diverse and heavily populated as India- it is impossible for a heavily centralized development strategy to be effective. Of course there is the argument that more decentralization means more bureaucracy, more chances for corruption, and there is validity to this. But these problems can and must be combatted through better regulation at all levels.
The effect that this has on development is that the responsibility of development falls into the hands of the communities in question, and it becomes more participatory rather than directed externally (by entities who naturally come with their own agendas).
All the ideas are swirling in my head again. It's time to take a break. Hope I provided some good food for thought.
-Nikhil

Me and Kaka

Purely out of interest, I decided to meet with a manager at Bank of India, who was admittedly only the stand-in for the actual head of Agricultural Finance of the Bank's Maharashtra branch. For purposed of anonymity, I will just refer to him as Kaka (Marathi word for Uncle).
I'm always amazed by how tiny a city Pune actually is. What looked on the map as a pretty good distance took me about 10 minutes in a rickshaw. So I was left to kill an hour outside the bank. Just my luck, there was nothing to do around there. Except walk, and walk, and walk, and I did. I think I walked around the entire city. And for some reason, on that particular day, I couldn't find ONE chai stall.
Anyways, back to the story. First of all, I trudge in to this bank, kinda sweaty from my hourlong chai-search. I did wear a collared shirt ...but on jeans. I had my backpack on, and even on a particularly unshaven day, I look 20 at best. So its understandable that this guy was not overly interested in giving me the time of day.
With that said, Kaka was the quintessential government employee. Hardly making eye contact with me, he shuffled papers back and forth on his desk to look busy, and made me wait a couple minutes at an adjoining desk. Then, when he was ready for me, he shuffled over. I think 'shuffle' is a good word for everything he did. Even his speaking was..shuffly.
Unlike others who I've spoken to in the field, Kaka answered each of my questions- intentionally open-ended- with curt answers. His suspicion was not hidden very well, he looked at my notepad with the kind of regard a US Immigration officer would give to a beard.
The conversation was largely disappointing, and it would be unfair for me to make any significant conclusions or generalization about Bank policy from it. However, the recurrent theme from the conversation which I managed to drag out for about 30 minutes, was that the bank basically executes policy from above- the RBI. There were some significant contradictions- on one hand, he said that there was no role for NGO's or groups closer the ground for determining agricultural finance policy- experts in the bank could handle it. On the other hand, he said the rural branches, and even local/state branches, did not determine criteria for loans/funding, but rather simply carried out central policy. Confusing, to say the least.
At the end of our conversation, as I offered him a smile, he finally figured out that I was no threat, and even extended an invitation for me to come 'whenever I wanted to ask more questions.'
Good touch, Kaka.

-Nikhil