Is "social enterprise" just a buzzword?

I wrote the following post back in October but never ended up publishing it.... I'm not sure why I forgot about it! Updated notes in []

Yesterday [25 October 2014] I went to Cambodia's annual Social Enterprise Conference at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) with my friend and coworker Sothea. I have to admit I didn't expect much, but it turned out to be more interesting than I anticipated.

Sothea was excited for the conference. I'm pretty sure she's going to start her own business some day.

A lot of this conference focused on whether or not an NGO should run a social enterprise and what that might look like. In the morning, there was a debate with panelists working in this field, and in the afternoon, I joined a session discussing the mechanics of an NGO starting up a social enterprise. The problem with this debate was that "social enterprise" was not well-defined--it was clear to me that the two sides were not really disagreeing with each other, but were defining "social enterprise" differently. In fact, the definition was so unclear that during the Q&A session after the debate, a Cambodian student asked, "What is 'social enterprise,' exactly?"

The short answer, I suppose, is that a social enterprise is a business that aims to better society in some way. But some of these NGOs seem to think you don't need to be turning a profit to qualify. And lots of businesses better society without the "social enterprise" tagline. For example, a soap manufacturer is selling a product that improves hygiene and keeps people healthy, but I don't think Unilever or Proctor & Gamble would call themselves a social enterprise.

Panelists debating "Should NGOs run social enterprises?" On the left, the against side: PSE Institute (an NGO), Sustainable Green Fuel Enterprise (a for-profit business). On the right, the for side: Teuk Saat 1001 (NGO) and Friends International (NGO). The moderator in the middle seemed to be a freelance consultant, but it was a bit unclear who he was.

I have to say, the "against" side really kicked the "for" side's butt. The against side pointed out that businesses run by NGOs can distort the market through multiple mechanisms. Maybe because Friends International was sitting on the "for" panel, they got the brunt of the criticism. The against side pointed out that Friends was cross-subsidizing their failing businesses (for example, a welding enterprise) with donations to the NGO. Other competing businesses would not have such a safety net. Additionally, with an NGO subsidizing the business expenses, the enterprises are able to sell their products and services below market rate, thereby (artificially) driving down the prices for everybody and harming competing businesses--the very businesses Friends is supposedly training their students to go out and work for (not to mention that the people at those businesses need jobs, too).

I was also shocked to learn that Friends International does not pay the staff of its restaurants because they are providing those staff with vocational training to work in restaurants. How is this not slavery? All staff at any restaurant, "social" or not, have to receive training. How is it acceptable to not pay employees just because you're giving them training? I must be misunderstanding what's going on, but Friends did not deny anything when the other side of the debate accused them of this no-paying behavior--and you'd think they would have denied such behavior if it weren't true. The "against" side pointed out that not paying their employees was giving Friends Restaurant a competitive advantage over other restaurants, because they had eliminated a major expense that others could not eliminate (not to mention they can charge way higher prices by advertising to foreign tourists as a social enterprise).

However, the "against" panelists were not opposed to an NGO starting a spin-off business. In fact, they recognized that an NGO might really understand a community's needs and devise an innovative market-based solution--but that spin-off business should be run as a for-profit business separate from the non-profit NGO, subject to market forces and responsible for all its own business expenses. I 100% agree with this.

During a separate discussion session after the debate, one of the topics was whether a social enterprise should register with the government as a for-profit business or a non-profit organization. The benefit of registering as a non-profit, of course, is that non-profits do not pay taxes. But if you're an enterprise aiming to turn a profit, how is it possibly acceptable to register as a non-profit? Some were arguing that because a social mission is the first priority of a "social enterprise," the company won't engage in any nefarious cost-reducing activities (e.g. corruption and corner-cutting) so they won't be able to compete with other companies that do engage in those activities. Well, my response to that is evading taxes makes you no better than the logger who bribes an official or the construction company that skimps on concrete. Taxes have a social purpose, they keep society running, they pay for education, health care, infrastructure, etc (yes much of it is lost to corruption in Cambodia, but still! paying your taxes is the right thing to do!). You have to beat the competition with a better-value product or service, not by cheating the system.

One person in this discussion brought up the idea that there should be a third category of registration for social enterprises, with some tax breaks and other concessions but not as much as given to an NGO. I call bullpoop. This would be ripe for corruption. Social enterprise is so ill-defined, how can you possibly determine if a company would qualify? How would you differentiate between Unilever, which sells hand soap, and WaterSHED Ventures, which sells a plumbing-free handwashing station? Plus, anybody could claim a social mission and cheat the system. For-profit and non-profit are fairly well-defined, and an organization needs to be honest about which category they really belong to.

Here I am admonishing people who think it's ok to register a "social" business as a non-profit in order to gain a competitive advantage by evading taxes.

Something that really bothers me about social enterprise in Cambodia is that many people still have this mindset that you need to get the money from (relatively) rich Westerners. There is a pattern of NGOs starting restaurants and handicraft shops targeting foreigners to fund completely unrelated, traditional NGO-type activities, often while claiming that they have provided "training" to underprivileged Cambodians to provide the food or product to foreigners--they are basically turning tourists into donors, still looking to outsiders for support.

This is very different from the social enterprises I'm used to in India. Indian social enterprises are selling products and services to the communities they are trying to help (check out Villgro for some examples). In India, social enterprises treat people at the "bottom of the pyramid" as consumers rather than as beneficiaries of donations or programs; in Cambodia, many social enterprises still see the poor as beneficiaries and foreigners as the only viable consumers.

But treating people like consumers empowers them to make their own decisions about what they need and want. And if they choose their own products and services, if they invest their own money, they are much more likely to actually use these products and services. The poor are often willing to spend, or take out loans, more than you might think--the poor are viable consumers, you can build a successful business by selling to the poor. Cambodian social enterprises need to stop emulating the donor model.

(Not-so-side note: many of these outward-looking enterprises seemed to be dreamed up by foreigners, not by Cambodians. If Cambodians in Phnom Penh had access to the same resources as Indians in Bangalore, I bet the Cambodian social enterprise sector would look a lot more like India's. Perhaps part of the problem is that many of Cambodia's social enterprises aren't truly homegrown, but started and run by expats.)

The restaurant thing in particular I don't get. How is Friends Restaurant "social" but other restaurants are not? I'm writing this blog post from Xotique Coffee and Bakery, which as far as I know does not define itself as a social enterprise. But most employees here are working to pay for their college education, and they regularly come over to my and other foreigners' tables to practice their English--working at this cafe both pays for college and enhances English skills, which are essential in today's job market. Certainly then Xotique is providing people with an opportunity to improve their lives. Is that not a positive "social" cause? Why is Friends' restaurant any different, any more social? Why should Friends' restaurant get out of paying taxes but not Xotique? I guess this goes back to my point that "social enterprise" is nebulously defined--and that might render it a meaningless buzzword.

How can we define this term so that it actually means something? What does social enterprise mean to you? And is it a problem that it means something different to everyone, or should we be working towards a single definition that everyone can agree on? Or is a definition not even that important? And what can be done to promote social enterprises in Cambodia that don't focus on foreigners, that grow their business targeting Cambodian consumers?

Vote for WaterSHED in a design competition! Once a day every day until April 15

Dear dedicated blog readers,

I am so, so sorry that I have been neglecting my blog a bit. I have a few ideas for upcoming blog posts, and I hope to be more active here in the near future.

As some of you may know, I have been designing a toilet shelter for rural Cambodians. Almost 70% of rural Cambodians don't have access to sanitation--and that means children are suffering from all sorts of terrible diseases, like cholera and typhoid. My organization, WaterSHED, has successfully sold over 100,000 toilets in Cambodia, but the biggest remaining barrier to widespread toilet adoption is the price of a desirable shelter for the toilet. My team has been designing an affordable, flat-pack, easy-assemble attractive shelter for Cambodian consumers, and soon we want to take our design from prototype to production. You can learn more about our product here: http://www.watershedasia.org/why-shelters-matter/ Or just watch this short video:



We have entered our design into a competition that, if we win, will provide us with support to set up manufacturing. WaterSHED's extensive sales network will serve as our distribution network--we work with over 170 businesses that reach 40% of Cambodia's population, and we're exploring partnerships with major multinational corporations to expand throughout Asia--and manufacturing is the most major missing component. However, to make it to the finals of this competition, we need to be in the top 10 receivers of votes in an online competition.

Please vote for Emily Gorbaty, Project Name: WaterSHED here: https://www.wishpond.com/lp/639776/entries/22982693

You can vote once a day every day until April 15, so please continue to vote for WaterSHED every day!

Thank you so much for your support!! My team and I greatly appreciate it.

Tech hubs: Silicon Valley vs. Phnom Penh

This is everything that is wrong with Silicon Valley: Alfred won the TechCrunch Disrupt competition. To be fair, I have no idea if the TechCrunch Disrupt competition is or is not important. I hadn't heard of it until the HBO show Silicon Valley made fun of it. But in any case I feel this represents everything that bothers me about the Silicon Valley start-up culture (which can be extended to the Cambridge, MA start-up culture).

Alfred is a butler/maid/personal servant service that organizes all your other service apps (dry cleaning, grocery delivery, house cleaning, etc). I guess the name Alfred is supposed to remind you of Batman's butler. Because you're basically Batman? Apparently it's really great to have your own personal servant whose real name you don't need to know because you just call him your Alfred. Slate much more eloquently discusses why Alfred winning a tech competition is terrible in this article.

And Alfred is not a unique start-up by any means. So many of these start-ups are solving what I like to call "non-problems." They just seem self-serving; their services are targeted at other people of the same privileged socioeconomic status. For example, I once met a woman working on a start-up that would deliver food from restaurants to offices of other start-ups. I'm still not sure why these other start-ups couldn't use one of the existing food delivery services (e.g. GrubHub, Seamless, etc) or--GASP!--call the restaurants themselves. Food delivery to offices is not a real problem. 

What bothers me most is that some of the most brilliant people work at these start-ups. Graduates of Stanford, MIT, Harvard. Do we really want the brightest minds--or at least the most privileged ones--working on non-problems? Shouldn't those of us who were fortunate enough to receive the best education on the planet be working on making this planet a better place?

Last week I attended the Innovations in Development Technology expo in Phnom Penh. I was really inspired by the great work young Cambodian engineers are doing. They are creating apps, much like their software developing brethren in Silicon Valley, but their apps solve real problems--and many of them don't even require a smartphone. Here are just a few examples of interesting projects I learned about:

• For those of you who don't know, one of Cambodia's primary industries is clothing. That's right, your shirt was probably manufactured down the street from me. You may or may not be aware that over the past year there have been many intense protests by garment workers to raise their wages and improve their situation. A group in Phnom Penh has been working on a two-pronged solution: (1) a smartphone app for factory owners that tells them all the laws regulating the garment industry and the rights of their employees and (2) a missed-call voice system (missed calls are free, and the number will immediately call back the caller--an affordable solution for poor garment workers) that tells garment workers their rights and how to seek help. The garment workers can even make anonymous complaints about their employers, and the system will report the factory owner to the proper authorities.

• To reduce violence against women, a game to teach men how to properly treat women and why abuse is wrong. (And I think it's fantastic that they are focusing on educating men to tackle the domestic violence problem--that's way too rare.)

• Logging is a huge problem in Cambodia. Only 1% of Cambodia's forests remain! Much of the logging activity is (often unofficially) government-sanctioned, but some of it is illegal. One organization uses a hidden motion-activated camera that takes pictures of illegal loggers and poachers then immediately sends out a signal with the photo and GPS coordinates to the authorities to catch the criminals and stop the activity. (An animal can of course trigger the camera, but the authorities will check the photo first.) They also use drones to monitor the forest. The remaining forests are in areas belonging to indigenous hill tribes, and the organization that developed this system works closely with the local communities to run this program.

• Apparently it's a big problem that government ministries only briefly post data before taking it down. In order to improve transparency, Open Development Cambodia grabs the data, maps it using GIS, and makes it publicly available. They also get data from various NGOs and companies. You can see their maps here. In my opinion, their most interesting (and perhaps most useful) map is of economic land concessions.

• A variety of education tools for both teachers and students at all levels

• An app to report bribery (much like India's "I Paid a Bribe"). While it's unlikely there will be any punishment for those who demanded bribes, what's interesting is that Bribespot maps each bribe, so at least citizens know where the bribes are happening.

• Mobile banking to increase access to financial services in places where there might not be a physical bank (and to ease transactions where there are), to more easily transfer money between accounts (e.g. for migrant workers sending money home), and to facilitate microfinance loans

[Also, side note, I ran into a group of 10-year-old Cambodian kids who had 3-D printed their own pencil holder. They are ten years old and know how to CAD!! (I was 24 when I learned how to CAD.) They also had business cards, which was ridiculously adorable. I was very impressed.]

I understand that people want to make money, and making an app to help garment workers in Cambodia may not be a way to do that. Fine. But there are a lot of ideas that can help society and make you rich, too. For instance, Google revolutionized access to information, and those guys got super rich. Also, business at the "Bottom of the Pyramid" is the hottest thing in international development right now. My organization is starting up a for-profit venture to sell water and sanitation products--improving people's health while (hopefully) turning a profit.

There are still plenty of real (and potentially money-making) problems to be solved, in both developing and developed countries. Shouldn't we all be working on solving these real problems?

Tech geeks of Phnom Penh, you win this round. Silicon Valley, time to step up your game.

Expat life: Cambodia vs India

I've been in Cambodia for about four months now. To be honest, while I love my job, I don't love living in Cambodia. I live in an expat bubble, and I find it incredibly frustrating. Expats, quite frankly, do not live in the same Phnom Penh as Cambodians. It's true that I never really intended to move to Cambodia, but I feel like if I'm going to be here, I should at least try to immerse a little bit and make Cambodian friends. But immersion is nearly impossible.

A perfect example: a few weeks ago, Kingdom Brewery was throwing an all-you-can-drink with burgers and fries party, with a $10 cover fee. I went with some of my expat coworkers, and as soon as I entered the brewery I realized that, besides the employees, there wasn't a single Cambodian in the crowd. This is a regular occurrence but it never ceases to upset me.

This is unlikely to happen in Delhi, Mumbai, or Bangalore. I can't imagine walking into a bar in India and not seeing any Indians. Expats tend to mingle in middle- to upper-class Indian circles. Certainly there are bars that expats frequent, but you would always see plenty of Indians too.

From what I've seen, there appear to be several reasons for the differences between the expat experience in Cambodia and in India:

1) There is a significantly higher concentration of expats in Cambodia. Cambodia receives more foreign aid per capita than any other country, and with foreign aid comes foreign NGO employees. I read somewhere that there are about 60,000 expats in Phnom Penh, a city of only 1.5 million people. I don't know how many expats live in Delhi, but Delhi is a city of 20 million. You don't see nearly as many foreign faces on a daily basis.

2) Foreigners who come to India are genuinely interested in India. India is a pretty intense country to live in, and this weeds people out. The foreigners who stay want to be in India. They have decided that it is worth it to put up with challenges of everyday life to experience India. A lot of expats in Cambodia--myself included--sort of just end up here. Many of us have no prior interest in the country, and we're here out of circumstance. These people are less likely to be interested in immersion and befriending Cambodians.

3) There is a larger income difference between expats and locals in Cambodia than in India. I made the same salary as my coworkers in India, but in Cambodia I earn a much higher salary than my coworkers. Expats in Cambodia tend to hold higher positions than their Cambodian colleagues, and quite honestly the NGOs might not be able to attract foreign talent at Cambodian salaries (I'm totally part of this system: I absolutely would not have moved to Cambodia if I had been offered a lower salary). Because foreigners in India want to be in India, and the kind of lifestyle desired by foreigners is much more affordable in India, expats are generally willing to accept lower salaries there (at least in my experience).  As my Indian friends and I earned similar salaries, we could afford the same social activities. However, with the big income gap in Cambodia, I would always think twice before inviting a Cambodian out to dinner--and when I do invite them, they usually turn me down to eat at home, understandably. This income gap is a huge challenge to building a social life with Cambodians. (Admittedly it's on me to be more creative with social activities, but what doesn't cost money? There are no parks in Phnom Penh! I'd be open to any suggestions you have...)

4) Educated Indians are much more comfortable in English than educated Cambodians. India is an incredibly diverse country with hundreds of languages, and thanks to British imperialism, English has become the lingua franca between cultures. If someone from Tamil Nadu wants to chat with someone from West Bengal, they are likely to speak in English. Educated Indians often socialize in English whether or not a foreigner is in their presence. In contrast, Cambodia is much more homogeneous and everyone speaks Khmer. There is no need for a second language to communicate. Additionally, many higher education institutions in India teach their classes in English; in Cambodia, university classes are usually conducted in Khmer. As a result, educated Indians can communicate and socialize much more comfortably with foreigners than Cambodians can (there are of course exceptions, but I find this to be true in general).

Another note about expat life in Cambodia vs. India: expats tend to stay longer in India. With the exception of summer internships, expats tend to stay in India for at least one year. In contrast, at any time of the year in Cambodia you find expats who are here only for a few months. I regularly meet people who I think are interesting, only to learn they are leaving next month. The transience of the expat community here has really demotivated me from making many friends. Why should I invest time and effort into befriending people who are leaving so quickly? I know that's a bad attitude, but I can't help myself. I've been focusing my efforts on the longer-term people instead (I use "longer-term" loosely; I mean more than 6 months), but they're not always so easy to find.

Needless to say, I greatly miss my social life in India (and, obviously, in the States). Hopefully things will get better for me in Cambodia soon.

Watching Uncle Ho watching us

As many of you know, I went to Vietnam two weeks ago for work. This was my second time to Vietnam, as my brother Ben and I visited the country for a few weeks back in 2011. I love Vietnam and highly recommend a visit!

I went to the Mekong Delta region--specifically, Can Tho and Soc Trang--to witness the launch of my organization's handwashing product, called the HappyTap, in partnership with the Vietnam Women's Union (let's be honest, without any Vietnamese language skills I wasn't doing much more than simply witnessing). The Women's Union has branches in every village in Vietnam, so partnering with them is a huge opportunity to raise awareness about the need for handwashing and create demand for our product in every corner of the country. It's a bit unclear to me if the Women's Union is a government institution or a wing of the Communist party or if the government and the party are one and the same, but I'm pretty sure that's how the Women's Union has access to every village.

I traveled from Phnom Penh to Can Tho, and then back to Phnom Penh from Saigon. I took buses between Vietnam and Cambodia (the distance from Phnom Penh to Can Tho is approximately the same as Washington DC to New York and to Saigon approximately the same as Philadelphia to Boston). The difference in the landscape at the border was striking. As soon as I crossed into Vietnam, the potholes in the road disappeared and I found myself surrounded by bright green rice paddies and lush banana plantations. The Mekong Delta is the most productive rice region in Vietnam, and because rice is one of Vietnam's most important exports, the government has invested a lot of money to ensure that area is irrigated and can produce rice year-round. In contrast, Cambodian farmers cannot afford to irrigate their fields and only grow rice during the rainy season, so the countryside was pretty brown. (Sound familiar?) It was incredible to me that Vietnam's economic edge over Cambodia was immediately apparent.

(To be fair, I crossed back into Cambodia at a different checkpoint, and there was pretty much no difference other than language and a bunch of casinos on the Cambodian side. [I guess gambling is illegal in Vietnam so people cross the border to play? not sure.] But that checkpoint was not in the Delta.)

A funny note about my Vietnamese coworkers (who are probably sick of foreigners thinking this is funny): they are named Ai and Quy, pronounced "I" and "We." And Ai's sister is named My, pronounced "Me." I love it. In the Phnom Penh office we have to refer to Ai as "Miss Ai" otherwise it gets too confusing and everyone thinks you are talking about yourself. Ai and Quy are wonderful people and the best part of my too-short trip to Vietnam was hanging out with them. Ai grew up in Can Tho, and she and My (who is still in high school and thus lives in Can Tho with Ai's parents) showed Quy and me around the town.

Quy and Ai eat soft tofu in jasmine water.

The rest of my Vietnamese coworkers were field staff and spoke pretty much no English, with one exception. That one exception told me that most of his family lives in San Jose, California. His father was on the wrong side of the war; he had worked as an officer of some sort in the US-backed South Vietnam government. At some point after the war, his father was sent to a Communist reeducation camp and upon his release sought asylum in the US. Since my coworker was over 18 years old at that point (he is now about 40), whether to go or stay was his decision. He chose to stay in Vietnam since he was already studying at university and wasn't confident that his English was good enough to succeed in an American college. He was the only one to stay. His younger siblings and mother joined his father in the US. My coworker hopes to one day move to California to reunite with his family and provide his children with an American university education.

I often feel like I'm running into American history that wasn't quite taught in my high school history class. And not only in Vietnam. I went to Laos during my Khmer New Year vacation in April. The US dropped more than 270 million bombs on Laos during the "secret" carpet-bombing campaign from 1964 to 1973--that's more than all bombs dropped everywhere by everyone during WWII. Laos still suffers from this everyday, as people inadvertently step on unexploded ordnance. Walking through Luang Prabang's night market, I came across several stalls of vendors selling utensils and bangles made from melted-down bombs (I bought chopsticks; the proceeds fund demining efforts and support the metal artisans). Much of the advertised tourism in northeast Laos involves trekking to "bomb villages" (I didn't go). I met several Laotian people, usually belonging to the Hmong tribe, whose relatives had fled to the US (mostly Minnesota) after the war. The CIA had financed and trained Hmong tribespeople to fight an insurgency against the Communist Party in Laos. The Hmong lost and the US granted asylum.

During the war the US rained bombs on Cambodia as well, in an attempt to oust the North Vietnamese from the bases they had established on the Cambodian side of the border. After the coup of Prince Sihanouk created the Khmer Republic and triggered the Cambodian Civil War, the US provided air support to the Khmer Republic to fight the Viet Cong and the Khmer Rouge insurgency.  To be honest, the American legacy is not nearly as apparent in Cambodia as it is in Laos and Vietnam (at least not to me), since the Khmer Rouge genocide following American withdrawal overshadows pretty much everything else. There might still be unexploded ordnance from the American cluster bombs, like there is in Laos, but I'm under the impression most landmines were planted by the Khmer Rouge.

Despite the brutal history of American involvement in Indochina, it seems that people don't really feel any animosity towards Americans. As Ai and Quy explained, these days Vietnamese people actually like Americans. Americans are open and friendly, and interaction with us is an opportunity to improve English language skills, which are necessary in today's globalized society. Their beef is only with the American government. People in Laos and Cambodia have told me the same thing.

While I appreciate the differentiation between people and the government, it's not totally legitimate, since in a democracy supposedly the people are choosing their government. Should American citizens not be held accountable for the actions of the American government? As an American, should I not feel some sense of responsibility and guilt for what transpired in Indochina? Does the fact that the US government actually withheld information about the carpet bombing from the public (and of course the fact that I wasn't born yet) relieve any of this responsibility? And what does it mean to be an American living in this region today, a few decades after the war?

When I mentioned to Ai and Quy that I really need to read up on the history of Indochina, especially American involvement here, Ai told me that she hated history in school. She said that schools feed children the Communist party's version of Vietnam's history and students are not allowed to question it. Even at university students could not engage in discussions and debate about various perspectives on history. Of course, in the US children are also taught certain mythologies about our history, but I do think in higher education debate is encouraged.

I found all the Communist propaganda in Vietnam amusing. I know it's not funny, but I couldn't help but laugh at it (I realize this reveals how very American I am). A bust of Ho Chi Minh, accompanied by a gold star, a hammer and sickle, and banners with Communist party slogans in Vietnamese, watched over every meeting and event we held (and in one location Marx and Lenin watched us, too). I found it a bit unsettling that "Uncle Ho" was always watching. Quy joked that, in fact, we were watching Uncle Ho watching us (especially because I kept taking photos of Uncle Ho). To me, it was particularly weird to be holding sales events--decidedly capitalist endeavors--in spaces decked-out with Communist imagery.

A sales event, with Uncle Ho, Uncle Karl, and Uncle Vlad watching from the stage (Ho Chi Minh is the bust to the left, and Marx and Lenin are in the oval picture to the right).

Uncle Ho is a very powerful man. Physically, too. That must be why he's in a government ad to promote exercise.

It was a bit difficult to tell what my coworkers thought about all this in-your-face propaganda, but my impression is that people mostly shrug it off. It's just a part of life in Vietnam. They don't think about it any more than I might think about a US Army recruitment commercial. People seem satisfied enough with the country's economic development, and the government isn't nearly as repressive as the Chinese model of Communism. (Facebook is blocked in the country, but one of my coworkers joked that the government was helping people develop their computer skills, as everyone figures out how to circumvent the restrictions.)

Communist propaganda aside, the sales events were fascinating. We held two events, one led by my organization, and the other led by the Women's Union. The idea was to learn from each other's strategies to inform a stronger sales pitch for the future. Our presentation emphasized the negative health implications of handwashing negligence, and the Women's Union's presentation mentioned heath briefly before launching into a demonstration of how to properly wash hands using items commonly found in a rural Vietnamese home. Interestingly, their demo required two people to wash one person's hand--someone else was needed to pour the water. The convenience of our product, basically a standalone sink with an attached water tank, stood in stark contrast. Women had reacted somewhat lukewarmly to the previous day's health presentation, but they loved actually seeing the convenience of our product. Many more women were interested in the product after the second presentation (we did the presentations with different groups of women).

The Women's Union demonstrates proper handwashing technique using objects already found in the home. Using a bucket and pitcher require the help of a second person.

Our product, in comparison, does not require a second person to help and it saves water. Plus it's adorable.

It was interesting, though not surprising, that illustrating convenience makes the product more appealing than focusing on health benefits. After all, who likes to get lectured at about how they're doing everything wrong for their families' health? And it's not just handwashing. Traditional cookstoves emit pollutants that give their families respiratory diseases. Open defecation poisons their water and food and gives their children diarrhea. Not boiling or filtering their water will inflict typhoid and more diarrhea on their children. Everything women do in rural Asia seems to be bad for their health, right? While of course knowledge of health impacts is vital, during a sales pitch it makes sense to put greater focus on something else for a change. As my coworker Lindsay, our resident behavior change expert, can tell you, knowledge of healthy practices doesn't necessarily drive change. For example, everybody knows smoking is bad for you, yet millions do it anyway.

People all over the world love convenience; it's human nature to do what is easy and fast and avoid what is difficult and slow. If I did not have access to plumbing and water flowing right out of my tap, I probably wouldn't wash my hands a lot either. This lesson is not new to our organization. In fact, our product's Vietnamese name translates to "Convenience." I think it would be wise for us to integrate the Women's Union's traditional handwashing demonstration into our presentations before introducing our product. It would also be great to have the women actually try out washing their hands with both the household tools and our product. Seeing and experiencing the difference between the two handwashing methods would have a powerful impact and, hopefully, boost our sales.

After our work was done, Ai, Quy, My, and My's boyfriend Giang (...not pronounced like an English pronoun) and I visited the floating market of Cai Rang. Ben and I had visited this same market almost three years ago, and it was interesting to see how the market had changed in a fairly short time period. The market was noticeably smaller. There were fewer boats and less activity.

Ai explained that the Vietnamese government had been taking measures to move floating markets to land. Traditionally, living and working on a boat in the Delta made sense. There are hundreds if not thousands of canals and boats were the fastest way to get around. These days, though, there are roads (and trust me, those roads are beautiful, especially compared to Cambodia's roads), so there is little need to depend on rivers for transport.

The floating market communities face many difficult problems, and the government believes moving onshore can improve their quality of life. They bathe, do laundry, wash dishes, drink, poop, and pee in the same water. The mobility of a boat means they do not have an address or residence. With no address, they are denied many social services. Their children, until recently, were not allowed to attend school without a permanent residence (though they are now admitted into schools, the families might still travel the canals between villages so that their children are not in the same place everyday and cannot attend school). Teen pregnancy is also a huge issue, as people live in very close quarters and do not have access to sex education. If moving these communities off the water really would have an impact on improving their health and wealth, I can see why the government has been pushing the move. However, they'll have to do a lot more than simply beach the market to tackle water, sanitation, education, and teen pregnancy. Even landlubber communities face these challenges!

Children of floating market families who do get an education often look beyond the river for economic opportunity. Those who go to college want to become office-bound professionals rather than boat-bound produce wholesalers. They want to provide a more comfortable, healthier life for their own children. The floating market communities are shrinking even without government prodding.

All this being said, people continue to live and work on these boats today, even with the roads. So some people do care about preserving the floating market way of life (either that, or they see no other options). The floating market is just one of many worldwide examples of a traditional lifestyle struggling to survive and thrive against the mighty wave of modernization. But culture is dynamic--today's particular snapshot of their culture is not the same as a snapshot of their culture from three hundred years ago--and ultimately improved health and education are good things.

Boats in the Cai Rang floating market

Pumpkin wholesaler in the Cai Rang floating market. The giant eyes were traditionally painted on the boats to scare away crocodiles, but these days there aren't many crocodiles left in the Mekong Delta.

We took a selfie on the boat. Front to back: Giang, My, me, Ai, Quy.

Finally, I end this absurdly long post with a shout-out to my brother. Ben, I saluted Can Tho's giant Ho Chi Minh statue again for you:

June 2011

April 2014

Ai and Quy, if you guys are reading this, I apologize if anything I said about Vietnam was mistaken. Please correct me if I'm wrong and I'll fix it!

I love my new job.

I've been a real slacker on this blog, and for that I apologize. In fact, I apologize for my last post complaining about apartment hunting. I'm embarrassed that I sound like an American brat, but it seems to be tradition on this blog to bitch about apartment hunting when I move to a new city.

I ended up finding a great place with a wonderful landlady. She often welcomes me home at the end of the day with a snack and, most recently, a whole bag of mangoes. While she doesn't speak a word of English, her children (who are about my age) speak English fluently and have even studied and/or worked abroad in the US and Japan. One of them studied in Boston on a Fulbright! We sometimes hang out on the ground floor of the building. They are wonderful people.

So, what am I doing in Cambodia? I work for an NGO transitioning into a for-profit enterprise (or are they just starting a for-profit wing? I'm a bit unclear on that). My organization approaches water and sanitation challenges with market-based solutions. Basically, we sell toilets, water filters, and handwashing devices to rural consumers. (People tend not to value--and thus not to use or repair--a product they receive for free.*) Therefore, a lot of our work involves creating demand for water and sanitation products; we are actually among the leaders worldwide in what is called "sanitation marketing."

*I recognize this statement is an oversimplification and not always true but I don't feel like getting into all that right now.

The products we sell were designed in collaboration with a famous design firm in San Francisco, but now my organization wants to build an in-house design team rather than rely on external consultants. I was hired to build and lead this team. I'm in the middle of recruiting Cambodian engineers, and it's really weird to be on the other side of hiring so soon after going through the job hunting process.

I will be working on a number of products. Our flagship product in Cambodia is a simple pour-flush pit latrine, since approximately 80% of rural Cambodians do not have access to toilets and must practice open defecation. We've already sold over 70,000 latrines nationwide. However, the primary obstacle to widespread toilet adoption is the high price of the latrine shelter that is attractive to consumers (cheaper shelters are available but people don't want them and prefer to have no toilet than a toilet with the cheaper shelter). My first challenge is to come up with an affordable latrine shelter that meets the consumers' needs and desires. In the future I will be working on "infant and young child feces management" products (a.k.a. potties), a larger version of our handwashing device for schools, health clinics, refugee camps, etc (our current device is household-size), and a household rainwater harvesting kit.

I love my job. I get both the engineering and the social science, the physics and the field work. I have already been traveling a lot. I've been out in "the provinces" three times (people say "the provinces" when they mean anywhere but Phnom Penh; usually it refers to rural areas) and to Vietnam--and it's been only 5 weeks. I will be working closely with manufacturers, which is the biggest hole in my experience, so hopefully I will learn a ton and gain new useful skills. And my coworkers are lovely. I mean, how could I not love a job where my boss pretends to poop?

This is my boss.

My life is a little boring outside of work, because I don't have any non-work friends yet. To be honest though, I'm really enjoying the alone time right now, burying myself in books about Indochina and watching my favorite TV shows. But I think soon I might go a little stir-crazy, so I should probably start trying to meet people. I learned about a Hindi/Urdu conversation group recently, so I might join to meet other people interested in India (I would be lying if I said I didn't miss India every day) and of course to brush up on my Hindi.

Speaking of languages, I have started Khmer lessons. In some ways the language is difficult--the pronunciation is pretty much impossible for my American tongue--but in other ways it's not so difficult. For example, there appear to be no tenses or verb conjugation. So vocabulary is hard but grammar is easy. My tutor is fantastic and classes are pretty fun.

And now for some photos:

The edge of a market in Kampong Cham province

The infamous fried spiders. Cambodians started to eat spiders and other bugs to fend off starvation during the Khmer Rouge when there was no other food available. I'm not sure why people still eat them. Apparently the legs are the tastiest part.

Adorable family in a village in Kampong Cham province.

Another adorable family in Kampong Cham province.

This guy climbed a tree to pick some coconuts for us to drink.

Volleyball is the most popular sport in Cambodia. This surprised me, since I didn't realize volleyball was popular anywhere.

A typical village home in Cambodia sits on stilts. A typical poor family's home is made of palm leaves rather than wood. Rural households typically store their water in giant jugs like these.

In rural Cambodia, iced coffee comes in bags. Lindsay (pictured) and I love Cambodian iced coffee.

This is where village women give birth--if they come to the clinic at all. It was even more terrifying in person.

Napping in a hammock is a favorite pastime in the hot season.

Children play on a mountain of scraps from the nearby garment factories in Kampong Speu province.

Mai, Lindsay, and me with our host family in a village in Kampong Speu province

In Vietnam we held meetings under the watchful eye of Uncle Ho. (That's Ho Chi Minh, in case that's not clear.)

More posts coming soon. I have so much to catch you up on!

Finally got a job ...in Cambodia!

Unemployment has come to an end. I got a job! In Phnom Penh! I'll be designing water and sanitation products with communities in rural Cambodia and I'm super excited about it. I move on Friday!

It's crazy to me that I'm moving to a totally new country (that is, a country that is not India). I've been in and out of India for almost seven years now. In my work and research I have only ever thought about India. I studied Hindi for a while. I minored in South Asian Studies as an undergrad. I have lots of friends in India. I have an entire Indian wardrobe of salwar kameezes and saris. I know the train system like the back of my hand. Every time I land in Delhi, I feel like I'm coming home. I felt committed to India for so long--in some ways, I still feel very committed to India--and it feels weird to be going somewhere else.

I'm afraid I'll project India onto Cambodia. When I went to Oaxaca, Mexico, I was called out on comparing everything to India. "Not every developing country is the same," I was reminded again and again. (To be fair, though, Oaxaca has Bajaj autorickshaws!! They call them mototaxis. But the point is well taken.) It's difficult to push aside expectations and assumptions that I have developed over several years. I will have to try hard not to view Cambodia through the lens of my experience in India; otherwise, my work in Cambodia would suffer.

Hopefully I'll continue to stay connected to India. Certainly I'll keep following Indian politics. After all, this is the most controversial/exciting/terrifying election in years. I'd love to squeeze in a visit to the Subcontinent during my time in Cambodia, so friends in India, stay tuned!

And to anyone in Cambodia who comes across my blog: do you know a good Khmer teacher? It's time for me to commit to Cambodia, too.

Research findings from my thesis work

In my last post, where I shared my thesis, I promised you a short summary of my research findings. Here they are. (Well, some of them, anyway.)

First, a quick reminder of the research issue: In eastern India, ~85% of farmers irrigate their land using fossil fuel-powered pumps because they do not have access to electricity. Diesel and kerosene pumps have very expensive operation costs that farmers cannot afford, so they often choose not to irrigate outside monsoon season. With few other livelihood options, they migrate elsewhere for work. When they migrate seasonally, their families often cannot access social services such as health and education. I sought to address this challenge by developing an alternative off-grid pumping solution.

(Please do not confuse this with the opposite irrigation problem in western India, where free or near-free electricity for agriculture has led to unlimited pumping and severe over-exploitation of groundwater resources. The water table is not falling at a dangerous rate in eastern India. In fact some people argue that increasing groundwater extraction would reduce the incidence of flooding during monsoon season, because the soil would not be as saturated.)

For more about irrigation economics, see an earlier post here.

And now for my favorite research findings:

1. Rental costs are greater than fuel costs. This one actually surprised me. Everybody loves to talk about dirty fossil fuels and how the high cost of diesel (or in this case, kerosene) is what's keeping poor farmers from irrigating their fields. But I tested the actual performance of some pumps owned by farmers in Gumla and found that the flow rates were so bad that farmers needed to rent the pumps for an absurd number of hours to soak their fields--and hourly rental rates are fairly high. The implication? The focus of designing a new pump should be on increasing the flow rate more than fuel efficiency. The faster the flow rate, the less time it takes to irrigate a field--and the fewer hours required to irrigate, the less a farmer spends on renting a pump.

costs to irrigate one acre of land with 2" of water with a 12 year old Honda pump

2. Eliminating, or at least significantly reducing, suction head can reduce operation costs by up to 44%. I ran an experiment to test the hypothesis that eliminating suction head would increase efficiency and flow rates--and the experiment verified this hypothesis (see chapter 2 of my thesis). I then spent a great deal of time during my master's research trying to come up with affordable ways to run a submersible pump with a surface engine (see chapter 3 of my thesis), only to be outsmarted by the farmers (as usual): see #3.

3. Farmers already know #2. It turns out that farmers have already figured out that reducing suction head increases the pump's efficiency and flow rates (apparently, they experiment with lowering their pumps once the groundwater level falls beyond 7 m, the suction capacity of a pump, during dry season). Some lower the pump into the well with a rope, while others dig a trench next to the well:

4. Indian pumps are super leaky, but farmers know how to deal with it. I couldn't get an Indian pump to suck. Period. I tried a million ways to plug the leaks and just couldn't do it. That is, until I met a bunch of farmers who laughed at my teflon tape and showed me how it's done: slash an old bike tire and wrap those strips of rubber around all pump connections and hose fittings. Jugaad at its best! (But seriously, this is a problem the Indian pump industry desperately needs to address.)

5. Farmers claim Chinese pumps are more efficient than Indian pumps. Nobody knows why or if this is even true. Unfortunately I was unable to test a Chinese pump (I couldn't get them to work at MIT, and the villages I visited didn't use them--I would have had to go to West Bengal, and I did not have time). By taking them apart, I learned that they use a 3" discharge hose, rather than the 2" hose that Indian pumps use, and they have a smaller impeller-to-chamber volumetric fill ratio. The larger hose diameter makes sense to me: larger diameter = fewer pipe losses = higher efficiency. But I'm not sure how impeller-to-chamber volumetric fill ratio might impact efficiency, and I would be interested in exploring this issue further in the future (especially because I'm fairly certain Chinese pumps are going to take over the eastern Indian pump market).

6. Women don't touch engines. This one is not surprising. I heard from both men and women in the villages that "machines are for men" (though one women did pull me aside and asked me to show her how to start a pump engine when her husband wasn't looking). Women came up to me while I was testing the performance of their husband's pumps and asked, basically, "What about us? We're stuck with a bucket and rope. Our husbands may use a greater volume of water with their 'paani ki machine,' but we use water more frequently." To be honest, I had considered domestic water supply a completely separate issue from agricultural water supply, and I thought improving irrigation would increase the wealth of the entire family and thus benefit women too. But if I'm working on water supply anyway, why not think about a multi-purpose pump?

7. Manual rope pumps intended for irrigation end up utilized for domestic uses. Manual rope pumps have been installed all over the world as part of various water programs. In many cases, such as in rural Orissa (in eastern India), the pumps are intended for irrigation. Well, it turned out that in Orissa, the pumps were not used for irrigation. Irrigating a field requires a huge amount of water, and manually pumping that volume of water is time-consuming and exhausting, especially in the heat of the dry season (temperatures can soar to 50 C/120 F). Instead, it turned out that women used the pumps for domestic purposes: drinking, cooking, washing. The women love the rope pumps because they are way easier to use than throwing down and raising a bucket. Plus, children and the elderly can use a rope pump; otherwise they need the women to fetch water for them, since they are not strong enough to raise a heavy bucket of water.

8. Farmers like the color green. This is maybe a silly one, but farmers associate green with agricultural productivity. PRADAN, the grassroots NGO I worked with, told me that whenever possible they use the color green in their products and services, because the farmers respond better to it.

So, what did I do with all of this? I designed a dual-mode rope pump. The pump can be used in motorized mode for high-flow applications such as irrigation and in manual mode for low-flow applications such as domestic uses. The engine is removable, so it can be safely stored at home (farmers expressed concerns about theft) and one engine can be shared by or rented out to several wells, as is done now with the regular centrifugal pumps. Plus the men have no problem allowing women to use the pump in manual mode (the hand crank is removable so it doesn't injure someone when the pump is operated in motorized mode). And yes, I painted the pump green.

Below is a video of the pump in action, being tested by users. I got pretty good feedback from the users, and I have some ideas for future modifications.



Speaking of user testing, I employed human-centered design methodology throughout my research process. Here's a video explaining what I did:



Ok, so maybe this post wasn't a very short summary.

HUGE thank you to PRADAN and Swastik Engineering Works for their support. I could not have done this project without them.

My thesis

I completed and submitted my thesis about two months ago and, finally, earned my master's in mechanical engineering! I very ceremoniously received my diploma in the mail, so it's official.

If you are interested in reading my thesis (or parts of it), please click here. Warning: it's a 15 MB pdf file. I will soon post a summary of my findings, if you don't want to read the thesis but are interested in my work. You can read a bit about the problem I focused on in these posts.

So what's next? Well... I don't know yet. I'm in the process of applying to jobs. If you know of any awesome opportunities in international development/energy/water/all-of-the-above, please let me know!

Green Pune, Clean Pune

"Green Pune, Clean Pune" is one of several slogans painted on walls and concrete barriers all over the city. Pune is famous for having one of the most, if not the most, organized and effective waste systems in India. As part of a project my advisor has me working on, I investigated Pune's waste cycle.

"Green Pune, Clean Pune" painted on a wall, ironically next to trash. Photo taken from Google Images.

In Pune, there are several different avenues municipal solid waste (MSW) can follow. Each housing society is served by two waste pickers who belong to the Solid Waste Collection and Handling Cooperative (SWaCH), an enterprise founded by the Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat, the trade union of waste pickers. Each home pays a monthly fee of Rs. 10 to 30 (depending on the area) for waste pickers to directly pick up trash from their homes. This miniscule monthly fee is not how waste pickers make their money, though. They earn cash in the scrap market. They sort the waste and sell the very valuable recyclables to scrap dealers, who in turn sell scrap to larger dealers or wholesalers. Some of these wholesalers then either sell the scrap to "super" wholesalers or process the scrap into usable plastic pellets for manufacturing. 

Perhaps the most interesting recycle-cycle is plastic bags, which are slowly being banned by cities around the world for being non-recyclable. World, take a good look at Pune. One large wholesaler mechanically cleans these bags then processes them into pellets, which are sold to an irrigation company to be melted and molded into drip irrigation pipes. Since the recycled plastic bags are an absurdly cheap material--there is no competing demand for them--the drip pipes are among the cheapest in the world and can be sold at affordable prices to smallholder farmers.

(Actually I still think banning these plastic bags is a good idea. But for cities that are still using them, don't give up hope on them being non-recyclable!)

Waste that does not end up in home trash cans likely ends up in dumpsters or in the streets. This more public garbage is taken care of by the Pune Municipal Corporation, which employs safai karmacharis (cleaning workers) to sweep the streets and empty the dumpsters and then sort all the waste. Organic ("wet") waste is sent to either biogas power plants to supply the city of Pune with electricity or to fertilizer production plants. Recyclable waste goes to recycling processing plants. Non-recyclables mostly go to incinerators or landfills, but Pune has been experimenting with using the waste as syngas fuel for electricity generation.

Large commercial entities such as malls have their own custodial staff who take care of the waste in various ways. Some shopping complexes sell their waste on the scrap market to wholesalers while others send the garbage to major recycling plants.

This whole process is illustrated in the figure I made below (click on the image to enlarge). I'm sorry it's confusing and busy; this is the first time I've attempted to create such a diagram. Two caveats: (1) that process is what ideally happens and (2) that figure excludes the non-unionized waste pickers who go to the landfills to scavenge. A lot of trash slips through the cracks of the system, and the non-unionized waste pickers try to recover some of the valuable recyclable waste that has slipped through. This figure might imply that 100% of recyclables end up recycled, but that's not true. In Pune, almost 50% of plastics end up recycled. But keep in mind that is still extremely high: in the US about 8.2% of recyclable plastics get recycled. (Source.)

Pune's waste cycle. Click on image to enlarge.

Whenever I talk about waste management in India, I like to recall a story from December 2009, when my brother Ben and his friend Joel visited me in Delhi. We went on a trip to northeast India, and on our way back we passed through Kolkata. Ben ate a banana and could not find any trash can to discard his peel. After having seen tons of garbage in the streets (Kolkata can sometimes be particularly dirty), he decided to simply drop the peel where he was standing, in the middle of a plaza. An Indian man came over to Ben and started yelling at him not to throw his trash on the ground. Ben, of course, was exasperated: "Have you seen your streets? You have no right telling me not to litter when you treat your streets like landfills. Everyone else in this filthy city is littering. What am I supposed to do with my trash if there are no trash cans?"

But if you looked around more carefully, you would realize there was not a piece of garbage in the plaza itself--but tons of trash piling up in the streets lining the plaza's border. Street sweepers, like those safai karmacharis in Pune, pick up the trash in the street, but not in the plaza. Thus, Ben should have added his banana peel to an existing pile in the street, rather than dropping it anywhere. However, this is not obvious to an outsider who doesn't know anything about India's waste system and sees waste strewn about in a seemingly indiscriminate way. And really, Ben was right in a sense. It is unhygienic to allow trash to pile up in streets, even if street sweepers or waste pickers will come by later to collect it. Not to mention that it's far from aesthetically or aromatically pleasing.

So yes, the streets of India often appear filthy. When you walk around, you have to watch your feet lest you step in garbage (...or cow dung). But it's important to keep in mind that this littering is part of the waste system, and in fact, putting waste into the hands of professionals, rather than hoping the average citizen can sort his or her waste properly, results in higher recycling rates, as witnessed in Pune.

As I have learned again and again, nothing in India (or anywhere, really) is as it seems on the surface. It's too easy to judge and make assumptions based on first impressions, especially when those impressions are as strong as smelly piles of trash in the street--but those assumptions will almost always be wrong. We have to delve deeper to understand what's actually going on (and we probably still won't fully understand; I certainly have much more to learn!).

Open source rural technology?

I don't know much about intellectual property law. Especially not in India (other than, perhaps, as it pertains to pharm re: the recent Novartis case). But something IP-related has been bothering me the last few days.

I'm working with an organization that runs a vocational school of sorts for school dropouts. It gives the students technical training, but I don't know if you would necessarily call them mechanics at the end. The curriculum encourages creativity, and the students are involved in designing new, affordable technologies that address problems they face in their villages.

In 1983, students developed a low-cost, low-power tractor suitable for smallholder farmers--a very large group of farmers in India who cannot afford big tractors. Then in 2002, some students significantly improved upon the design. The organization decided to make the design "open source," with the idea being that any farmer anywhere could take this design and build himself a tractor.

But that's not what happened. Instead, or so the story goes, Mahindra, the largest tractor company not only in India but in the world, took the design and now manufactures and sells it, making millions of dollars in profit. (I have no idea if this is true or not. It's very possible Mahindra also came up with an affordable small tractor without any knowledge of this organization's tractor, since it seems fairly obvious that there's a large market for such a product.)



The organization's tractor

A Mahindra tractor

  

This organization views this story as a huge success.

I view this story as a huge lost opportunity.

If this story is really true--if indeed Mahindra just took (I would like to say "stole," but it was open source) and modified the organization's design rather than coming up with a similar design independently--then this organization lost out on a lot of money. Not that they have the capacity to mass-manufacture, or that commercialization is their goal. I understand that their primary focus is educating their students. However, had they patented their design, they could have sold it to Mahindra and made some royalties off of the profits. That money could have been invested back in the students by improving facilities and programs, without (or with less) dependence on donors.

This organization does great work educating their students, and their students come up with clever solutions that would improve the quality of life in rural India. I understand that this organization wants to remain non-profit, but it would be really fantastic for the students to see their technologies become a reality, to see their products being sold in villages around India. And maybe these students would earn some money from the royalties and start climbing out of poverty.

Honestly, I don't see how open source technologies could work in rural India. At least not yet. How would smallholder farmers even learn that this new tractor design exists? The organization did zero knowledge dissemination, other than to post some photos and specs on their website (which a poor farmer would never see). And if the farmers did learn about the tractor, how would they go about building it without the necessary resources and mechanical expertise? I guess rural mechanics could make the tractors and sell them--but again, how would they know about the tractor?

If this organization wants to see the technologies their students develop reach the people who would benefit from them, they should consider engaging in partnerships with major manufacturers who have large distribution networks. That way the organization doesn't actually have to do the scaling-up themselves; they can continue to focus on the education. I just think that working with established manufacturers is likely to be a more effective way to disseminate technology than to make the technology open-source.

Besides, people copy products all the time in India without any consequences. Knock-offs of every type of product are super common. (Case in point: I bought a gym bag in Lajpat Nagar that has the word "Reebok" on the front and a Nike swoosh on the side.) The organization could patent the product, sell it to or partner with a company to manufacture and sell, and the product would still effectively be open-source. What's to stop a village mechanic from copying a Mahindra tractor if he wants to?

Back in India again. And behavioral irrigation economics.

I'm back in India. Bet you didn't see that coming! It happened extremely quickly. I literally bought my flights two days before I took off. Highlights of flying Swiss Air through Zurich: free Swiss chocolate and amazing views of the Alps. Highlights of returning to Delhi: catching up with old friends and drinking mango shakes.

Two days ago, my first day back, I met with an agricultural economics researcher. He researches irrigation in Bihar and Gujarat, which is why I was meeting with him. He is interested in the groundwater economy and pumping behaviors. Like me, he finds irrigation fascinating because it lies at the energy-water-food-livelihood nexus.

I learned a lot from this meeting. For one, I learned that economics is really a study of human behavior. I guess that's obvious, but for some reason I never thought of economics that way. This makes econ a lot more interesting than what I had imagined it to be.

As I may or may not have explained before on this blog (I honestly don't remember), in eastern India where pumps are ~85% diesel- or kerosene-run rather than electric, pumps are not installed on a well. Instead, a handful of people own pumps and rent them out to their neighbors on an hourly basis, and pumps are transported on bicycles. These pump owners essentially run an oligopoly. They seem to agree on high rental rates. Interestingly, as more farmers purchase their own pumps and enter the rental business, increased competition has not driven down hourly rates, contrary to what one might expect. This researcher thinks he has learned why: the costs to the pump owner are so high he doesn't have any particular motivation to actually rent out the pump to more customers. He must deliver the pump to the well, which is a pain in the ass. A pump is a pretty heavy thing to strap to your bike. Then, the farmer who is renting the pump may or may not know how to operate the pump, so the owner has to start up the pump for him. Someone has to hang around near the pump to make sure operation is going smoothly and to add more fuel when necessary; sometimes, this someone is the pump owner and not the renter, if the renter is inexperienced with diesel engines. A pump is usually run for several hours at a time, and if the pump owner must babysit the pump for that time, he is losing out on hours that could be spent more productively (in most cases, the pump owner has his own farm to tend to). His time is pretty valuable, so he keeps rental costs high, and often he would rather have that time to do other work than rent out to another customer. Therefore more competition does not reduce prices.

Because of these high operation costs that do not even include fuel cost, according to this researcher, advances in efficiency of the pump would not make much difference to the pumping behaviors of farmers. I'm not taking into consideration all costs involved in operation. Yes, the farmers would spend less on fuel. But the time cost would remain high. Maybe if farmers are getting more water per liter of fuel or per hour, they would be able to irrigate more. But if the farmers want to translate the fuel savings into more hours of pumping, that puts a bigger burden on the pump owner. It is possible that the pump owner would raise hourly rates in response. So even if I make the most efficient pump ever, I might not have any impact on reducing operation costs. (But this doesn't mean a more efficient pump is a bad thing!) In that case, my hope should be that the farmers would get more water for the existing amount of time they irrigate. However, this increased efficiency in operation hardly matters if the pump has a higher capital cost than the cheapest pumps on the market (which, at least at this point, it certainly would). Capital cost reigns supreme over operation costs in financial decision-making. Though all the renters would benefit, the pump owner sees little advantage to his rental business to have a more efficient but more expensive pump--more demand for his pump means more work in renting out the pump, and the rental business is not his only source of income. So why bother spending money on a more expensive pump?

...I really need to learn more about economics.

In addition to enlightening me about pumping behavior and economics, the researcher confirmed something I already suspected: farmers lie about everything when surveyed. (Ok, "lie" might be too strong a word. Stretch the truth, maybe?) But I did not understand the whole picture. I had always thought that I couldn't fully trust people's answers to my survey questions because they were trying to give me the "right" answer. I thought they were trying to come up with the answer they thought I wanted to hear (for example, a woman might lie about keeping her child away from the stove while she's cooking, even if the kid sits right next to her, because she knows I would think the smoke is bad for her child's health). This is true in some cases. However, in many cases, especially when you ask about earnings and expenditures, people exaggerate to make themselves seem poorer. Says the researcher, "They see you, a white woman, or me, a city guy, and they think 'this person works for some NGO and is going to go back to Delhi and write up a report about how we need more subsidies or government assistance.' So they exaggerate how poor they are in order to get more money." Even if a fellow villager is taking the survey, the fact that the survey is taking place at all alters people's answers.

This is a very cynical point of view, and I assume this isn't true for every single person interviewed, but I can believe this does happen sometimes. Probably this behavior stems from a history of NGOs advocating for more government assistance based on field surveys. Like how kids in Kerala constantly ask white tourists for pens because about a decade ago an American group donated supplies to local schools there. (This researcher does not deny that these people are indeed very poor or in need of assistance, by the way.)

So how does this researcher deal with the untrustworthiness of survey responses? "Just add error bars. Uncertainty is part of the fun of social science! See, you want accurate numbers. That's why you're an engineer. You like precision. You don't get the same precision in social science, and you have to be willing to work with that." Well, we use our fair share of error bars in engineering, too. But I guess I see his point.

(To be fair, his research is not all wishy-washy. He gets real numbers when he can: he acquires irrigation data from electricity meters, flow meters, pressure gauges, etc. like an engineer would. But questions of income and costs are a lot trickier to answer in a village where people don't have good records. No receipts, bills, paychecks, etc. Without any paper trail, you have to take people at their word.)

I have been thinking recently about switching into the social sciences (maybe economics or public policy) (this is a topic for another post). But as someone who has training in engineering, will I find the fuzziness frustrating? Or will I find it to be an exciting puzzle to be deciphered, the way this researcher does? I have a lot to think about re: my future.

(As a side note, this researcher got his master's at Princeton and his PhD at Harvard. To those of you interested in studying public policy with a focus in international development, he recommended Harvard over Princeton.)

In other news, I noticed in my blog stats that I get a lot of traffic from a seemingly random blog out there in cyberspace. Apparently, a blogger named Vikram Garg called my blog "the best American in India blog." Thanks for the shoutout, Vikram. Shouting right back at ya! Check out his blog at http://vikramvgarg.wordpress.com/.  

Rare earths mining: what is the just way forward?

As many of you know, the fellowship program that funds my work in India holds weekly seminars. Each week, one or two speakers talks to us about various issues in India or developing countries or discusses a particular methodology (for example, cost modeling or randomized control trials). At yesterday's seminar, a professor in MIT's Department of Materials Science spoke to us about minerals cost forecasting. Specifically, he talked about rare earth elements.

For those of you who don't know about rare earth elements (I certainly knew nothing before yesterday), they are used in a lot of modern electronics, advanced motors, and other automotive parts. China is pretty much the only player on the rare earths market. China produces 97% of the world's rare earths, and India produces the other 3%. India has the world's second-largest reserves of rare earths, but those reserves have barely been tapped. India has tremendous potential to expand rare earths mining, especially in the states of Jharkhand, Orissa, and Chhattisgarh, home also to the largest concentrations of adivasis (indigenous people) and iron ore.

The professor somehow managed to talk about rare earth elements without talking about the sticky politics of mining those elements in India's adivasi heartlands, where a Maoist insurgency has taken root partly due to the perceived illegal exploitation of tribal lands for mines. To be fair, this professor is not a political scientist; he's a resource economist who tries to predict supply and demand curves of various minerals and then uses those predictions to advise mining corporations on how to prepare for future market behavior or engineering firms on which minerals to employ in their products. The point of his talk was not about the politics of mining in Jharkhand, Orissa, and Chhattisgarh, but about how supply and demand forecasting can influence material selection in engineering.

Last night, I briefly chatted with my friend Marena about the sloppiness and fuzziness of environmental justice, and it got me thinking about the rare earths talk. Mining rare earths is good for the global environmental cause: these elements are necessary for the magnets found in the motors of electric vehicles and wind turbines. If we want to ween ourselves off of petroleum-fueled vehicles and coal power plants to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change, we're going to need a lot more of these minerals for our electric cars and wind farms. On the other hand, the mining process of rare earths devastates the local environment. Much like hydrofracking, the process is water-intensive and results in heavy contamination of local water resources. So, do we sacrifice the local for the global? What is the "just" thing to do?

Arundhati Roy would say the just thing to do would be to "leave the bauxite in the mountain." (Yes, I've referenced this quote before.) She feels so strongly about this issue that she declared the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks should focus on mining in eastern India rather than curbing worldwide carbon emissions. Roy is an ardent supporter of the Maoists, who oppose the mining operations. She implies that the Maoists represent the wishes and beliefs of all tribal people in the regions in which they fight. However, this is simply not true. It is difficult to quantify support for Maoism, as the Maoists tend to utilize intimidation techniques to garner support. While certainly there are genuine supporters, many adivasis who show support do so out of fear. Some agree with the Maoist ideology but disagree with their violent methodology. Others disagree with them altogether. Like any population, adivasis feel divided on politics.

I learned during my visits to Jharkhand that the poorest people do see the mines as a lucrative employment opportunity, especially because there are few other opportunities. It is very easy for the Maoists and Roy to paint the government and mineral companies as evil bullies stealing land from helpless tribal people at absolutely zero benefit to them, but it is not that simple. Mines do provide jobs, and jobs that pay well due to the dangers.

I'm not denying that the major mining corporations exploit the local communities. Of course they do. To admittedly simplify the issue: the forest lands belonged to the adivasis, and then the Indian government took those lands away and sold them to outsiders for huge sums of money--and adivasis haven't seen a rupee. But the answer cannot be to completely eliminate mining; the world needs the minerals (Japan definitely wants an alternative supplier to China!), and these impoverished states of India need the money. The answer has to involve some form of inclusive development. How can the benefits to the local communities be maximized and the risks to the environment be minimized? How can the profits be more equitably distributed so that adivasis see more advantages from these mining operations? The local communities need to be included from Day One in the planning of the mines--not just included for the sake of being included, but included as an equal partner with equal power--and the environmental damage needs to be adequately contained. (Ok, maybe I'm asking for a lot that is not realistic...)

For now, major corporations on the demand side, such as GE, are preparing for the potential decline in rare earths availability by trying to design induction motors that do not require rare earth magnets. One supply side player, Molycorp Minerals, has been developing more environmentally-friendly (or should I say, less environmentally-devastating?) mining methods that meet California's environmental regulations so that they can re-open the Mountain Pass rare earth mine (in 2002 California had closed Mountain Pass, the only rare earths mine in the US, due to environmental contamination). Certainly researching ways to reduce the demand for rare earths and ameliorate the environmental impacts of mining is a step in the right direction for environmental justice. But for the foreseeable future, rare earths mining is going to be in high demand and highly dirty--with potential for high profits. Given this reality, what is the just way forward in Jharkhand, Orissa, and Chhattisgarh?

Some further reading:
 
If you want to learn more about mining in India, it is definitely worth reading Roy,* even though I don't think she takes a nuanced-enough approach. She does make some strong points, so click here for her thoughts on mining and Maoists.

India Together's mining news here

Ernst and Young's "Mining India Sustainably for Growth" here

"India bets on rare-earth minerals," Wall Street Journal here

*My problem with Roy, really, is that she doesn't seem to recognize that the modern world has encroached on traditional tribal life. She never offers any alternatives for tribal development; she seems to think India should simply leave the adivasis alone. That might have been fine if they were always left alone, but now they're in this weird limbo between their traditional lifestyle and mainstream society as a result of various British colonial and Indian policies. The adivasis probably cannot revert to their old way of life given modern realities. I'm not saying India should force them to join mainstream society, but they should be included, somehow, in policy-making and be given the tools to make decisions about their own future. (Where I work, former forest-dwelling adivasis have been forced into a settled agrarian lifestyle due to various forestry policies. But they were not farmers before a generation ago, so they lack a lot of the knowledge and skills that are usually passed down from parents to children.) Ok, Roy rant over.

My first poster (an update on my research)

It's been forever since I've posted, and that's because, well, I haven't been abroad in a while. Which means my life is a helluva lot less interesting. But I did recently present my first-ever poster. If you're interested in an update on my research, click on the image below:

Everyone is talking about Hitler.

Remember how I blogged about the new Hitler store in Ahmedabad? Twice? Well, I'm not the only one talking about it. The NYTimes is talking about it, too: click here to read the article and see a picture of the storefront (the picture I couldn't manage to get because I was passing by in an autorickshaw). This quote by the store owner pretty much says it all:

“None of the other people are complaining, only a few Jewish families. I have not hurt any sentiments of the majority Hindu community. If he did something in Germany, is that our concern?” Mr. Shah asked.

He said he thought Hitler was a “good, catchy” name for his shop. In fact, his business plan seems to include cashing in on the name to attract customers. “We have not written anything below the sign or on our cards to indicate what we sell to generate mystery,” he said. “The customers who come in tell me they came in seeing the name.”

Update: Israel plans to ask Chief Minister Modi to force the Hitler store to change its name. Click here to read more.

Red is not the only color in Gumla.

I'm making up for my recent boring, all-text posts with some photos from a week of field work in Gumla District, Jharkhand:

On my first day I visited some villages in Raidih block. It turned out many villages were almost empty because Monday is the weekly haat, or market. People from every village in the area flock to the haat, which sees about 5000 people every week. Adivasi haats are famous for having a party atmosphere and a lot of drinking. I did not witness that here, so I guess that reputation comes from another adivasi region. Here are some photos from the haat:

And photos from my village visits, during which I held group discussions about irrigation:

For some reason the self-help group thought it would be funny if I pretended to be their accountant in the photo.

That man in blue is covering his face because he was sneezing.

Drawing a map of their village.

This house was painted for a wedding back in April. The doorway says "swagatam," or "welcome."

 There was a solar panel store in the district headquarters. Or more accurately, an electronics store that also sold solar panels so that you could actually use the electronics you purchase--because what good is a TV if you don't have reliable electricity? The solar panels are fairly cheap (and maybe secondhand?): Rs 1800 for the small ones, which are rated at 20 W and can power 2 light bulbs for 4 hours (the store also sells light bulbs, of course). 

There are missionaries all over the adivasi regions of India. This village is one of many that has converted to Christianity.

It may be hard to tell in this photo, but this woman has tattoos on her face (note her forehead). Many adivasi women in this region have tattoos all over their bodies. The heaviest tattoos I saw were on women's forearms. I didn't want ask about the tattoos because I thought it might be a sensitive issue. Luckily, I didn't have to: sometimes the women would ask me where my tattoos were! I took advantage of this and asked them why they have tattoos. They believe that the tattoos are required to allow their spirits to leave their bodies after death; without the tattoos, their spirits would be trapped. However, this traditional practice seems to be on its way out, as many of the younger generation do not have tattoos (perhaps because of the influence of Christianity in the region?).

 carrying wood to be used as fuel

typical village house, with an awesome jackfruit tree

And some agriculture/scenery:

animals grazing on land that hasn't been tilled yet

People are finally sowing!! (See this previous post to understand why this is exciting.)

rice paddies--that actually have rice, despite the poor monsoon! here's hoping the yield is alright come harvesting time.

forest near Palkot

forest near Palkot. the terrain was very bouldery, not unlike Hampi in Karnataka.

mango on a tree

 I got around on a motorcycle. See, Mom, I wasn't lying when I said I wear a helmet.

 

...and yes, "red" in the title of this post is referring to the Maoist presence in Gumla. Don't worry, they have given permission to the NGO to operate in the area and do not bother them. Because I was with a Maoist-approved NGO, I was safe. (To clarify, this is not a rebel NGO. They are also friendly with the Indian government. They just do what they need to do in order to get work done in these communities.) To be honest, nothing seemed out of the ordinary and I never would have known I was in a Maoist area if the NGO hadn't told me.

Follow up to Hitler: Opening Soon

I got some interesting responses to my previous post, and I thought I should share:

1) One friend of mine from Delhi thought I was unfairly picking on Hindus by only discussing the Ahmedabad riots.The reason I chose to discuss Ahmedabad is because the Hitler store I saw was located in Ahmedabad--I thought that if my racial politics theory about Hitler's popularity had any legitimacy at all (and I fully admit that it might have zero legitimacy; I'm no expert), then it would make sense that I saw a store celebrating Hitler in a city like Ahmedabad, which is home to particularly tense ethnic relations, as evidenced by the riots.

This friend felt (or at least, I think he felt) that I should have balanced my argument with an example of Muslims killing Hindus. He mentioned the murders of millions of Hindus crossing the border from East Pakistan into India during Partition. However, I think he might be equally unfair as I was with my Ahmedabad example to only mention the devastating massacres committed by Muslims against East Pakistani Hindus. Hindus killed Muslims too, on both eastern and western borders. Muslims also killed Sikhs and Hindus on the western border in addition to the East Pakistanis. Sikhs killed Muslims. Basically, everybody was killing everybody as they fled across newly-formed borders, and millions from all these ethnic groups were brutally murdered. My friend also did not need to go as far back as 1947 to find an appropriate example of Muslims violently attacking and killing Hindus. There are many examples in more recent history, including several bombings. It is a back-and-forth cycle of violence. Wikipedia provides a summary of religious violence in India and gives many examples of various groups killing each other. Read it here.

2) Two other friends of mine thought the fascination with Hitler had more to do with the fight for independence against the British during World War II than with present-day racial politics. Following the age-old adage of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, the leader of the Indian National Army (INA), a group of soldiers who broke away from the British army during WW2 in order to fight for their independence, sought the support of Hitler and Mussolini.

A huge percentage, if not the majority, of the British army consisted of Indian soldiers. I visited some WW2 battlegrounds, war memorials, and cemeteries in Northeast India (specifically, in Nagaland and Manipur) in May 2011. At the cemetery in Kohima, there were very few British names among the hundreds of Indian names (even if people had been cremated, they had a tombstone). I soon crossed the state border into Manipur and learned about the soldiers who abandoned and fought against British (really Indian) soldiers such as those commemorated in Nagaland. In Moirang, I visited the INA Museum, which proved enlightening. I knew that the INA worked with the Japanese against the British in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, and I knew that they would basically ally with anyone who was against the British, but for some reason seeing a photo of Bose shaking hands with Hitler was like a smack in the face. I should not have been surprised at all to see this, yet there I was, confronted with evidence of a man fighting against the oppression of his nation joining hands with a man inflicting oppression upon another nation--of an oppressed hand-in-hand with an oppressor. It felt quite unsettling to see someone I had repeatedly heard lauded as a hero with someone I have always thought of as a villain in the context of my own family history. Because I'm a bad daughter who only ever buys her father books as gifts, I purchased a book entitled Bose in Nazi Germany by Romain Hayes (read a review here) from the museum gift shop. I haven't had the chance to read it yet, but my dad said it was very interesting and I should pick it up.

outside the INA Museum in Moirang is the spot where the INA first raised the Indian flag

I admit that Hitler's connection with the INA and the independence movement was my first thought as to the rationale behind Hitler's ubiquity as well. However, there does not seem to be an equally popular fascination with Bose himself or with the history of the INA's role in India's independence struggle. In fact, Hitler's autobiography outsells Gandhi's autobiography (not that Gandhi had much to do with the INA, but he is by far the most popular figure associated with the independence movement--if people are more interested in reading about Hitler than about Gandhi, then they're likely not going to read as much about Bose). This is why I thought there had to be more behind Hitler's popularity than only the Bose/independence tie. Though of course my friends could be right and I could be wrong. Or maybe they're right in the sense that Hitler's popularity simply carried over from an earlier time, even if today most people are not terribly interested in studying that history.

3) One of the above two said something about the middle class admiring Hitler's discipline. I have no comment on this, because I'm totally ignorant about that. He may be right.

Well, I guess I have reached no conclusions on this issue. If you're interested in more takes on Hitler's popularity in India, check out the following articles:

Hitler Usurps Mahatma, NDTV: This suggests that people are looking to learn about strong leadership.

Indian Business Students Snap Up Copies of Mein Kampf, The Telegraph: Business students think they can learn about management skills from Hitler. This article says that students "see it as a kind of success story where one man can have a vision, work out a plan on how to implement it and then successfully complete it." However, an Indian professor "cited Mein Kampf as a source of inspiration to the Hindu nationalist BJP" and thought that Hitler's popularity is due to political tensions.

Hitler Memorabilia Attracts Young Indians, BBC News: Young people admire Hitler's patriotism and discipline. Hitler "is seen as someone who can solve problems. The young people here [in India] are faced with a lot of problems."

The Advent of Hitler in India, Dr. Aafreedi: I disagree with a lot of what this guy says, but he brings up much of what my friends and I have discussed: the rise of race-based political parties and right-wing extremists, the WW2 history wherein Bose allied with the Nazis, and the admiration of strong leadership.

Hitler: Opening Soon!

I'm back in Ahmedabad for one day between salt pan sites (they are quite far away from each other and I had to go through Ahmedabad to travel between them). I took an auto from Law Garden to Bodakdev, and from my auto I noticed a store called "Hitler" with a banner proclaiming "Opening Soon!" The store sign was decorated with a swastika. A swastika in India never has to do with Nazis; it is a traditional symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism. But the connection with Hitler here was more than clear, and it's something I've never seen before. There was no indication about what kind of store this will be or what it will sell.

Anyone who has traveled around India has probably noticed the tremendous popularity of Mein Kampf. The book is ubiquitous: you see pirated copies of it being sold in railway stations and on the street as well as legitimate copies in high-end Western-style bookstores. It seems to be a perennial best seller here. The first few times I saw it being sold by some street hawker, I would feel deeply offended and start yelling at him, how could he sell such a blatantly racist book written by one of world history's most evil figures and perpetuate hateful stereotypes about a group of people Indians otherwise have little to no exposure to? Of course the hawker would stare at me with a blank face and have no idea what I was talking about. The yelling was pointless anyway, because it's not like he was going to throw the book out. Eventually it became too exhausting to yell at every book hawker selling Mein Kampf, because there are just too many of them.

Don't cry anti-Semitism just yet. I'm fairly certain this has absolutely zero to do with Jews. Most Indians who discover I'm Jewish--including Muslims--have no idea what that means. Most either hear "Jain" when I say "Jew" or assume I'm a type of Christian. The vast majority of Indians have never met a Jew before and are unaware of the centuries-old stereotypes. They really have no reason to like or dislike Jews.

Instead, it probably has to do with the racial politics within this country. India has hundreds of political parties, and of its two most dominant, one of them, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), promotes Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism. They believe that pre-Mughal India belonged to the Hindus, and India should be reclaimed by members of its indigenous religion (this is a distorted view of history. Hinduism was brought by the Aryans, who invaded the Indus Valley civilization from the steppes of Central Asia, so that they could impose the caste system to control the indigenous population. The Aryans are no less invaders of India than the Mughals; they just came millenia earlier). Regional ethnic-based political parties have emerged as well, in pretty much every region. It is easy to see why Hitler's theory of racial purity would appeal to these parties, some of which are quite militant. (In one particularly upsetting episode a few years ago, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) supporter told me he loves Jews because the Israelis are fighting the good fight of "getting rid of Muslims" to "reclaim the land for its rightful owners." It was a gross misunderstanding of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, not to mention that it was extremely insulting to associate my entire ethnic group with racist politics. I'm sure he finds Hitler inspirational and identifies with Mein Kampf, but he harbored no hatred against Jews.)

If the popularity of racial politics is the true reason behind Hitler's ubiquity, then I should not be surprised to see a store celebrating Hitler in Ahmedabad, which saw the some of the worst Hindu-Muslim riots in Indian history in 2002 and remains an ethnically-divided city. Even after ~2000* Muslims were brutally beat to death and burned alive by Hindu extremists, the people have Gujarat have continued, for the past 10 years, to re-elect the same Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, who is believed to have instigated the riots (or at the very least, even if he did not start the riots, he held back the police from intervening to stop the rioting. He was by no means an innocent bystander). Many consider Modi a mass-murderer; Sonia Gandhi of the Congress Party famously called Modi a "merchant of death." The BJP thinks of Modi as a very serious contender for their Prime Ministerial candidate. It will be a terrifying day for Muslims and other non-Hindu minorities if or when Modi is elected as Prime Minister.

(*This number is contested and highly controversial. I've read figures everywhere from 500 to 5000.)

My Gujarati translator for the past few days was Muslim. I discovered this only after he forgot about lunch--or rather, he was fasting for Ramadan, and I forgot to ask him for a lunch break. After dinner one evening, we were watching the news about the humongous blackout that affected 19 states, and Modi came on TV to, as usual, talk about how awesome his Gujarat is while the rest of India is falling apart thanks to the Congress Party. Javed, my translator, muttered in Hindi, "Modi is full of shit."

Javed then started telling me about his experiences during the riots in 2002. He was 14 years old at the time, and he said it was the most terrifying time of his life. His parents pulled him and his siblings out of school because it was too dangerous for Muslims to go outside. He did not leave his house for six months. He was lucky enough not to live in the main Muslim area that had been burnt to the ground by rioters, but he had several friends from that neighborhood who were killed. When I asked him why his family didn't just leave Ahmedabad, he retorted, "Where would we go? Where else in India would be safer? Hindus and Muslims kill each other everywhere in this country. Look at Assam right now. Hindu Bodos and Muslim Bangladeshis are at war. Ahmedabad is my family's home. We have been here for generations, and we do not want to abandon our home. All we can do is hope for a more peaceful future."

For a more peaceful future, India will have to navigate the tricky ethnic politics that have arisen thanks, in part, to migration bringing communities together that would otherwise have had little contact--and to these communities now struggling to take advantage of the same limited resources. The violence in Assam between the Bodos and the Bangladeshis is, at its core, not a religious disagreement. The Bodos, who are an indigenous group, are pissed off because they feel the Bangladeshi immigrants are impeding on their land rights. Likewise, the militant Shiv Sena has emerged in Mumbai to protect Maharashtrian interests against the influx of Bihari migrant workers. This pattern has been multiplying nationwide due to both internal migration and international immigration.

Many Indians will point out that much of the ethnic tensions started during the British Raj, when the imperialists employed divide-and-conquer tactics to take over the country and control the population. I don't doubt that the legacy of colonialism plays a role in ethnic tensions, but I don't think that's the entire story.

(Of course the US has become less welcoming to immigrants and certain ethnic groups, and I'm not implying that there aren't ethnic tensions at home too. The root cause is actually the same: immigration. I just think these kind of tensions sometimes take on a more violent manifestation in India.)

All of this is to say that I believe Hitler's popularity stems from India's racial politics and has little or nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Or you can read what the BBC had to say about this two years ago here.

Happy 5th Anniversary, India!

I first set foot on Indian soil five years ago today. And I certainly had no idea at the time how much my life was about to change.

I still remember that first day in India. The very first thing I noticed about India, before even reaching the subcontinent, was the profusion of mustaches. When I reached my gate at the Bangkok airport, I found myself surrounded by an unusually high number of mustachioed men. (I was flying to Chennai, which I now know is the mustache capital of India. While mustaches are popular all over the country, a higher percentage of men seem to fancy them in South India than in North India.) At the time I wondered why so many people would choose to adorn their face with the ugliest style of facial hair. I still wonder a bit, but I think it is some sort of symbol of manliness.

When I stepped off the plane in Chennai, I was immediately hit by the intense heat and humidity and shortly after by the smell. Those of you who have been to India know that smell. I'm not sure how to describe that distinct smell of India, but I think it's what you get when you combine a plethora of spices with a plethora of animal poop with a plethora of tropical flora. (You get used to this smell after a while. I never notice it now.)

At the baggage claim, I waited and waited and waited for my luggage to show up on the carousel. It didn't. Thai Airways had left it in Bangkok or possibly in Los Angeles, where I started my journey. There was no Thai Airways representative for me to speak with, so some baggage handlers came over to help me out. They didn't speak a word of English, but somehow they managed to communicate to me that I should put my name and Indian address on the back of some piece of scrap paper and my luggage would be delivered. There was no computer to check where my luggage was, no official form for me to fill out, nothing. I completely flipped out. I thought I was never going to see my bag again.

(The next day, my bag showed up at the university, just as the baggage handlers promised. This was an important lesson I would learn again and again in this country: somehow, things always work out in India.)

After the lost luggage ordeal, I finally went through customs. Someone from the university was supposed to pick me up, but there was no one holding up a sign with my name. I was suddenly barraged by taxiwallahs who wanted to take me to my hotel, madam. I was already flustered because of my luggage, so this overwhelmed me. I had no idea where to go or what to do. I managed to find a payphone and called my contact at the university, who quickly resolved things and sent the driver. Apparently he thought I missed my flight because I didn't come out with the rest of the passengers.

The streets of Chennai, even from the window of the car, were just as overwhelming as the onslaught of taxiwallahs. I had never seen so many people. And are those cows in the street? So that's not just a stereotypical view of India that my grandfather joked about before I left the States?! Oh my god there's an elephant! And monkeys! Is that pickup truck filled with people? There are dozens of men sitting on the roof of that bus!

I thought--and I remember this verbatim very well--what the hell have I gotten myself into?! 

Since then, nothing has been the same. Apparently, I got myself into a powerful experience that would alter my life forever. That first stint in India changed the course of my career (at least up until now): upon witnessing the incredible disparity between the lives of India's poor and my own privileged life, I decided to work in development, to apply my engineering skills to trying to help raise people out of poverty through sociotechnical interventions.

I have spent half of the last five years in India: a semester in Pondicherry, a year working in Delhi, and a year working in Shimla and studying Hindi in Varanasi, and now this summer doing research. I have been fortunate enough to travel to 26 out of 28 states, from Kanyakumari to Ladakh, from the Pakistan border to the Burma border, over the course of my time here. I have celebrated almost every major festival, many more than once. I have ridden on an elephant into the depths of the jungle to see tigers and leopards and crossed waterways on trees that were trained to extend their roots to the opposite riverbank. I have walked with a migratory tribe and their herds of buffalo from the high Himalaya to the plains of Punjab. I have shared chai with people from all walks of life all over India, from an upper class Princeton alum in the Delhi Gymkhana Club to Buddhist monks and nuns in Sikkim to adivasi villagers in Jharkhand to a tribal chieftain in Nagaland to an autowallah in Gujarat ("unity in diversity" is India's favorite slogan. I'm convinced chai is what ties people in this country together). Most importantly, I have made some truly great friends who have shown me unparalleled kindness, who have made me laugh until I peed a little, and who have made my time here unforgettable--they are the real reason I keep coming back.

Happy half-decade, India. Thank you for turning my life into an unbelievable adventure. I can't wait to see what the next half-decade will bring.

Adivasi Economy and Water Access (or lack thereof)

Pranam dobara, Jharkhand. (Or in English: Hello again, Jharkhand.)

I'm back in Jharkhand conducting a feasibility study for a solar thermal pump. Why a pump? As the tribes of Jharkhand have traditionally been engaged in hunting and gathering, they are relatively new to agriculture and thus have no irrigation infrastructure. Only 5% of the state of Jharkhand is irrigated; the rest rely completely on rainfall (this monsoon season's lack of rain is having serious consequences, which I will discuss later). Why solar thermal? Because diesel is soon to be deregulated and, without subsidies, it will become too expensive for poor farmers to purchase the fuel to operate their diesel pumps (assuming they even have pumps). As it is, legal diesel is not easily available to these communities. The farmers explained to me that they must buy diesel on the black market, and this diesel is often adulterated and thus the pump often does not work properly. Electricity, which is free or close to free for agricultural purposes in India, is either nonexistent or extremely unreliable in these villages. Meanwhile, the capital cost of solar PV pumps is too high. Solar thermal is much less expensive than solar PV, plus the fuel (sunlight, duh!) is free and available, so this could be a good irrigation solution. For some reason, I'm not sure why, it seems no one has attempted to develop a solar thermal pump, other than an NGO in Ethiopia, but they have faced some mechanical issues and their pump is priced too high for Indian farmers. I am also thinking about possibly including a built-in filter or still so that the water that exits the pump outlet is clean, but maybe this is getting too complicated. (I have not made a final decision about what my project will be; next week I will be doing a feasibility study for another, totally unrelated, project in the salt pans of Gujarat.)

I am spending my time in some of Jharkhand's poorest communities: adivasi (tribal) villages in Gumla district. Most villages I have visited belong to the Oraon tribe, who speak a language called Sadri, and the other villages belong to the Khadia and Lohar tribes, who speak their own language as well as Sadri (since Oraon is the dominant tribe in the area, the other tribes have learned their language). Their Hindi is at times difficult for me to understand because (a) it's a different dialect and accent than the Hindi I have learned (it is similar to Bihari Hindi), (b) when they don't know a word in Hindi (after all, it is their second or third language) they substitute a Sadri word, and (c) they don't use the usual English and Urdu loan words that I've gotten used to in Delhi and Shimla--they use the original Sanskritized word.

I have been interviewing farmers about sinchai (irrigation), and, obviously, this involves a lot of questions about khetibari (agriculture) and more generally about their livelihoods. I also stumbled upon a fantastic book in the NGO's office, Mainstreaming the Margins: Water-centric Livelihood Strategies for Revitalizing Tribal Agriculture in Central India* by Sanjiv J. Phansalkar and Shilp Verma. I don't think a more perfect book could exist for the project I'm currently researching. So, let's talk about the adivasi economy. (Note to Jhanvi: you had asked me for some more context to understand the coal cycle wallahs. Here it is.)


*The use of the term "mainstreaming" here does not mean assimilating the tribal communities into mainstream Indian society. The authors emphasize that there is "no inherent conflict" in preserving tribal identity and culture and an approach to tribal development that involves mainstream water technologies and ties to the mainstream markets. Besides, I tend to believe that cultures are dynamic. What culture has really stayed the same throughout the centuries? While there is certainly value in protecting certain aspects of culture, I would argue that it is more important to live a meaningful life free of poverty--not that being free of poverty necessitates sacrificing traditions. Of course it is preferable to both preserve culture and promote development, when possible. Anyway, the Christian missionaries have already altered tribal culture; a huge percentage of adivasis have converted from their animist religions to Christianity. As a reaction to this, Hindu missionaries swooped in and converted many adivasis as well. Fairly few people still practice their traditional tribal religions. Although I'm usually very anti-missionary, I have to admit that they have done some good: in Northeast India, especially Nagaland, Christianity has brought high literacy rates and an end to intertribal warfare. Ok, tangent-rant done.

Phansalkar and Verma explain that the adivasis participate in three economic spheres: (1) forests, (2) agriculture, and (3) migration. It is a very common misunderstanding among the mainstream Indians that all adivasis depend only on forest activities (forest activities basically means gathering "non-timber forest produce (NTFP)" such as wild fruits, tubers, and mushrooms). Each Central Indian adivasi group is different from each other, and while many (if not all) groups have roots in hunting and gathering, their engagement in NTFP today varies widely. The communities I have been visiting in Gumla have largely abandoned that way of life in favor of a settled agrarian lifestyle.

Well, settled to an extent. Phansalkar and Verma emphasize that tribal agriculture is not modernized and thus cannot sustain a community for an entire year. Tribal agriculture is rain-fed and has no irrigation inputs, so during the non-rainy seasons people must migrate to other parts of India to work as laborers. Some bring their families with them, while others send money back to their families.

After reading a bit about migration in this book, I decided to ask the villagers what they do during the rabi (November/December to February) and garmi (March/April to June) seasons if they don't cultivate their land. As expected, many answered that they migrate. I asked to where, and the answer surprised me: to brick industries in Uttar Pradesh and cement industries in Himachal Pradesh.

Wait, did I hear that right? Cement industries in Himachal Pradesh? They couldn't possibly be referring to Nalagarh, where I had worked with IIRD in 2011, could they? (You may or may not remember my two blog posts discussing Nalagarh's cement industry: the first and the follow-up, in which I briefly discussed the migrant workers I had at the time believed to be Bihari.) I asked them, "do you go to Nalagarh?" and now it was their turn to be shocked. "You know Nalagarh?!" "I worked in Nalagarh on village development planning," I told them. Apparently I had been wrong about the migrants in Nalagarh being Bihari; they were Jharkhandi, and from these villages! Who knew these two very remote, very different areas were tied to each other? And what a coincidence that I had worked in both the area that was demanding the migrants and the area supplying the migrants! India continues to astound me with what a small place it is, despite being a country of over a billion people. (Yes, I'm aware I've written that sentence before, possibly more than once. The smallness of India really never ceases to amaze me.)

Phansalkar and Verma argue that this migration is the biggest obstacle to the development of the tribal belt. What good are health and education initiatives if people aren't around to receive the benefits? They claim that the government and the missionaries (who have historically been the only ones helping the adivasis--that's why there are so many Christian adivasis) are attacking the symptoms, not the root cause, of the communities' poverty problems. To lift the adivasis out of their poor living conditions, they must be given assistance to build a more stable livelihood in their home villages, to build a life without migration. Only then will these health and education programs become effective. The key to ending migration? Irrigation that will allow year-round agricultural productivity. The root cause of tribal poverty, then, is poor access to water, according to the authors.

As I stated earlier, right now the vast majority of tribal communities depend solely on rain for their agricultural livelihood. This means most adivasis only grow one season of crops, the kharif (monsoon) crops. Unfortunately (unfortunately is an understatement), this year has seen drought-like conditions (the Government of India is refusing to declare a drought, but the Jharkhand state government is considering it). This is my sixth consecutive monsoon season in South Asia, and I can say it has certainly been the driest I've experienced. It is unbelievable to ride a motorcycle through these villages and pass acres and acres of land covered in grass and weeds from the previous season--at the end of July! Rainfall has been so low that farmers didn't even bother to turn the soil, let alone sow the seeds. Why waste the money on seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides if there isn't enough water for the crops to grow? I do see a few tilled plots scattered here and there, but I haven't seen much of the beautiful, healthy florescent green rice paddies that I'm used to seeing in the monsoon.

This lack of rain is terrifying for several reasons: the kharif crops provide these communities with food for the rest of the year. If the kharif fails, then they will not have enough food to eat (and they have very little money to buy food from elsewhere)--people will go hungry. Additionally, people will go thirsty. In every village I have visited, people tell me that their wells dry up by the end of summer (which in India is April to June) and that usually the monsoon rains re-fill the wells. This year, however, the wells have remained dry. These wells provide the only source of drinking water for the entire year, and villagers depend on the rains replenishing these wells during the monsoon. Even after a good monsoon their drinking water supply is limited (this is why there is little to no agricultural activity during the rabi and garmi seasons; the wells do not have enough water for both irrigation and domestic purposes, and the communities consider drinking water more important), so a poor monsoon can be catastrophic. I cannot properly articulate how grave these circumstances really are and how scared I am for these communities for the upcoming year.

What does my pump idea have to do with all this? Well, I hope that by increasing access to groundwater (which is actually quite accessible in Jharkhand, where the water table is high at less than 15 meters), I could help reduce the dependence on rain. Of course the groundwater level itself depends on the rain, so utilizing groundwater wouldn't completely eliminate the problem. However, especially if coupled with groundwater recharge methods, pumps to access groundwater could certainly alleviate some of the issues (worst case scenario, just keep digging deeper until you hit water). The NGO facilitating my visit here has developed earthworks methods that have proven quite successful in aiding groundwater recharge; they have actually seen a rise in the water table where these techniques have been implemented. I hope that, if ultimately I do decide to work on a pump, the implementation would include groundwater recharge earthworks.

Not only would an affordable pump reduce rain dependence during the kharif, it would allow for additional crop seasons. A second (rabi) or even third (garmi) crop season utilizing groundwater irrigation would significantly increase a family's income as well as provide them with a stable year-round livelihood. They would no longer have to migrate for work. And, as I explained earlier, Phansalkar and Verma believe the end to migration is integral to raising these communities out of poverty, because staying put allows them to take advantage of social services.

Bas.

(PS: Sorry there are no photos. The Internet here is waaaay too slow for me to upload any.)