Many Lives, No Masters

Sorry people, those very few who had been reading this blog of mine. I know I am late. Two months is a long time in blogosphere.

Well, what do you expect? The last two months have been hectic, to say the least. I switched jobs in June, and since then, have found no time, but then, gained valuable experience.

I have spent time in Assam in a remote place where there are about 13 extremist groups, and while I was there, 14 people got killed in violence. Then there were floods. One of the reports says about 29 people died from that. No electricity for long stretches of time, high humidity, lots of mosquitoes and bugs, no internet access, very weak or at many times no phone network coverage at all, very small and dingy and ill maintained hotel rooms.

And then I looked around myself, the beautiful landscapes, extremely warm people, great food………life never fails to surprise you with its diversity, all in one place. I sometimes feel so privileged at working in the development sector, for I get to see life from up close. Life, which takes me to luxurious hotels, cocktail parties, meeting with high flying people……..and then, just like its another life, to paddy fields where I get knee deep into mud, meet struggling farmers barely managing two square meals a day, walk through dingy urban slums, eat at some roadside stall sweating in the heat and driving away flies……it really seems that I am leading two lives.

So, forgive me if I do not write often. Writing a blog takes a third life, and right now its difficult managing the first two. Wish there were wizards to manage your lives, just like you have them in blogs to design the templates. Without them, life is meandering. I certainly am not the master of my life, and I wonder if there is any master to to the multiple lives I lead.

The Development Divide

The recent announcement of the cheapest mobile phone handsets by Reliance set me thinking. This is development. Telecom has been one of the hallmarks of our development. The growth and reach have been so dramatic that today mobile phones have tremendous outreach, to all sections of the society. Be it a business tycoon, a housewife, a school teacher, college going students, a housemaid, rickshaw puller......it has made communication within reach to all and sundry. Not to mention the dropping call rates that have made distances shorter.

The same trend can be seen across many sectors. Things once viewed as luxury items are all within the common man’s reach. Be it television sets, refrigerators, computers, branded clothing, air travel (another major revolution) and the like. The sharp reduction in the prices of all these items within a short span of time has brought all these within reach of the common man. Now, my contention here with all this is, who do we consider to be the common man.

While it is true that the prices of the above items have been coming down, at the same time it is also true that inflation rates have been going up drastically, and prices of essential commodities have been going up. Cost of food grains and vegetables have gone up. Real estate prices are at an all time high. Costs of day to day household goods are increasing. Subsidies are coming down. This now means that sustaining the household at the basic level is becoming more expensive. After this basic level of sustenance is achieved, it becomes much easier for the household to then acquire the items that were once supposed to be more prohibitively priced like telephones, televisions, air travel etc. The different trends across these two segments of products point towards a dangerous trend. While it is becoming more and more difficult for the poor to sustain even the basic needs of the household, the standard of living of the lower middle class to the higher classes keep on increasing, and yet we talk about bridging the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

What efforts are we taking to correct the above anomaly? Practically nothing, in fact, in our scramble for development, we are fuelling this divide even more. While it is true that mobile telephony, real estate and aviation are revolutions of our time, and the cost of automobiles, air conditioners internet usage etc. have brought them within reach of a large mass, and that is a healthy trend, it is also true that there is some correlation between the trends of the two segments.

With the retail boom, industrialization, urbanization, the property prices have soared, which has made it difficult for a common man to acquire shelter for himself. Also, with acquisition of more and more land (including agricultural land) for industrialization, the costs of agricultural produce have gone up. Rapid urbanization has led to migration from traditionally agricultural belts. This again leads to rise in prices of agricultural produce. It does not help that with increasing population, the sizes of land holdings are coming down, making agriculture unviable. Government support for SEZs, in agricultural areas, not only leaves the farmers to fend with more problems with livelihoods, it also gives industries more incentives, hence bringing down their prices but leaves lesser land for agriculture and increasing the costs for farm produce. Also, with subsidies coming down in agriculture, there are lesser incentives and increasing costs in agriculture.

While it is true that support to industry is imperative for growth and development, it should not come at the cost of agriculture and the primary sector. We need development, and costs of mobile phones to come down, but the development has to be balanced and not increase the divide between the haves and have-nots. Only if there is a balance can we say that we are truly developing and only that will lead to a healthy society and sustainable development.

All in the Name of Development

Development is a tricky word. For the past few years, I have been trying to understand what it really means and who defines development, and what the measures of development are.

As a part of one of my projects, I went to a village in Northern India. It was a chance visit, and it was a hilly village and had a very difficult access route, with no roads and on a hill. I had my own agenda of trying to see the potential of microcredit in the state, and though this village was not on my planned schedule, I thought I might as well check out the potential of this village now that I was already there.

It was a small village of about 100 households. It was not yet connected to electricity; there was no road that connected the village to the outside world, no school (the children went to school in another village about 15 kilometers away). In short, the village was still untouched of development. Yet, they seemed a happy lot. They produced most of what they needed in the village itself, and shared it amongst themselves. I cannot call it a barter economy, as it was more of people sharing things rather than exchanging them. For example, a family which had a cow would consume milk, and whatever was leftover, it would give it away to anyone who needed it, not necessarily exchange it for something. If this family needed vegetables, they could get it from someone who had cultivated vegetables and had an excess, and that person need not have been the one who the previous family had shared its milk with. There were people who worked in the cities and some also in the Indian army, so people had the money to buy things they needed from outside the village. I hardly saw anyone using any luxury item in the village; most of the things were either the basic necessities, or those of traditional value.

I realized that the village was not developed. I knew it had immense potential as a market for microcredit and other developmental activities. I knew these people could be connected to the mainstream; they had quite a few income generation activities and could earn better money for themselves. Only if they started selling the excess produce that they had rather than just giving it away. Then it struck me. What does development actually mean? These people were happy the way they were. They were a community based on togetherness, trust, sharing and caring for each other. Were they not immensely developed already? Or bringing electricity to their lives, bringing them closer to the markets, making them earn more would mean development. What I realized was while I was uncomfortable without electricity, they were not, and they did not need it. While I felt they earned very less, it was something they had never felt, as they did not have many needs to speak of, they had enough for their bar necessities and that is what mattered to them. While I thought they could actually have a lot of fancy things if they were linked to the market, I also realized that it would create a demand and dissatisfaction when they will not be able to get those things. They were happy as they were without having too many demands. Again, development would mean them earning more by selling their produce rather than sharing it, would it not destroy the very fabric of the community based on trust and sharing. People would then be more commercialized and be unhappy, they would earn more but lose out on the brotherhood they shared.

I walked off, obviously happy to have seen such a community for myself but was also left confused as to what development actually means. Do these people need development? Or are they better left the way they are? What is more important? Being developed or being happy? Because I realized that happiness does not follow development always, neither is it imperative for development to precede happiness. So, what should be done with this village? I left it alone and did not make it a part of my report. I only hope that no one comes to this village and thrusts their brand of development on these simple people.

My Initiation to the Development Sector

Till the time that I joined IIFM, Bhopal, for my management degree, I had never thought I would be a part of the so called "development sector". I was 21, starry eyed, wanted a flashy corporate job, with all the perks and a fat package to go with it. I appeared for CAT, and landed up at IIFM, and thus the story of my tryst with the sector begins.
Initially, it was which sector is going to pay me the highest, or which is the sector that is "in". Then the focus shifted to what is the subject I like most and am most capable of doing my best in. Microfinance for me was more of a career move rather than wanting to help poor women through providing them with access to financial services, thereby empowering them. This came in much later, after I joined my first job at an apex Microfinance agency - Friends of Women's World Banking, India.
While I still believe that market forces rule anything that is even remotely connected to finance, and that is how it should be, working in FWWB sensitized me towards issues and gave me perspectives I never had before. I am a firm believer that business, bottomlines and profits are the buzzwords and any development can be brought about only through mutual benefit, and development or prosperity cannot be brought through charity and grants, yet, I have now been through many incidents of meeting people, discussing with them their problems, sharing their practical day to day struggles, which now have made me capable of looking at things from their point of view also. Its a very humbling feeling. I will narrate a lot of those incidents in this blog.
Now, I am joining MicroSave, I hope to carry the learnings and build on them to a new workplace, to a new profile of work. Ultimately, it must lead to my career development, through developing the lives of those poor people.....which now clearly justifies my calling them our clients.......benefeciaries is a word that is long forgotten. If there is a benfeciary, its us.