60th Week@XIMB - 29th July to 4th August, 2012
29th July - Sunday is celebrated through a video on rural marketing sharing experiences of Airtel, M&M, and Hero Honda in rural India
Eyeing on the monsoon reality, farmers in northern India always use the proverbs of Ghagh aur Bhaddari for weather forecasting. There has been a research paper - Farming proverbs: analysis of Their Dynamics and Farmers' Knowledge by Ranjay K Singh and A Dorjey.
The linkage of good monsoons and the Indian market is too close still we keep ignoring the reality of the rural market. With inadequate monsoons rural consumption falls and so do the overall sales of agri-input companies. There are many more companies whose sales are indirectly dependent on the agricultural cycle but with the poor monsoon that will also go down. Farmers try to maximize their returns in times of drought through the use of local, non-hybrid seed varieties and cheaper micro-irrigation.
30th July - A two-day workshop on “Markets That Empower Farmers (& Consumers)” has started today at XIMB. This learning and brainstorming workshop is jointly organized by XIMB and ASHA (Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture) and is coordinated by Prof. Shambu Prasad. There was detailed coverage on the blog of Kisan Swaraj.
My Learning:-
1- People have lost many years doing wrong things. But you have to do wrong for long enough to realize this. It's worthwhile to do something not for the sake of money and pleasing society.
2- Too much consumer centric approach has diverted our attention from the problems of primary producers and rural livelihood. Policy, Market, and Technology are currently used for agri-business rather than agriculture. Farmers are in crisis, not farming.
3- Diversity is the key concept for sustainable agriculture. Sustainability should be the keyword for the next green revolution. More collectivization of farmers is required to increase bargaining power. Bina sanskar nahin sahkar, bina sahkar nahin udhar (without morals no cooperation, without cooperation no uplift).
Fact: 5000 liters of water is required for rice in comparison to negligible irrigation for millet. Per capita yield must be matched with the per capita nutritious value of the crop.
31st July - There were guest speakers in the ESM class: Joseph Thomas, Centre for Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship, IITM, and Sridhar Radhakrishnan who runs a Zero Waste Center in Kovalam, recycling local waste and converting it to useful products, thereby generating livelihood for locals. Both of them were critical of the engineers. One of them was about the design of sewage systems design and the other was about the use of incinerators for the disposal of solid waste.
One quote mentioned in the slide quite touched my emotional chord: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
The concept of waste management is good and useful for assessment of product life cycle assessment. While the whole class was very vocal in their support of organic farming, I found that response quite shallow. The core message of organic farming forms an antithesis for the students looking for their bright future in fertilizer giants like Monsanto, DSCL, Tata Rallies, etc. I will support my assumption by quoting Upton Sinclaire: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
29th July - Sunday is celebrated through a video on rural marketing sharing experiences of Airtel, M&M, and Hero Honda in rural India
Eyeing on the monsoon reality, farmers in northern India always use the proverbs of Ghagh aur Bhaddari for weather forecasting. There has been a research paper - Farming proverbs: analysis of Their Dynamics and Farmers' Knowledge by Ranjay K Singh and A Dorjey.
The linkage of good monsoons and the Indian market is too close still we keep ignoring the reality of the rural market. With inadequate monsoons rural consumption falls and so do the overall sales of agri-input companies. There are many more companies whose sales are indirectly dependent on the agricultural cycle but with the poor monsoon that will also go down. Farmers try to maximize their returns in times of drought through the use of local, non-hybrid seed varieties and cheaper micro-irrigation.
30th July - A two-day workshop on “Markets That Empower Farmers (& Consumers)” has started today at XIMB. This learning and brainstorming workshop is jointly organized by XIMB and ASHA (Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture) and is coordinated by Prof. Shambu Prasad. There was detailed coverage on the blog of Kisan Swaraj.
My Learning:-
1- People have lost many years doing wrong things. But you have to do wrong for long enough to realize this. It's worthwhile to do something not for the sake of money and pleasing society.
2- Too much consumer centric approach has diverted our attention from the problems of primary producers and rural livelihood. Policy, Market, and Technology are currently used for agri-business rather than agriculture. Farmers are in crisis, not farming.
3- Diversity is the key concept for sustainable agriculture. Sustainability should be the keyword for the next green revolution. More collectivization of farmers is required to increase bargaining power. Bina sanskar nahin sahkar, bina sahkar nahin udhar (without morals no cooperation, without cooperation no uplift).
Fact: 5000 liters of water is required for rice in comparison to negligible irrigation for millet. Per capita yield must be matched with the per capita nutritious value of the crop.
31st July - There were guest speakers in the ESM class: Joseph Thomas, Centre for Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship, IITM, and Sridhar Radhakrishnan who runs a Zero Waste Center in Kovalam, recycling local waste and converting it to useful products, thereby generating livelihood for locals. Both of them were critical of the engineers. One of them was about the design of sewage systems design and the other was about the use of incinerators for the disposal of solid waste.
One quote mentioned in the slide quite touched my emotional chord: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
The concept of waste management is good and useful for assessment of product life cycle assessment. While the whole class was very vocal in their support of organic farming, I found that response quite shallow. The core message of organic farming forms an antithesis for the students looking for their bright future in fertilizer giants like Monsanto, DSCL, Tata Rallies, etc. I will support my assumption by quoting Upton Sinclaire: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
1st August - M-CRIL is Micro Credit Rating International Ltd. M-CRIL is a global leader in the financial rating of micro-finance institutions and sectoral advisory services.
2nd August - Prof Nonita Yap, Professor in Rural Planning and Development at the University of Guelph delivered a talk on "Greening the economy - opportunities through cleaner production and industrial ecology" at XIMB. She touched on the topic of Decarbonisation of the whole energy sector, Industrial Symbiosis at Kalundborg, and the "Quasi Cyclic" economy. There was criticism of the cluster approach of industries in her talk as these clusters concentrate pollutants. In India, industries rarely see waste as a resource.
3rd August - The immersion course Agribusiness Value Chain Finance (AVCF)and Carbon Management and Carbon Trading (CMCT) started today.
4th August - I was sick with a fever and still managed to attend a few classes of immersion courses. With the weekend looming, enjoy this video!
Making the Market Work for the Poor: This session was moderated by Elliot Gerson, Executive Vice President, The Aspen Institute USA, and the panelists included Adarsh Kumar, Executive Director, All India Artisans and Craftworkers Welfare Association; Lakshmi Venkatesan, Founding Trustee and Executive Vice-President, Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST); Deepender Hooda, Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha (Indian National Congress); and Amitava Chattopadhyay, The L'Oreal Chaired Professor of Marketing-Innovation and Creativity, INSEAD, Singapore.
The majority of Indians are still not reaping the benefits of liberalization. While there seems to be a growing consensus that the trickle-down theory is not working for India, is there a way that markets can be made more responsive to the rural poor in particular? Beyond NGO activism, how can the poor buy into the market economy?
