The rare pleasures of the ubiquitous mango

Namaste from Bagar on this scorching summer day. I have just returned to SFC after a brief trip to the market to buy a bag of delicious mangoes. Speaking as reformed mango-hater, I have learned to appreciate and enjoy the wonderful qualities of Indian mangoes over the past six weeks. They are soft, juicy, and a perfect on-the-go snack. The mangoes here come in all different sizes, making it easy to satiate oneself to the exact level needed. Unlike most other fruits, mangoes also taste great even in the severe heat (which is imperative in Bagar). In fact, they become more succulent as the day goes on.
One of the most useful things I have learned while in India is the correct method in which to consume a mango. For weeks, Siler, Sarah, and I fumbled around trying to cut the mango skin for easy access to the fruit’s stringy flesh, only to drip the yellow juice all over our sparse wardrobe. Not pretty. We finally came to our senses and took a page from the locals, observing their method in order to learn how to eat these things the right way. The technique is simple, yet its correct execution can be tricky. First, you must massage the mango, pressing on it and rolling it between your palms to loosen the yellow meat from the pit. Although it’s hard to be patient, you will have an easier time eating the mango the longer you do this. Then you need to wash the mango. With your teeth or an implement (I’d recommend your teeth unless you would like to get even more stares), remove the stem nub from one side of the mango. Finally, start sucking the ambrosial tissue out of the greenish-yellowish skin. Pure delight. When you find yourself without anything more to suck out and hyperventilation is in your future, pull out the pit through the widened hole and you will find there is more luscious mango meat to be had.
Siler, Lindsay (an SFC intern from Penn as well), and I ate the mangoes I bought. As you can tell from the stain on Siler’s shirt, some of us still haven’t perfected the technique. It's something to work on during out last two weeks in Bagar.

Cricket and Ants and everything that crawls

"What you don't understand about cricket is that it is a huge mind game, once you understand that the game makes sense"
As I'm sitting here in the GDL courtyard, the power having just faded out from the fans, speakers and lights with the soft whir of a dying spaceship finally set to drift among the cosmos, several of the staff members along with a few members of the local community are practicing their cricket skills, which involves bouncing a tennis ball at a man holding a flat bat who is standing in front of a garbage can, evidently meant to represent the "stump", here as with most things at GDL a certain amount of "Jugar" is at play, a Hindi word meaning creativity in using what you have to get things done, sort of a combination of ghetto and innovation (ghettovation?)that i've been assured is a buzzword for operations in rural India. While those who are playing certainly seem to be deriving some enjoyment from the action, the only "mind" at work that I can observe is with the rest of us interns who, skeptical of this odd ritual taking place, are taking particular care to mind that our faces do not get pommeled with the ball being smashed in our direction. We'll be no doubt scheduling a viewing of Lagaan in the near future so that out minds can become acquainted with the stunning concept that is known by the deceptively minuscule and chirping name of cricket, despite being far and away India's most popular sport.

Speaking of Jugar, things have been heating up for the Mobile Naukri Marketing Team, where we have been set the target of 2,500 job-seekers registered in our database and 100 job-opportunities filled by the end of our internship in mid-July. Daunting as this may seem (and I assure you it doth), we have put together a comprehensive and and somewhat intensive plan to accomplish this goal, mainly by setting up shop in a major town center and handing out fliers/business cards and generally "bringing the buzz" with our "mobile marketing booths" that we will transport via India's luxurious and hassle free bus system (sarcasm alert) to the 6 greatest population centers in Jhunjhunu district, knocking down one a week with a maelstrom of Mobile Naukri Marketing that should be irresistible to Rajasthan's rural job-seekers. Only problem is we don't have a portable table or tent of any sort nor no anywhere to get one, slightly essential to our whole portable marketing booth plan of action, so we're going to spend the next day scouting around the GDL compound for possible materials to cobble together a table (some blocks and an old white board?) and tent (poles from the mops and a bed sheet?) fit to do the job. I feel confident we can assemble a regular "Jugar"naught that is unstoppable, unswerving, and quite possibly highly unattractive, but regardless we'll have our base station from which to conduct Mobile Naukri operations.

Speaking of maelstroms, we had our own actual freak weather event this past week when the first rains hit with a vengeance, dropping the temperature from the high 110s to the low 70s in the span of a say, and leading a number of us to play "storm volleyball" in the downpour, getting chilled and soaked but thoroughly enjoying every minute of furious play, accompanied occasionally by the thunderous applause of the heavens to celebrate a particularly destructive spike or bump. The rain continued throughout the night and the following day, keeping the power off with it and leading us to resort to candlelight and cellphone Hindi songs for our night's entertainment. By the time the sun finally reappeared the sweltering sauna of the previous week was a distant memory and we were all eager to welcome it back, knowing we would most likely be cursing it within a day to salutes of sweat and the rasping of parched mouths. Later I was to learn the change in weather was due to a major cyclone that had caused much destruction and several deaths in Pakistan and Oman before turning down into Rajasthan to flood us out of our heat-soaked stupor. As with many things in this part of the world tragedy and tribulation were often part and parcel, two sides of a capricious coin passing through the hands and lives of the many.

This was the case with the one other development of our week, the expedition to what we had expected to be out first Indian wedding, a glamorous and gala event involving the procession of the gold-festooned groom on a white horse and the excess of food, dancing and song until the wee hours of the morning. After an hour of walking along the highway in the dark, we finally arrived at the place, where the groom, (who was the former student of a man who ran an English training institute who was an acquaintance or one of the other staff members at GDL..), practically our best friend, greeted us warmly and gave us some chairs to sit and rest on. After which we grabbed some ok but incredibly spicy food and made our exit, no dancing, no music, not white horse. Turns out this was the reception, the wedding taking place at a special auspicious time around 1 am a week distant. What followed was over an hour of unsuccessfully attempting to flag down a bus to take us back to Bagar, which we finally achieved just after witnessing a motorcycle driver lose control and crash along the side of the road a little ways ahead of us. The next day the newspaper had an article proclaiming India's newly claimed position as number one in traffic fatalities in all the world, a claim that after our experience with the roads and those who drove them we found hard to dispute, and thus resolved to take extra caution when traveling about. Now to get invited to a real Indian wedding...

Namaste from Bagar!

We have already been in India for a whole month(!) and it seems to me that we are fitting in quite nicely. The people of Bagar have been so incredibly welcoming, and the staff at GDL/Indicorps have been very helpful and supportive as we acclamate to our new surroundings. At first adjusting was a bit difficult- we were, after all, introduced to India in 125 degree heat. Now, as the rains are coming and as our Hindi improves, it seems strange that we only have four more weeks yet. Interning at GDL has proved to be quite rewarding and challenging, with nary a coffee-fetching errand in sight. I am working full-time at Mobile Naukri as a marketing/business development intern. Mobile Naukri is a service that connects rural job-seekers to employment opportunities. There exists a serious market failure in India, where job-seekers and employers are completely unaware of each other. An industry paradigm that encourages expensive HR consultancies, bribes, and personal connections perpetuates a system of unemployment, particularly with rural youth.

In my first weeks in Bagar, I began to read Muhammad Yunus' "Creating a World Without Poverty." Yunus is a Bangladeshi economist, pioneer of microfinance, Nobel Prize winner and all around awesome person. He created Grameen Bank in his home country, which is an innovative banking program that gives small loans to poor people (mainly women), enabling them to launch businesses, lift themselves and their families out of poverty, and control their economic destiny. Microfinance institutions are popping up around the developing world now, and all are replicated on the fundamental ideas of Grameen Bank. In "Creating a World," Yunus goes beyond this one institution and explores the idea of a 'social business.' Recognizing the importance of capitalism and globalization in today's economy, Yunus builds on the notion of profit-maximizing businesses (PMBs)that are owned by shareholders. He proposes a new kind of business, social business, which entrepreneurs set up "not to achieve limited personal gain but to pursue specific social goals... Operated in accordance with management principles just like a traditional PMB, a social business aims for full cost recovery, or more, even as it concetrates on creating products or services that provide a social benefit. It pursues this goal by charging a price or fee for the products or services it creates."

Mobile Naukri, is in accordance with Yunus' definition of a social business. What I find most interesting about Mobile Naukri is that it is in no way charity work. Yunus points out that NGOs and charity work are only band-aids for real problems, are painfully dependent on outside funding, and don't look at the poor as individual actors. While charities and NGOs obviously do good work, they are not a plausible long-term solution for eradicating poverty. A social business, on the other hand, gives the poor specific tools to gain economic power. At Mobile Naukri, we provide a gateway service in which rural job-seekers, who have limited or no internet access, can get in contact with local and national businesses searching for employees. Because Mobile Naukri is still in its pilot phase, we don't ask our job-seekers to pay a fee for our services; starting in July, job-seekers will pay a fee of Rs. 500 (about $10). Over time, we hope that our enterprise will make profits, allowing us to recycle the money into expanding our business across other locations in India.

Yunus notes that like any capitalist PMB, social businesses will have/need shareholders who buy stock in the company. Social businesses would have to compete for these shareholders, ameliorating their ideas, increasing their productivity, and in turn, benefitting the poor. These shareholders will buy stock in the businesses they find most likely to succeed, and will most likely make back their money, allowing them to reinvest it in the same or different social businesses. Shareholders can be big-name, rich philanthropists, or, they can be the very people who have benefitted from said social business. At Grameen Bank, for example, many of the shareholders are women who have taken out loans from the bank to start their own business. Not only does this add to the financial security of a social business, it instills a sense of pride and hope in the participants. At Mobile Naukri, I have learned that many unemployed rural job-seekers suffer from a lack of direction, hopelessness and frustration. Imagine if they were able to get a job through our services, succeed at their post, and turn around to invest their hard-earned money into our business! Of course, we still have a ways to go before this can become a reality, but the concrete emergence of social businesses as a viable solution to eradicating unemployment amongst the poor is reassuring that we can, in fact, create a world without poverty.


Namaste,
Sarah