India Rising: Tales from a Changing Nation (11 page)

From Mumbai, I head south. My experience with Svasti has inspired me. It proves just how far a little capital can go, especially when placed in the hands of the industrious. In their own way, the slum-based enterprises are impressive. They contribute to women’s financial independence and, ultimately, their self-empowerment. Yet they fall short of being strictly ‘entrepreneurial’. A corner shop or market stall doesn’t represent a new approach to making money in the way that Air Deccan or InMobi do. Realistically, it needs more than a briefcase full of cash to turn the likes of Laxshmi, Gaolachi or Kanti into the next Captain Gopi or Tewari.

What money can’t do, technology – potentially – can. New India abounds with stories of wired-up solutions for the poor. I travel down the coast to Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala, to learn about one such case.

The South Indian Federation of Fisherman Societies occupies an isolated, two-storey building below a road bridge on the edge of town. Surrounded by tropical undergrowth, the building
looks to be slowly but happily losing its fight against the rampant vegetation.

I have the name of Sahay, a programme coordinator at the Federation, which I pass to a young lady at reception. She directs me up a rickety wooden staircase to a tiny garret on the second floor. I find my contact on the phone, a bulbous old-style handset clamped to his ear. I take a seat on a metal-framed chair. A rip runs down the length of its faux-leather cushion.

The space has the distinct feel of a neglected government office: admin papers piled high on the desk, paper-bound files held down by paperweights, metal filing cabinets rimmed with dust, an old rusty fan wheezing away, a single huge padlock key.

After a few minutes, he puts down the phone and, with a cheery smile, moves to shake my hand. ‘We may speak in Eng-leesh?’ he asks, a polite question mark hanging over the last word. We both know that the idea of dropping into the vernacular Malayalam or his native Tamil is improbable. The invitation makes me warm to him right away.

In his early thirties, Sahay is at great pains to appear professional. His black hair is neatly brushed, the side parting so straight and rigid that a pencil could rest in its lacquered groove. An ironed shirt covers a splendidly premature pot-belly. He takes out a brand-new notebook and writes down my name in a careful hand on the first page.

Sahay oversees a pilot scheme that provides the Federation’s members with daily fish prices by mobile phone. Before we talk about the project itself, the amiable coordinator feels some background would be instructive. He starts with himself. He originally wanted to be a priest. ‘One needs to be very pious,’ he says with an impious grin. Revising his calling, he dropped out of the seminary to study social work. By religion, he is Catholic. By caste, Mukkuvar. Many of the fishing communities in India’s deep south are similarly low-caste Christian. The fishermen’s charity seems a natural home for him.

He shifts the topic to the Federation itself. It was set up by a
Catholic priest for ‘the good of the fishermen community’. When? He’s not sure of the exact date. He’ll check with his supervisor.

Anyway, back whenever it was – say thirty or forty years ago – the charity helped introduce stitch-and-glue plywood boats. What did they use before? Catamarans, he replies. Like . . . ? My image of catamarans is one of sleek-hulled yachts. ‘Like canoes,’ he says patiently. Later, the Federation spearheaded the move to fibreglass. Other innovations followed. Outboard motors, for instance. The non-profit outfit has exclusive import rights for Suzuki engines, which it sells to its members through a generous credit facility. Then came nylon nets in place of cotton. The latest novelty to hit the shores is a twin-engine trawler with cold storage.

‘How is my English? Are you understanding me very well?’

‘I am,’ I assure him.

Sahay is very concerned about his command of English. He wants to move to Australia but it requires passing a language competency test.

His preliminary comments over, he tells me about the mobile-phone scheme. It’s called the ‘Market Intelligence System’, he says with pride, pronouncing each individual word with clipped precision. The Federation employs data-gatherers in harbours and fish markets up and down the Keralan coast. They then clock the day’s prices for different fish species and text them through to the Federation’s headquarters.

‘Now, let’s imagine we are collecting the data,’ Sahay tells me, attempting to help me visualise the process. ‘Actually picture yourself as the data.’ I’m not sure what he means. He makes himself clearer. ‘You are such and such a species code, with such and such an origin, at such and such a price. And you arrive, just so, in the computer room over there.’

He leads me out of his office and across the creaking corridor. In front of the computer room’s one working terminal sits Aravind, a shy and well-meaning technician. Tapping at the keyboard with ring-adorned fingers, he brings up a data entry webpage. ‘So you’re an oil sardine. Code “003”. Goes in here.’ He types the digits into a rectangular box. ‘And you’re from
Munambam. So that’s “13”. Here.’ My price, quality and catch size fill subsequent boxes.

With the press of the ‘Return’ key, I find myself suddenly shunted into a narrow data column above the Cuttle Fish and Squid and below the Flower Prawns and Poovalan. Aravind checks the digital watch on his wrist. At one o’clock, he warns me, I’ll be sliced, spliced and reconfigured, before being dispatched through the ether to thousands of waiting cellphones. Torturous as it sounds, the journey will be worth it, Sahay assures me. I, in my text-message form, will enable South India’s fishermen to get the best price for their day’s catch.

The two employees prolong the roleplay for a while. As they embellish the pilot programme’s dramatic credentials further, I begin to grow more comfortable with my SMS persona. It dawns on me that I suffer several character flaws. For one, I am in English, a language that precious few of SIFFS’ members can read or even speak. Secondly, my theatrical range is severely restricted, squeezed as it is into a mere one hundred and sixty letters and symbols. In practice, that limits me to the price of one fish type at one market.

Worst of all, I am a figment of my own imagination. The Federation’s funding ran out last month. Sahay is waiting for a cheque to come through from the Marine Products Export Development Authority. Until it does, the Market Intelligence System is officially offline.

Remembering some of his earlier professionalism, Sahay adopts an official tone. Obviously if other donors were to come forward, the Federation can easily change the languages and improve the programme. ‘Did you get that? You’ll write that down, won’t you? With more money, it’ll be a tip-top programme.’

The next morning, at Sahay’s advice, I travel by train towards Kanyakumari, positioned at India’s southernmost tip. The programme coordinator had given me the address of the Federation’s local office there.

On arriving, I make my way by foot down a steep road that leads towards the sea. At the bottom, beside a small flotilla of
lolling fishing boats, stands a long queue of Indian tourists. A ferry awaits them, its engine puttering. On a rocky outcrop just off the shore, a forty-metre stone statue of a bearded yogi surges out of the water. The Tamil saint Thiruvallur is giving a three-fingered salute.

On another rocky islet behind, presiding over the meeting of the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Mannar, sits an expansive memorial building. The popular tourist attraction recalls the enlightenment of another holy man, Swami Vivekananda. The ascetic’s nirvana moment had come to him on the rock while meditating about India’s past, present and future.

I silently ask for a fraction of his insight as I turn left, away from the queue, towards Sahaya Martha Street.

The narrow road leads down through a poor seafarers’ community. The fishermen’s cottages are small and quaint and painted in soothing colours that soak up the sun. At the far end, the twin bell-towers of the whitewashed church of Our Lady of Ransom jut boldly into the aqueous sky. For a moment, I feel as though I’ve taken a wrong turn and ended up on the Amalfi Coast.

I enquire after the Federation’s office. No one knows for sure. It’s moved, one resident informs me. It’s closed for the off-season, says another. Never heard of it, says a third, who invites me in for tea.

Taking him to be the most honest of the three, I join him. His name is Marcelin. He’s spent more than half his life at sea. His middle-aged face is weather-burnt and as tranquil, as the ocean deep.

I ask him about his work. He fishes at night, generally selling his catch at the shoreside market by his house. Business has improved since he acquired an outboard motor a decade or so ago.

‘Suzuki?’ I enquire.

‘Lombardini.’

I spot a basic Nokia phone on the low brick wall beside his cup of tea. I tell him about the SMS service run by the Federation. He looks at me askance. He doesn’t send text messages. Doesn’t know how to. What does he use his phone for then? His wife calls
him when he’s out fishing. She wants to check that he’s safe and find out when he’ll be home. ‘That’s all?’ No, if he has a good night and returns with his nets bulging, he telephones his contacts in Chinna Muttom, Thoothoor and other nearby harbours. If the price is better, he goes there. Other fishermen phone inland to the wholesale market in Nagacoil. Marcelin would do so as well but he doesn’t own an icebox to keep his fish fresh.

The chance meeting renews my spirits. I’d left Thiruvananthapuram slightly sceptical. The Federation’s messaging scheme was well intentioned. It was – when fully funded and operational – no doubt a useful resource too, even with its linguistic and content limitations. Yet, like so many charitable projects, it struck me as an interim step, a product of Intermediate India, stuck somewhere between the paternalism of the past and the individual empowerment of the future.

Several months later, I’d visit another pro-poor technology scheme in Tamil Nadu. On this occasion, it was run not by a charity but by a multinational company. ITC, formerly the British-owned Imperial Tobacco and now an Indian version of the same (just bigger), was equipping farming communities with Internet hubs or ‘e-choupals’ (‘electronic gathering places’). The firm invited me to Sundra Natapu, a rain-starved village close to the temple town of Madurai, where I’d watch an elderly farmer proudly log on to a computer terminal in a new annexe of his home. With the idols of Tirupati, Lakshmi and Lord Murugan looking on curiously from the household shrine, the old man clicked through to daily crop prices, upcoming weather patterns and advice on modern farming techniques. The ‘useful links’ tab took the farmer through to a sole web page, the technical papers section of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University website. No other websites were accessible.

Such a restriction felt like dangling a carrot, offering something without really offering it. It was natural for the farmer to adapt the system to his own ends, as the DVD on top of the hard drive would prove. ‘Games,’ it read, in big, black felt pen.

Marcelin had done likewise. With the provision of a satellite
signal, a mobile handset and a little nous, he’d succeeded in leapfrogging from Old to New in a single jump.

I head back up the other coast to Hyderabad, leaving the three seas and their merging, swirling blue-black-green waters behind me.

‘Come out from your homes, come out. Quality products at lower prices.’

The old man’s low-pitched voice rumbles down the rain-parched village high street, enveloped in dust balls as it trundles past low-hung doorways. A dawdling black starling on the eaves of a tiled roof takes fright and flies off. From around the corner of a narrow passageway, a mongrel peers out. His whiskery nose twitches in the air. Such hue and cry in the late morning has him curious.

‘Discount, discounts, come and see for yourselves. Such bargains.’

The commercial incantations are the only noise in the otherwise silent village of Cholleru. The day is blisteringly hot. Some men are out at work. Most are lazing in dark, cool corners of their homes. A few older men have collected under a neem tree in the centre of the village. Their eyes droop with heat and years.

The herald’s cries shake the village slowly to life, just as the cockerel did that morning and every morning since the beginning of time. Faces appear in curtainless windows. Doors creak open. People step out onto the street. Before leaving, they collect their hard-earned cash from a locked kitchen drawer or a rusty tin and tuck it discreetly in the folds of their shirt or sari.

They head towards the slogan-shouting town crier and the yellow Piaggio Apé truck parked behind him.

At the sight of the emerging crowd, a toothless grin fills the old man’s white stubble face. He beats a kettle-drum hanging from his neck with a final burst of vigour. Then, like a dancing bear after a round of tricks, he folds his legs beneath him and seats his bony
backside on the earthen road. Below his white lungi, two knobbly knees protrude like gnarled knots on a fraying rope. He watches the growing queue behind the truck with detached pleasure.

The vehicle at the centre of the scrum is less a truck than a motorised cart. Fitted with a small engine and the cabin of an autorickshaw, the three-wheeler carries behind it a small open-topped trailer. The sides of the trailer are fitted with horizontal metal bars, attached to which are two advertisement banners: one for a water purifier called PureIt and another for Pond’s moisturiser. The trailer itself is full of cardboard boxes, each packed to the brim with home and personal-care products: dishwashing powders, soaps, detergents, toothpastes, shampoos, talcum powders, body lotions, face creams, tea bags, salt, wheat flour.

At the rear of the cart, forty-five-year-old Srilatha is a flurry of activity. Hands waving and tongue wagging, she is busy explaining her products, clarifying prices, taking orders and, as quickly and politely as she can, divesting the villagers of their money.

‘Now, have you tried the new Vim? Ooh, it’s so much better than the other stuff . . . Yes, yes, yes, it’s the same price. Well, just a teeny bit more, but you’ll notice the difference . . . yes, the shampoo deal still stands . . . no, no credit, I’m afraid.’

Sale done, Srilatha moves onto the next customer. And so on, until the queue begins to dwindle. The villagers wait their turn patiently. The Piaggio Apé is a new entrant to village life. They treat it, and by extension its proprietor, with shy respect. After their purchase, each backs away as if they’ve just been privy to a private audience or special honour.

The orderliness of the shopping experience is temporarily broken by a tall middle-aged woman dressed in a thinning red sari. She is irate. ‘What do you mean I have to pay? This is absurd. I don’t have any money. Aren’t you from the government?’

Srilatha and the lady go back and forth on a similar tack until it is eventually understood that the goods are for sale and not part of some pre-election, vote-buying exercise. Reluctantly, the woman hands back her plastic-wrapped consignment of three Rexona soap bars and bag of Active Wheel Easy Wash.

Helping Srilatha is Ravi Kumar, a friendly and industrious local man in his late twenties. He is keen to impress. Ravi is a Regional Sales Promoter. His boss, Guruvaiah, is watching from the sidelines. Ravi takes it upon himself to distribute ten free sachets of Clinic Plus shampoo to every customer who spends more than one hundred rupees. For those who fall short, he notes down their name and the amount they spend. ‘Don’t worry, the offer still stands. When your total hits one hundred, you’ll get the shampoo.’ A joking remark and a generous smile from Ravi then follow. The customers smile back. ‘Till next time then,’ they tell him. Like Srilatha, he is an adroit salesman.

A short, thin pensioner with withered hands purchases goods worth one hundred and fifty-two rupees. Ravi pounces on the infirm gentleman and insists I take their photograph together. With little choice, the man obliges. The camera records the villager’s tremulous stare beside Ravi’s beaming grin. ‘Happy customer,’ the salesman enthuses, patting the man on the back. The man retires without a word, a bit part in what feels like a badly acted television advertisement.

But this is real. Srilatha’s note-taking proves as much. Armed with a stubby HB pencil, she diligently records each sale in a thin-lined ledger. On to a second sheet of paper go the names of all those who buy a fifty-gram pack of Pond’s talcum powder. Each purchaser obtains a free sachet of shampoo for their efforts. As for Srilatha, she’s set to earn a one-hundred-and-fifty-rupee bonus for every hundred talcum powders she sells. Paid in product, not cash.

After forty-five minutes or so, Srilatha thanks the last of her customers. Only a hunchbacked beggar holding a thick walking stick is left. Ravi waves the aged cripple away. He does so with minimal aggression. His boss, after all, is still observing. Two or three of Srilatha’s customers are in debate with a savvy seed merchant who’s taken advantage of the brouhaha to set up shop on the roadside opposite. Soon, they too move on, following everyone else in heading home. The road is empty again bar the dozing geriatrics under the neem tree.

Srilatha signals to her ad-man with the drum. He unbuckles his knees and picks up his drum. The Piaggio Apé heads up the high street and down a side road. The old man’s cries drift across the tiled roofs until they are frazzled into silence by the midday heat.

Guruvaiah ushers me in the opposite direction. I follow. The cheery sales chief is enjoying his day out from the offices of Hindustan Unilever, the local subsidiary of the Anglo-Dutch consumer-goods giant. He’s dressed down, which means his black flat-soled work shoes have been replaced by a spotless pair of trainers in production-line white.

Bouncing off down Cholleru’s main street, he suddenly stops outside a ‘mom and pop shop’ and beckons me over. There is no sign above the door and little to differentiate it from the three similar stores in the village. The shop comprises a single poorly illuminated room. The products are lined up haphazardly on shelves along the walls. Long strips of sachets hang from a string across the room. The effect creates a plastic lattice-blind of creams and shampoos. Customers aren’t invited in. Instead, they stand at a large open window that looks out into the street and point to what they want. It’s a laborious way to shop.

Manning the nameless store is Praveen, a big-boned adolescent with Billy Bunter glasses and an obliging smile. He is filling in for his parents during his school vacations. He aspires to be a chartered accountant, he tells Guruvaiah, who’d asked what his plans were on finishing high school.

In the hour’s drive from Hyderabad railway station, Guruvaiah had described the ‘sea change’ afoot in India’s rural heartlands. He credited television commercials and better road connectivity for the transformation. Disposable incomes are going up. Education is improving. With around seven in ten Indians living in rural areas, it is, as Guruvaiah had pointed out, ‘a massive untapped market’.

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Guruvaiah had referenced the term half a dozen times. It’s a buzz-phrase that crops up sooner or later in the spiel of all marketing folk. As a concept,
it’s very Indian, right down to C. K. Prahalad, the Tamil management guru who coined it.

The Unilever rep had used the drive to explain the essentials of the theory. The Indian consumer market can be broken down into three, he’d said, drawing a triangular diagram to help illustrate. At the top sit the rich, a tiny dot of icing on a gigantic cake. Next down runs a slightly wider band depicting the growing minority on middle incomes. What had made Guruvaiah’s eyes gleam was the thick layer of sponge at the base: India’s impoverished.

Statistics differ on just how many poor there are in India. The World Bank puts the cut-off point at an income of less than two dollars per day. Below that and you’re officially ‘indigent’. By that marker, around three hundred and fifty million Indians qualify. Until recently, the country’s mega-brands have ignored them, pitching their wares instead to the wealthier categories above. The trick is to treat the poor not as individual consumers but as a collective. That was C. K. Prahalad’s insight. Looked at in this way, the joint spending power of the poor suddenly morphs into a potential treasure trove.

Guruvaiah sizes up Praveen’s store like a commander scoping the terrain of an upcoming battle. For him, as for his company bosses, every rural sales point marks a staging-post in the fight for the bottom of the pyramid.

He asks Praveen to pass him a shrunken-sized bar of Eta Detergent Cake, a non-Unilever brand. The boy hands it over. Guruvaiah turns the blue-wrapped product over, examining it up for shape, smell and packaging. He could be a gem dealer choosing between three precious sapphires. ‘How much do you make on this?’ he asks, noting the six-rupee price label. One rupee twenty-five paise, the future accountant responds. Guruvaiah exhales and cocks his head, a sign that he’s impressed. They talk about buyer margins on Unilever’s other competitor brands. It’s information that Praveen freely shares, and which the sales exec gratefully stores away for his next marketing meeting.

One of the features of Praveen’s stock that strikes me as curious is product size. Large packs are entirely absent. For the rural
market, small is beautiful. Proof comes in the form of the humble sachet. Unilever was the first to dream up the idea of miniature packaging, geared specifically for customers on the breadline. Experiments with mini-packs of shampoos and soaps came first. Sales rocketed. Now, everything from toothpaste and cigarettes to coffee and tea bags comes in little and large.

Guruvaiah counts off the sachets above Praveen’s head. Seven of the twenty-six carry the Unilever symbol. It’s a reasonable percentage. All the same, Guruvaiah wants to know how fast his company’s products are shifting.

‘Did you place an order last week?’ he questions Praveen.

‘No,’ interjects Ravi, who has been standing on his boss’s shoulder all the while waiting for an opportunity to make himself useful.

Praveen concurs. The sales chief looks from one to the other, seemingly unsure whether to blame his underling for missing an order or the bespectacled student for not placing one.

He picks on Praveen. ‘Why not?’

His tone is non-confrontational. He appears genuinely quizzical as to why the citizens of Cholleru shouldn’t want more Lux soap or Red Label tea.

‘We need to sell the stock we already have first,’ Praveen responds.

‘But why didn’t you sell enough of the existing stock?’ Guruvaiah presses. ‘Were you closed? Was there a family wedding?’

‘No, we just didn’t sell it. We sell if the customers ask for it. What else can we do? We can’t give it away, or force them to buy.’

The large-framed shopkeeper shrugs his shoulders. His logic is unerring and his temper even. He’ll make a good accountant.

Not wanting to look foolish, Guruvaiah turns to Ravi and seeks to present the situation as a learning opportunity for the eager young Regional Sales Promoter.

‘Now Ravi,’ he says in his best instructor’s voice. ‘Ask yourself: last time, did they buy heavily from us? Did they overstock? Or do they buy just once a month but in large quantities? These are questions that require right thinking.’

Ravi racks his brain for the answer that will best please his boss. He hesitates. His chances of being put forward for promotion revolve on moments like these. By the time he’s settled on a response, Guruvaiah has turned on the heel of his spanking new trainers and left. He is heading away down the residential high street. Again, we set off in pursuit.

Cholleru is typical of small villages across rural India. The mud-brick houses are squat and sturdy and spruced up with a lick of paint. An open-drainage ditch runs outside the front doors. There are no gardens. Goats, cows and chickens rummage in part-sheltered lots beside bedrooms and kitchens. Uneven rooftops create a meandering line away into the distance, flowing gently up and down like the notated musical score of a baby’s lullaby. Above, wires carry power from one crooked electricity pole to another. Hovering over everything is a cloudless azure sky, arms thrown open wide and crowned by a blazing sun.

We turn a corner and head down a side road, looping back on ourselves along a narrower parallel street. Waiting on the doorstep of a well-built three-roomed house is Srilatha. She is on her lunch break and ushers us inside for refreshment.

Guruvaiah invites me to take a peek at Srilatha’s stockroom. The box-shaped storage space comprises a purpose built annexe next to the entrance lobby. The door is made of wood and stapled with crumpled metal advertising hoardings. Metal-framed brackets stretch from floor to ceiling. On their shelves, laid out in regimented multi-pack lines, is the company’s high-grade arsenal: a military array of powders, tablets, bars and liquids ready to go forth and conquer.

Guruvaiah picks up a plastic carton of Vim Drop Dishwash Extra Gel from the nearest shelf. He holds it up in front of him, admiringly. ‘First it was a powder, then a tablet and now it’s a liquid.’ One drop cleans between fifteen and twenty plates. So it’s more economical for the consumer. He reaches for another product, a 200 ml bottle of Domex. Before, the flagship floor and toilet cleaner only came in bottles twice the size, he explains. ‘This is a new promotional range.’ The company has changed the
colour too. A beam of genuine glee crosses his face. ‘The new version comes in penetration pink.’