Life and Travel – Page 3

Do they “need” us?

A friend, who is doing some great work in the space of delivering quality healthcare to remote rural customers, narrated a story of how she went to meet an old lady whose medical tests revealed that she had a high risk of cardiovascular disease but when suggested regular monitoring and diet restrictions,the old lady said that she is doing absolutely fine and that she does her daily chores without any problem! Even her family thinks she is fine.

My friend asks, do they need our “help” at all? Who are we to them? Are we being forceful ? What is their purpose and what is ours? A good set of questions for all those “BoP enthusiasts”. (I admit I am not very impressed with the way in which the term BoP is used by most “experts” today.A clear urge to sound “cool”. For all that you can see, I avoid using the term BoP. But then, who cares if a minnow like me is not impressed?)

Ok, coming back to the topic. I face a similar situation. In the work that I do, we sell cattle insurance, purified drinking water, smoke free stoves, all of which, by all means have little or no felt need amongst our existing remote rural customers. If need for healthcare is not felt, it is obvious that the same people will not value any of the things we are selling.

I hav a very different analogy for this. Imagine the world before iPods. People were happy with normal MP3 players and could never believe that hearing experience could be better. Even if they knew that hearing experience could be better, they couldn’t justify spending the exhorbitant amount for ipod. They said, whatever quality the normal MP3 s offer, is good enough and that there isn’t any problem with that quality of listening.

Then some of the rich brats started purchasing iPods either because they appreciated better quality of sound/design or because they wanted to be a part of the elite tribe that owned sleek,stylish and expensive ipods. Slowly, more and more people wanted to buy iPods and soon a lot of the “normal MP3 people” now wanted to buy the ipod! They were suddenly dissatisfied with the sound quality and clumy shapes of the normal mp3 players. After a while, iPods became the defacto music player for the great “discerning” middle class. The “normal MP3 people” have now started seeing and appreciating the better quality of sound/design of the iPod.

I believe, the same route has to be followed for the things like cattle insurance, purified water, quality healthcare and smokeless stoves (and possibly even information). This means we have to use a sly marketing plan to first break in to the “territory of aceeptability” of those who can spend and then ensure that the “fad” becomes a normal way of life. I must point out here that, aside from the great marketing, iPods are inherently a great product. It has a great sound quality and a brilliantly done design. This means that there has to be an underlying benefit in what you are trying to provide. The product and service quality has to be brilliant if not flawless.

I know I sound like a dirty capitalist (and it might be too simplistic to compare healthcare to iPods) but some where back of the mind I know that the stuff that I want them to purchase (healthcare, cattle insurance, purified drinking water, smokeless stoves) has some underlying benefit which would positively affect lives. Customer “education” as a way of “changing” habits and adopting better products/practices has proven to be expensive and fairly unsuccessful. We have to be sly. Not emotional. Anybody is free to argue against what I say. Opinions invited.

Off course, I do not want a moral debate on what should be available for free and what the job of the state (a la healthcare, primary education, market information)is to provide. Let us get real and accept the fact that the state run machinery has not been able to do a good job of making these available. However, you are free to question whether better risk mitigants like healthcare, purified water, smoke-less stoves and better risk transfer mechanisms insurance are needed at all!

Niche in life

Wrote this sometime back for my friends but thought I should put it on the blog.

When I was a kid, I was not very good at games….frankly speaking, I never had the opportunity to play many games. The only game that I ever played was football. In fact, childhood Bengal was a football academy. From Kolkata’s maidaan to the the small muddy villages, it was football allover. From the wooden spikes to the naked feet, it was football allover. From the anklets to the crepe bandages wrapped with safety pins, it was football allover. From the twisted ankles to the badly swollen shin bones, it was football all over.

Every year the city and the towns (not the villages generally because the people in the villages wouldn’t normally have enough to drape themselves) would be draped in Green and Maroon(colours of Mohunbagan club) or Red and Yellow (colours of East Bengal club), every four years the city and towns would be draped in Blue and white (colour of Argentina) or Yellow (colour of Brazil). Practically everybody was a footballer! Even if somebody did not play, HE had something to say about the game. (Frankly speaking Bengalis play a very few of the “games” on which they have a strong view). The HE is capitalised here to point out that Bengali women were completely missing from this area of having a view on football. The women grew up attending music or dance classes, learning how to cook and getting ready to become a good marriageable “package” right from childhood. Once they are married, they concentrate on controlling the lout who happened to spend time mostly outside the house solving away all strategic worldly affairs. This lout is the husband.

By the way, all that is history now. People do not discuss football and girls are not limited to the home. Its cricket and its Mamata Banerjee.

Anyways, I was digressing a bit too much. My point was “Practically everybody was a footballer!” so finding a place in the class team, college team was always difficult. Given my physique which was several times worse (read thinner) than what you see now, football was a difficult game for me. Well, that is what people thought when they would look at me to decide whether I could join the team or not. Certain answer was a no. I figured out a strategy to ensure I was in the team because I knew that once I was in team I would give my team ample reasons to continue having me in the team. The strategy was, I said I play in the wings (a winger sticks to the right or left flank of the ground during the game).Nobody wanted to play in the wings. Everybody wanted to be in the middle. Everybody wanted to be a midfielder, a forward! But, I said I would play in the left wing. Playing in the left wing meant you’ve got to be able to kick with your left foot. I was lucky to be able to kick with both my feet. So there I was, giving my team a proposition to play in a position where nobody would play! Normally amateur football happens in the middle with everybody chasing the ball around the middle, the flanks remained empty. There lied my opportunity. I took the ball right down from the bottom and went past the midfield upto the corner of the opponents side. Nobody stopped me because every player of the opponent was stuck in the middle of the field! By the time I reached the other end, the opponent players would rush from the middle towards me in the side to prevent me from scoring. Now the middle would get empty. I simply lobbed the ball and centered it in front of my forward who would wait in front of the goal, unmanned and then a smooth header or a slow nudge saw the goal!

I scored a goal only on rare occasions but I had to adpot this weird strategy to ensure I was in the team. To ensure that I could strategically be at a place where no one else wants to be and yet have a ball!! I enjoyed my game.

Economics of Happiness

US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke talked about the Economics of Happiness in a commencement speech at the University of South Carolina on 8th May, 2010.

A few takeaways:

He moves away from the materialistic reasons of happiness as proposed by many economists and suggests the following as things that lead to happiness (off course in addition to materialistic gains):

1.) spending time with friends and family,

2.)getting engrossed in the “activity” you are involved with,

3.)recognising the fact that everything in life can not be under our control.

4.) Remember all the good that happened with you!

He also tries to answer the age old question that we often ask ” Are the people in the poorer countries less happy?” or ” Are the people in the villages less happy than the city people?”

He says that what matters is the relative possession of wealth. So he says,”If I live in a country in which most people have only one cow, and I have three cows, then I will have lots of social status and self-esteem and will thus feel happy. But if everyone around me has a luxury car, and I am hung up on status, I won’t feel very special unless I have both a luxury car and an SUV.”

He ends it off by saying something very interesting “happiness is nature’s way of telling us we are doing the right thing. True. But, by the same token, ephemeral feelings of happiness are not always reliable indicators we are on the right path. Ultimately, life satisfaction requires more than just happiness. Sometimes, difficult choices can open the doors to future opportunities, and the short-run pain can be worth the long-run gain.”

Perhaps, an effort to draw our attention to the fact that the desire to gain immediate proseperity through financial jugglery has led to a fatal crisis for all of us today. He seems to be telling us that it is prudent to postopne immediate happiness for “life satisfaction”!

Read the whole speech here.