Actually, the drive itself was pretty interesting too. We had seen "brick farms" the last time out but didn't bother inquiring about them. This time our curiosity got the better of us and we decided to stop at one where a few workers were "farming" away. After taking a few pictures from a safe (i.e. long) distance away, a man approached us to ask us what we were doing. We could tell he was a man of some stature in the organization... not a principal or a partner mind you... but definitely a manager.
We asked him if he could tell us about the farm and to our surprise, he proceeded to give us a 1/2 hour lecture on the whole process. And here I was thinking that the four of us - two 'white-washed' Indians and two non Indians - would be run out of town for offending someone or another. Here's a summary of the fascinating process he described:
- Planting: the workers mold the clay soil in the shape (and size) of a brick and let it dry for 20 days
- Watering (okay, burning): after the 20 days are up, the bricks are piled up in a pyramid shape, covered with hay and "baked" for 8 days to dry them out completely (Hari was quick to point out that Indians never get credit for building pyramids but here they were, hard at work)
- Harvest: after the burning process, the bricks are loaded onto trucks and driven away
Pic 1: bricks drying
Pic 2: piling bricks up
Pic 3: "baking" the bricks
Pic 4: gaps left in pyramid to insert logs to burn brick pile
Pic 5: Pictured: Dheeraj, Kuen, "Teacher", John
Each farm yields up to 4 harvests a year over a 120 day period. These bricks are weaker than "normal" bricks but are good enough to do the job.
Now, for the interesting part. We get to the village and split into two groups. Kuen and John went to see a small business owner while Hari and I went to visit a village Doctor. Except that he wasn't a doctor... and readily admitted it. He had gotten a BSc in Geology and couldn't get a job for five years so had decided to go work as an assistant to a local Doctor. After a year, he set up his own practice. Apparently, in India, you can get certified as a "Rural Medical Practitioner" which then allows you to practice medicine even though you aren't an actual doctor. He had even chosen to "specialize" in treating Asthma, Cold, and Ulcer patients and knew what prescriptions to write for these conditions. He would refer other cases to the local government run hospital, which was open for all of four hours a day.
What was also surprising was that his patients seemed to understand the difference between a RMP and a MD and expected to be charged less when visiting a RMP. Our interviewee charged Rs 10-30 per visit as opposed to Rs 75 that a MD would charge.
Now, maybe I just have an unethical mindset but what I started wondering was why he had chosen to tell these people that he was a RMP at all and not just claimed to have been a MD. After all, he could have probably gotten away with it. It's unlikely that anyone in the area would have had spent the resources to confirm his claims.
Initially all sorts of explanations went through my mind - maybe he was scared of being found out, maybe he was worried that he would make a mistake. But by the end of our conversation with him, I was convinced that it was just that he was a very honest person.
It gets better. This 'Doctor' made more money selling life insurance than he did from practicing ... his art. He got a recurring revenue stream from selling life insurance in the form of a percentage of the customer's insurance premium for as long as he/she retained the policy. It is not inconceivable that in the future, he may start offering free medical care as long as his customer signs up for a life insurance plan.
Pic 6: Doctor
Pic 7: RMP "diplomas"
Next, we visited a local Kirana store owner. A Kirana store is a neighborhood, one-stop store which sells everything from toothpaste and razor blades to vegetables and cooking oil. There can be multiple Kirana stores in a given area but they are all pretty similar.
His store carried two types of goods - non-perishable and perishable. He obtained his supply of toiletries and other non-perishable from sales agents who came to the village regularly. He maintained a regular stock of these and could get new supplies of most items within a day or so.
The perishable items presented a much more difficult challenge. Since he didn't have access to a refrigerator or other cold storage facility, he had to obtain these on a daily basis. He did so by traveling four hours a day to a nearby town and bringing back what he expected to sell that day on a hired carrier. Talk about a balancing act - if he ordered too much, he would have to eat the cost and if he ordered too little, he would lose customers.
He also kept very long, investment-banking type hours. The store was open 20 hours a day, 6 days a week. The only day the store was closed was Wednesday and even then the store owner would go to Chennai (a six hour round trip) to order yet more goods for his store.
I had heard of the revolutionary, low-priced sachets introduced by Hindustan Unilever, but never actually saw them. The Kirana store was literally full of them and he had them for all kinds of goods - detergent, soap, shampoo, shaving cream, even food - the list goes on and on. These sachets started at Rs 0.50, which is equivalent to just over a penny in US currency. The surprising thing is that even at this price point, the companies that sell them are highly profitable. To put that in perspective - to earn a profit, the company has to spend less than $0.01 per package for everything from manufacturing to packaging to transporting the sachet to even the remotest villages (which in India is no easy feat.)
Pic 8 & 9: Sachets
After we finished the interviews, we whipped out our lunch - some delicious, custom-made, authentic Subway sandwiches. After that on the drive home, we saw the most interesting tractor you will ever hear about... but you will have to wait for John to blog about that... stay tuned!!!
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