Adrak Ke Panje

In early March, I was at a corner of Assam, at a small eco-camp alongside the Dibru river. In the three mornings that I spent there, there was a regular boat that would come up the river to the roadhead, which was just across from where I stayed. Sack after sack would then be offloaded onto a waiting truck. The work was back-breaking.
On the third day, I summoned up courage to have a chat with the boat’s pilot, who looked to be an easy going sort of fellow. “Ginger,” he pointed at the sacks being loaded onto the truck, “we grow it across the river in Arunachal and bring it here.”
“How far away is the village where this is grown?”
“About five hours by boat…”
“…and you do this journey everyday?”
“Of course. How else will I make money?”




The truck driver, a Sardarji, was reticent, even forbidding. He sat on his high horse, in a manner of speaking, as I stood below, reading the morning Hindi paper.
“Where do you take this ginger?” I asked
“To Delhi.” was the terse reply.
“… and how long does it take to reach Delhi from here?”
“About five days.”
“After which, do you get rest before you return?”
He replied with a sound that was the mixture of a snort and a laugh, short and sarcastic. But, not giving up, I repeated the question.
“I get a day’s rest, without pay.” he muttered. Sensing that I had overstayed my welcome (if that is an appropriate word in the context), I wandered off to look at the Hollock Gibbons in the nearby forest.
So, if you live in New Delhi, remember the farmer in Arunachal who grows your ginger. It truly has become an incredibly connected world.

Earth (H)our

At 8.30 pm on March 26th, as we turn off all electrical points in our homes for an hour, we could consider this an atonement, albiet a token one, for the economic runway that we have laid out for ourselves, riding on a blasphemous belief that energy – as much energy as we need - is a birthright.
Most people I know will switch off a light when they leave the room, yet this is hardly conservation; this is decency, protocol, the done thing, just as most people I know would say ‘Thank you’ when they were gifted a present. Conservation begins by questioning what could be done to change a lifestyle that is energy intensive and getting worse by the day.
A few months ago, a young journalist, Namrata Nandakumar, did a short study on electricity consumption in two urban spaces in Bangalore city. She first chose a slum which had ‘authorised’ access to electricity, a slum of three and a half thousand homes called Ullalu Upanagara, that houses about five times that number of people, during a post-monsoon month when there was no significant power cut. The monthly electricity bill for the entire colony was Rs. 2.38 lakhs. In contrast, Bangalore’s most popular mall, The Forum Mall, with a sanctioned load of 4 megawatts of electricity, had a monthly bill of about Rs. 85-90 lakhs (which included its expenditure on diesel for generators) for the energy it used with abandon, including the cooling of an enormous common areas around the day.
Recognise the sobering reality that energy is a finite resource currently in acute short supply in India. As the country’s GDP trots along, much more of it will be needed to supply basic energy needs to millions of our people as well as to meet the consumptive lifestyle of urban India. Energy comes at a cost, a cost well hidden from most of us who live in protected urban India and take planes when we travel : the costs, ecological, psychological, financial and otherwise, of displacement of people, damming of rivers, submergence of land and forests, pollution from thermal plants and carbon dioxide emissions and huge consumption of natural resources. Recognise that this is not a historical cost but a running one - for instance, the origins of the Maoist problem and the slums of urban India can be traced to our energy projects - and the true impact of the Mall’s consumption begins to emerge. Recognise, in addition, that the production of every litre of diesel needs 9,200 litres of water and 2-3% of the diesel that is imported into India is consumed in its own transportation to the consumer.
Yet, none of us would seem particularly perturbed with these numbers, ascribing them to a convenient rung on the ladder of development, for we empathise, not with the slum, but with the mall. It is a lifestyle that, though recent and foreign, is not negotiable. The biggest issue, of course, is that we – literate, well-read, well-meaning, intelligent as we are - do not connect the dots. We cannot, often do not, wish to see the impact of our actions on others. Let us then not blame the Americans for the climate mess we are in. Given an option, we have grabbed the ‘pollute’ lever ourselves for the short term gains that accrue from glamorous living.
I have in front of me, two recent articles that are very recent, yet hardly new in content. The first speaks of the protests last month against the East Coast Energy coal-fired power plant in Srikakulam district in Andhra, during which two people lost their lives, lives that were worth much more than any power plant could possibly match. This plant coming up next to a ecologically fragile wetland has, over the last couple of years, damaged the area and put many fishermen and farmers’ livelihoods in peril as the wetland is excavated and filled up in haste. The police were there, of course, to help push this private project through. This incident was merely a repeat: on July 14, 2010, in Sompeta, where the Nagarjuna Construction Company is building a thermal plant on a wetland, three persons were killed in clashes with the police.
The second article concerns a different source of energy that threatens a different species. If you make your way into the Athirapilly-Vazhachal forests of Kerala, as I have done – dense, wet deciduous forests of breathtaking beauty and surprise – you occasionally hear a loud, pitched call, a distinctive ‘tock-tock-tock’ , or sometimes a heavy whooshing sound. Look up or around (if you are by a ridge) and you might see the Great Indian Hornbill take to the air, the most beautiful, graceful, charismatic, even-tempered bird that has ever been. It is a bird that might see its habitat destroyed with a hydroelectric project proposed by the Kerala State Electricity Board that will generate a measly 160 megawatts, for the forty Forum-Mall-look-alikes that will dot the state to sell the resident Malayalee’s sole fetish: gold. The Hornbill, stunning as it is, is merely a representative species of the priceless biodiversity we stand to lose at Athirapilly, a portion of which is not even known to science as more discoveries enhance our sense of wonder at the mechanics of creation.
To set the record straight, the KSEB is hardly the first State Electricity Board to consider habitat of little use except for submergence, yet it was a pioneer in the destruction effort, with a plan made forty years ago to submerge the Silent Valley. It required the determined effort of Dr. Salim Ali and Mrs. Indira Gandhi to scuttle the project.
The destruction of forests, and the biodiversity within it, is a horrendous cost to pay for our lifestyle, yet it is a cost that few of us understand, even as the decision makers do the hypocritical act of planting the odd sapling to mark an Earth Day or a Wildlife Week. Much before additional power plants of any kind – thermal, nuclear or hydro – are planned, there is need, indeed a pressing, vital need, to use a system of incentives and disincentives to get the energy addicts (that’s us) to reduce our need for the fix. Yet, I have little faith in the Government’s ability to promote a culture of reduction and thrift and a lot more conviction in your ability to reason and conclude.
In my few years in conservation, never have I felt this alarmed at the speed of the consumption gravy-train. On March 26th, therefore, I have a request to make : please switch your lights, air coolers, water heaters and all else off, for just an hour. This, by itself, will make little difference, yet it will hopefully provide the darkness needed for a few moments of solitude.
In those moments, do think of just how you could become part of the solution, just how you could change the way you live your life to reduce, dramatically lessen, the need for energy. I repeat, target, not a 5% drop in consumption but, a 50% reduction in your energy demand. …for unless we press the brake now, the energy gravy train will run over the person on the railway track.
That person is you. And the time to heal the Earth is Now.

Stuck on You

Narayanan was, without doubt, the most interesting businessman I met in my decade-long career in venture capital. In fact, he was the only one who was as interesting as he was unsuccessful.

His background was the perfect formula for entrepreneurial failure: impeccable, pucca pedigree, an MBA from IIM Calcutta in the early ‘70s and many years selling Coke and other muck from the comfort of a big budget office, before he decided that the one thing India sorely lacked was, well, a bubble gum with attitude (ordinary bubble gum wouldn’t do, of course). He persuaded a couple of friends, who looked to me as though they once possessed some common sense, to join him and Gum India was born. A couple of years later, he pulled off his first impossible trick: he persuaded a venture fund that existed to fund high-technology projects to invest in Gum India – this was a couple of years before I joined the fund.

Narayanan had an unsatiable appetite for risk, particularly when there was no reason to take it and carefully cultivated an air of business expertise and creative thinking about him – he liked people to see him as a man of whacko out-of-the-box ideas. But what set him apart (and possibly still does, for he is very much alive and kicking) was his personality.

A tall, thin man, with a reed-like structure and a rapidly balding pate, he combined charm with wit in astonishing measure. The more his companies – all of which we at TDICI more or less owned – sunk, the greater we seemed to want to fund him, each time for a particularly different, yet outrageous, project. He had access to the very top of the TDICI/ICICI pyramid (I was at the bottom) and everytime we met, he would wear a smile that seemed to be pasted on for my benefit: it combined a certain arrogance with thinly disguised condescension, disdain and pity. This attitude was not without reason. I was fresh out of MBA, green behind the ears and part of an organisation that was accustomed to eating out his hand.

In the five years or so that I struggled to understand just what to do with this company, I was allowed to visit the factory only once and for good measure, for no one who has seen how bubble gum is made will want to
1. buy it
2. eat it
3. sell it
4. fund it
5. or use it to plug a leaking pipe.

To Nari, these were irrelevant considerations. He saw India as bubble gum country, his vision being one of children from Mcleodgunj to Mamallapuram clamouring for their daily dose of gum, thus painting a picture of a true India multinational that would be the envy of Wrigley’s. The reality, though, was much more modest: sales were about a few crores a year and falling. Profits? Well, that was for the future, since for the moment the company had a venture capitalist who would fund the losses.

Every quarter, we’d have a Board Meeting, to which we would go - my boss, his briefcase stacked with papers that analysed the pathetic performance of the company upside down and his face beetroot red as he mulled over the extent of financial damage that we had suffered, and I, determined to not take any nonsense this time and to call a spade a spade. Nari would amble over, pull my boss’ leg and joke on just how beaten I looked working with him. He would ask us out to lunch, speak of cricket with some passion, mull over the next marathon he planned to run, advice us on marketing our services better and ridicule Hindustan Lever’s marketing strategy.

Everytime I raised any business issue with Nari, he would give me his famous look and then confidently predict that the next quarter would be sensational. “After all,” he always said, “ this company is yours. Where will you get a bunch of MBAs working for you at this pathetic salary.” …….and the funny part is, I would always come off from the meeting feeling terribly sympathetic for this talented team. “Perhaps,” I would reason to my colleagues at the next internal meeting, “the next quarter will see a turnaround.” Everyone, of course, thought it was hilarious, since no one had the slightest doubt that our multiple investments in the company were up in smoke. Yet, Nari’s eloquence could be blinding.

In 1991, he predicted that a chain of dosa outlets would be the next big thing. In every part of this country, other than the South, he said, there was a crying need for a clean, machine-made masala dosa, the dry batter-and-mix of which would be supplied from a national, centralised kitchen. And since sambhar and chutney were hard to franchise, he decided that ketchup would do the trick.

We fell over ourselves in excitement, writing out cheques and investment agreements in a trice, even before the new company, Dosa King, had an office or an employee. When the story ended five years later, we had a great deal of blood (actually, ketchup) to show for it, a machine that made everything – photocopies, music recordings, ballpoint pens – except dosas. Well, that’s not entirely true: the five prototypes on the field made all of about 400 dosas, of which I had two while visiting the first (and only) outlet in Nagpur on September 14th, 1996. I remember the date and the place, because of the prescription dated that evening for acute indigestion, that I have preserved.

I vividly remember my last meeting with Nari, when I had put in my papers at TDICI. “I have learnt a great deal from you,” I said with feeling. “Thanks.”
“What a shame, Gopa! You are leaving just when Gum India will post record results in the next quarter. In fact, you may even want to invest in it in a few months time.”

'..and when our conversation ended, I had very nearly written out a cheque for my life’s savings.

Manna from Heaven

April 2010
Bangalore is an exasperating city to travel within and I have hitched a ride, run a fair distance, taken an auto and then run again to the gates of the Chowdiah Memorial Hall in breathless anticipation. I am in luck; there are tickets available. I buy one for five hundred rupees and rush up the steps. It is ten past seven in the evening when I flop into my seat, exhausted.

The musicians, a small handful of them, are assembled on stage, waiting for the Master. I have never seen him before in flesh and blood, yet have long been besotted with his voice, its elegance and versatility, its range, depth and pitch. My earliest memory of music at home, circa 1970, is listening to a record on a new record player, playing his lively, almost hyperactive, song from a now-forgotten film, Bhoot Bungla; it is a song that I grew up with, a part of my treasure trove of memories from childhood far far away.

My reverie is cut short; the Master shuffles onto the stage, as the audience rises to a standing ovation. It is a motley group of people here, largely middle aged and elderly and I (though officially middle aged) feel out of place. He makes his way to the middle, barely acknowledging the crowd, to where his harmonium has been kept and takes his seat deliberately, as the applause dies down and the crowd waits in anticipation.

In the silence that follows, the harmonium begins to play, guided by a practised, magical touch and, as the Voice begins to sing ‘Aey Malik tere bande hum’, I feel a lump in my throat, for the years have dropped away and it seems much like the original recording a half-century ago.
Manna Dey is now 91.

In the ensuing couple of hours, plagued by a bad throat and an indifferent back, the old man struggles to keep his composure and his famed temper. Yet, with every song that he begins, the trials of the World fade away as the eyes behind those large, benign spectacles focus on the distance, on a World that he once commanded as only he could. On a different World, when the best music directors requested him to sing songs that all others couldn’t. The magic continues on this day as well: when a song’s pitch reaches a crescendo, he holds his own, and the fans gasp in bewilderment. People who live to his age find it hard to speak; Manna Dey sings, and how!

The moments in between his singing are punctuated by good earthy humour, supplied in ample measure by the compere, Khurana Sahib, whose fluent Hindi, immersed in Urdu, is of Sixties vintage. Together, they make an odd couple, a legendary singer and his compere, in the evening of their life, holding their own in India’s most contemporary urban space. The audience demand an encore, but he is too tired to oblige. The Master stands up, does a Namaste and shuffles off the stage as every person in Chowdiah Memorial Hall applaudes with admiration, respect and awe.

At the end of a magical evening, I walk away knowing that this legend will always live. It’s a nice feeling.

Ad Wise

This is a story of advice and friendship.

We have been good friends with a couple, for many years. About four years ago, the husband called me and asked if he could talk over an issue that he was going through, to get a second opinion, another point of view. I agreed readily, since I liked him very much.

Vibhu, as I shall call him, is a suave chap, very prim and proper, educated in an olde world British school. After an MBA, he built a career in a large organisation in the sales function. I will mention here that the industry he was working in, is Mumbai-centric – most companies have their Head Offices there and branches in the large metros. Well, Vibhu’s performance at work was excellent and he rose to a level which was about the peak for the organisation’s office in Bangalore – if he needed to climb the ladder any more, he’d have to move to Mumbai, something that no self-respecting Bangalorean will consider, if he has his senses about him. Shortly after his promotion in this company, he quit and joined a competitor at a slightly higher level, reporting to the Branch Head. The salary and responsibilities were higher, though there would still be the inevitable Mumbai-move sometime in the future.

It was a bad decision. Vibhu’s gut (and a couple of colleagues) had warned him against the culture of the competitor, one that encouraged snake-oil salesmen and rewarded short term thinking. To top his discomfort, he had a particularly bad boss, who was as insecure as he was rude and who often alluded to Vibhu’s previous organisation with derision, something that got him particularly incensed.

As we sat down to talk, beer in hand, Vibhu told me that he wanted to quit this company immediately. He had no idea of what he wished to do, yet the stress of working here was taking his toll. His boss in the earlier organisation, on knowing of his discomfort, had sent feelers to him, asking him to come back to the same job he had held earlier, yet……..

“Why don’t you go back?” I asked.

The answer was long-winded. I sensed that he had set high standards of growth for himself and this would reek of failure. He was, in addition, concerned about how others in the old organisation would see him. This was where I had a point or two. “Vibhu, I have done just this. I left CDC in the late ‘90s to join a software product company as a domain specialist, realised that it wasn’t what I wanted and approached my boss in CDC within a month, before he had recruited a replacement. I felt the same way as you do now, but for a few days. My colleagues went out of their way to welcome me back. Don’t worry – our fears are in our heads.” I concluded.

“What about my growth?” he queried.

There was little to offer here, of course. He could choose to continue in the new organisation (“No, no, not a chance”), join his old organisation back (“Not sure of this, Gopa”) or just sit at home and hope for a job (which was most unlikely to come by).

“Here’s what I suggest, Vibhu,” I added, “There are often times when you have to go back to move forward. Go back to your old organisation, bide your time and look to change the industry you work in, moving to one where senior management positions exist in Bangalore.” I went back to my story. “Vibhu, quitting a job at this stage of your career without a Plan B, is not advised. I can tell you with confidence that, if you left a company with mutual goodwill, they’d be happy to have you back. Besides, your old Boss has sent the feeler first, hasn’t he? But don’t stay at home, its very depressing to be doing nothing.” Perhaps, in retrospect, I was being forceful, when I should have been gentle.

As the conversation progressed, he became quieter. We left after a couple of hours, some beer time included, and shook hands, while I wished him the best for the future.

It can’t be hard for you to guess the decision he took. He quit the new organisation, did not join the old one and, instead, spent a couple of exacting years at home, till a new, average job came his way. The impact on our friendship was rather hard as well; Vibhu stayed away, though his wife kept in touch with us. I have only once met him since that meeting and that was on a sidewalk. He has aged a decade, with his hair now vastly peppered, a cigarette in hand and some excess weight and when I reflect on the person I knew earlier it is cause for some despondency. It has made me wonder on the human tendency to self-destruct and, as you can see, how people see themselves has a big role to play in this process of emaciation.

I trust I learnt some lessons here, the prime among them being to not get passionate about solving other people’s problems.

Religion does not tolerate diversity

I escorted my mother into the restaurant. “The Higher Taste” the sign above door stated in style. ‘Aptly named’, I thought, for we were on Hare Krishna Hill, within the premises of the temple complex run by Iskcon in Bangalore and an eatery in such a place should have a name befitting its neighbouring building, the temple.
The food at the restaurant was good. Not outstanding, but good. There was an abundance of food colour in the souffle and a paucity of walnut in the walnut subji biryani, but one can live with these things. The décor and general upkeep of the place was befitting a luxury hotel, as indeed was the tariff for the food.
Now, the one thing I tend to be particular about is to call people by their name and not by their occupation (how I acquired this value concerns a ‘mali’ who brought me up without my ever knowing his name, but that’s another story). I gestured to the waiter who stood by the buffett counter to get me water and, when he came up to my table, had a look at the name tag pinned to his shirt. ‘Lakshman’, it said.

Something wasn’t quite right; the fellow was clearly from the North East, where Lakshman is a most unusual name. As I looked around, I found most of the waiters to be from the North East, as is common today in most restaurants in the city. Yet, their names were most discordant: Padmanabha, Ranganatha, Aniruddha and so on.

While helping myself to the souffle-and-cream, I spoke with ‘Lakshman’.
“Where are you from?”
“From Darjeeling, Sir.”
“Where exactly in Darjeeling?”
“Kalimpong, Sir.” I knew of Kalimpong, of course.
“So, what’s your real name?”
“Chiling, Sir.”
“Are you Buddhist?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am a big fan of the Dalai Lama.” I said, seeking to keep the conversation going, for I wished to know more.
“I am part Tibetan, Sir,” he said proudly. “And my father works for the Indo-Tibetan Border Police along the border with China.”
“Do you like being called Lakshman?” I asked, though it really was none of my business.
“It’s a nice name.” he replied politely.

Over the course of the meal, I mulled over my little exchange with Chiling. Why did he need to be rechristened to serve at this restaurant? Chiling is a beautiful name, with a lovely ring to it and in the Tibetan language it could have profound meaning.
The answer, perhaps, has to do with the way every temple (or any sacred place, for that matter) works; there is no room for diversity in the interpretation of religion. Chiling may change his name willingly, for he comes from a part of India that is rotting away, that has no opportunity, and he needs a job. Yet, to transplant a ‘suitable’ name onto such a person is, I think, exploitation, for a name is the vocalisation of identity and self-respect.
I wonder how the Restaurant Manager interviewed him: “Well, Chiling, the job’s yours, except for a small matter: can we call you Lakshman, because Chiling is, well, is not, actually, suitable to our audience.”
or,
“You know, Chiling, we want you to work for us, and we need high customer sat scores, so can we call you Lakshman ?”

When we finished our meal, I looked into the mirror in the rest room and saw one customer who was not quite satisfied. Perhaps they don’t quite care.

Rotting Food and a Rotten Minister

The thing I like about agriculture economics is that most of it is common sense and hence in critical short supply. Listen to the best brains around – Sainath, Devender Sharma, Suman Sahai, MS Swaminathan, even, occasionally, Swaminathan Aiyer – and you would wonder in bewilderment at the absence of common sense and simplicity in the entire Government system around agriculture.
Take the issue – now fading in public memory since it hit the headlines earlier this year – of rotting food. When a conscientious activist filed an RTI application in January 2010 asking for information on just how much food was rotting or damaged in the godowns of the Food Corporation of India, the answer stunned the nation: 10,688 lakh tonnes. Lets put this down numerically: 10,688,00,000,000 kgs.
When I contrast the insistence in most middle class families that the food on the table – mere grams of rice, or an extra roti - not be left over or thrown away, with this wanton, egregious, almost criminal waste, our value system seems terribly pointless. I spent some time reading articles on just why such large quantities of food lay rotting away. Let me give you some of the reasons :
1. Godowns available, but
a. leased out to the food companies such as Pepsi and ITC, who pay higher rents than FCI (I am referring to godowns owned or operated by State Governments, not by private players, so their touching refrain on a godown’s profitability is most unbelievable)
b. used to stock liquor, because of its ‘value-add’.
c. no labour to move material into it. Hence, food kept out in the open, under plastic sheets, while the godown lies semi-occupied. Dampness in the air in the monsoons encourages toxic fungal growth.
d. administrative apathy: no one sees the point in loading bags into a godown and out, when it will not rain (of course, it rains immediately).
2. Food in godown not taken out (in Haryana) before flooding, despite five days notice given on possible need for evacuation.
3. Bags of grain stocked one on top of another in colossal piles, which means that the grain at the bottom is damaged. In this technology age, no State Government has created grain silos, an obvious solution.
4. In instances, lack of availability of space in food godowns.
In other words, a large part of this wastage is hugely avoidable.
So much for supply. Lets talk of the need for grain. The National Sample Survey consumer expenditure data tells that 74.5 per cent of rural persons could not reach the recommended level of 2400 calories of daily intake in 1993 to 1994. By 2004-05, the percentage had reached an unprecedented high of 87 per cent. As importantly, the quality of food they eat is deteriorating as well.
A big part of India’s agricultural and food crisis, including this horrendous wastage, can be attributed to one man: our Honourable Agriculture-cum-Food-cum-Consumer Affairs Minister, of whom it can be safely said that, in the last seven years that he has held these portfolios, he has done virtually nothing to address India’s food security and long term agricultural balance. His decisions (including ones regarding the export of grain when there is a deficit) are bizarre; indeed never has he let reason or wisdom come in the way of a decision (or, indeed, in the absence of a decision). Add to this a rather outsized ego: when asked about the impact of food inflation on the poor, for instance, he said that if the poor could afford to buy soft drinks, then they could surely afford food essentials. His star moments are when he indulges in the politics of cricket with abandon,
Then, why does the Prime Minister put up with this?
The answer: the Hon Minister in question has considerable nuisance value and is an astute trouble maker, fishing with characteristic elan in troubled waters. The late US President Lyndon Johnson once said of a powerful, but troublesome colleague, “It is better to have him inside the tent pissing out, rather than outside the tent pissing in.”
It’s a heavy price to pay for India’s rotting food.