Responsible tourism

When you travel, you have an opportunity to use your money in a way that supports the local people in their livelihoods. There are two theoretical concepts in this connection:

1)leakage: this is related to how much tourism money stays in the local economy and how much goes out. If the money goes to local people and they in turn use that to pay other local people, the money benefits the local economy more and more. This is good.

2.) who benefits locally. Ideally it would be nice if our money could support those lower on the economic ladder as much as possible 

As an example, I noticed that the comparatively small town of Aurangabad has some pretty fancy hotels. Of course this is because its the nearest base for the Ajantha and Ellora caves. So I can visualise that rich tourists would fly into Aurangabad, go to a fancy hotel, then take a rental car, go to Ajantha and Ellora and then back to the hotel and then back to the airport and out. If you analyse the money they spend, you can see that most of it leaks or doesn't stay in the local economy:

- flight : money mostly goes to aviation fuel, trained airline and airport personnel 

- vehicle : mostly towards fuel (a good that comes from outside) and the driver (money stays locally hopefully)

- hotel : high-end hotels usually use a lot of men and material from outside the local area, both in their construction and running. 

When you think about it, responsible tourism is pretty hard to do in India. We would like to stay in reasonably decent places, which are clean, hygienic and pleasant. Unfortunately, this isn't part of the culture in India generally it seems (see : http://despoki.blogspot.in/2016/08/a-new-kind-of-hotel.html     ) . In our food too,  given low food hygiene standards in India , we obviously would tend to try to go to as upscale a place as possible to be safe, and give the local mom-and-pop shops a miss. 

So it can be a challenge. But I think with a little thought and with crowdsourcing of ideas, we could come up with quite a lot of good ways to support the local economy as much as we can when travelling.  Here's some to start with:

1.) Homestay and hostels: These are quite interesting staying options until my "new kind of hotel" becomes a reality. The negatives of bad hotels don't seem to apply to a large extent to households in India. So the idea of homestays ( where you stay at someone's home, not a hotel) might work out quite well, though its still in its infancy now. Youth hostels tend to be decently maintained and run and are another option. So are hotels run by the tourism department, though the quality of these varies widely in practice. 

2.) Buying the local traditional arts and crafts: This is a no-brainer and something most of us love to do anyway. The more research we do before going on a trip, the better in this regard. For example, to find producers who give their workers a decent wage and to find genuine products rather than cheap ripoffs. 

3.) Hire a good tour guide please, when you go to a historical monument or area. This is an excellent way to contribute, while enhancing your own experience of the area

3.) Another idea, not for the faint-hearted, would be to give a fraction of the money you spend on your trip to an NGO or other deserving cause in the local area.  10% would be a nice starting point, and 50% would be pretty cool :-) 

In general, the longer you stay in the area and more you get to understand and appreciate the local people and culture, the better, it seems to me. Hurried in-and-out and weekend trips don't serve anyone very well, it seems to me 

I paid Rs350/- for this collection of nice geological specimens to a  random salesman on my recent trip to Aurangabad. Coral, quarts and agate he told me. I am quite happy about the purchase but I wonder how this thing works. How much time does it take to find these pieces, who does the search, whom does the money go to ?

Notes, References:

1. If you're going to Wayanad, staying at the Wayanad County resort directly contribute to the well-being of tribal workers at the associated plantation. Read the happy story:  
http://www.thebetterindia.com/66124/ias-officer-prasanth-nair-priyadarshini-tea-estate-tourism-hunger-malnutrition-tribal-people-wayanad/

Relocating to Singapore (Guest post by Banupriya)

                                               At Bin Tan Island, Indonesia, a 1 hour ferry ride from Singapore


I’ve been wanting to write this blogpost since we moved to Singapore and finally got the inclination (with a little pushing from Vijay!).

When Vijay got his scholarship at NUS, Singapore and we wanted to move as a family...that's when it all started. We started calculating our living expenses including Vibhat's school fees. Meanwhile we enquired with friends living in Singapore. They gave us a figure which scared us. Some were telling us that it would difficult to live here with only our stipend. It was really scary and I backed out and started encouraging Vijay to go by himself. Vibhat and I would join later after a year if he got a job. But he was very clear that we move to Singapore with him. Now what? We started doing our budget planning on how to live with Vijay's stipend and our savings here in the bank. Meanwhile I would try to get a job there after reaching and if I got one, the salary would help.

  Finally the big day came and Voila! I landed up with my 6 year old kid in Singapore with a lot of doubts. and not very convinced with Vijay's financial planning. Initially I was very careful in spending and kept converting every dollar spent into rupees :-). It was painful after living a comfortable life in India, to live here without so many things. But later on I got used to it and starting buying necessary things. We had our budget for every month. We stayed within that but did enjoy eating out too in Food courts and  Hawkers Centres which were pretty okay and were within our budget. So we also enjoyed tasting local delicacies.

With 4000 $ per month we are able to manage. Here is the breakup:

House rent - 1500,

Vibhat’s school fees and bus facility - 1300, 

Living expenses - 700

Travelling inside Singapore (use Public transport) & Phone recharges for me n Vijay - 200

Doc's visit and miscellaneous things -  300

We are able to live within $4000 and also enjoy sightseeing around Singapore. 

The idea behind writing this post is to encourage other students of NUS not to get scared to bring their family along and to take the big step comfortably, of course after doing the required financial planning.

Using a Matrix sim card

User experience with using a Matrix SIM for foreign travel.
When I moved to Singapore, I brought with me a Matrix SIM card. While my experience leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, I'm not a fan of random badmouthing of companies that I see on the web. Below is my experience. Its only 1 persons' experience, and its spiced up a little bit for drama. There is also negligence on my part that contributed to the final outcome.

I had bought a plan for 1000 free minutes calling to India at approximately 2,500/- Rs. I expected I would spend this amount on the card. The final amount I spent over 3 weeks is upward of 19,000/- Rs.
In India I did not have knowledge of Singapore calling rates as also data usage, so I was not able to evaluate the plan I took properly. After coming to Singapore, I got busy in settling in at the school, visa matters etc. here and didn't pay sufficient attention to understanding how the phone charges were going. I realized too late that the data and local calling charges on the card were very expensive. I probably even crossed the 1000 Min limit on calling India.

The critical problem is that there is no convenient way to track usage (local calling, free minutes to India, data). This is mindbogglingly bad. To be on this kind of a plan, and not to give people a way to know where exactly they are in their usage is such a bad customer experience, that it crosses the line to where it merits an investigation by the government. After 2 weeks, and multiple phone calls to customer support, I started getting SMSes and recorded phone messages telling me what my balance was, but even then it didn't tell me the breakup for various services. And why did it start only 2 weeks into my trip ?
When one has some number of free minutes but doesn't know when it going to get over, its very problematic. Its hardly practical to keep noting the duration of every call you make.
The other thing that wasn't nice was that local calling rates were very expensive. Again its something that you can't evaluate very well back in India. The calling cards seem to be set up so that you get attracted by the free India calling minutes and then get screwed by the local calls.

The Matrix experience is quite schizophrenic. Any aspect of their service that has to do with generating revenue is extraordinarily good. Any aspect that might lead to revenue erosion is extraordinarily bad.
On the plus side:
1.) When I first contacted a salesperson in Bangalore, he was very knowledgeable, pleasant and courteous. He was also extremely responsive and reliable in follow-up to get me to purchase the card. 
2.) They ran ads on TV and cable sometime back. I found those extraordinarily entertaining and well-made. They also have a cute little box in which they give you the SIM card and usage instructions. These guys remind me of Indigo, the airline, for their branding and marketing ideas. And check out their website.
3.) When I had some trouble getting data service on my phone, the customer service was extraordinarily response in giving me detailed instructions and following up with me over a period of 2 hours until I got it resolved.
4.) The service worked well and call quality etc was all good. I would give them good marks for this.
5.)The most annoying thing is that its remarkably easy to get a phone connection here in Singapore. All it takes is your passport and you can get a SIM at any number of convenience stores around the city. But because I had the convenient Matrix SIM available, I postponed getting a local Singapore SIM. I also postponed setting up WiFi in the apartment properly so I could use WiFi data. These really cost me dear.

Two other people that I consulted about Matrix told me that they had the same kind of experience. That's a total of 3/3 bad customer experiences! 

If you are going ahead with Matrix anyways, things to keep in mind:
Of course the basic thing is that you have to keep an eagle eye on your call usage!
Understand the local calling rate. Check whether the local calling rate applies to incoming too.
Know your data usage. I had an unlimited connection back in India, so didn't really know how much was my average usage. Found out after I came here and paid through my nose, that it is much higher than I thought!

Note: Happy to get feedback from Matrix and hear their side of it. I did send them the substance of the above as a customer complaint and didn't hear back (Oh, yeah, that's another thing, they opened three customer complaints as a result of my calls, and I never heard back on any of them).


Their ads were so good, I will link them in here :-)

On Gold

For some time now I've been puzzling over ... gold. I have an instinctive and visceral dislike for gold jewellery (and the buying of it!). I was trying to get at the root of it and perhaps I have.

The 'buy gold' logic is very compelling. Your wife wants it. (Well atleast my wife does and so do most of our female relatives and a lot of friends, though I'm sure nowadays a lot of women have managed to stay out of it). As a guy it makes sense because it is an investment and not a consumption expense so you're keeping your wife very happy essentially without spending any money! What a win-win !

So why do I hate it so much.

I think its because all the gold comes out at events like weddings, and women overload themselves massively with it. Gold as ornamentation works upto a certain amount of the stuff ; too much and it takes away from beauty instead of complementing or enhancing it. You are no longer a person, you are a hanger to hang all this gold off of.

The primary function of wearing lots of gold jewellery is to communicate the message: 'I have lots of money'. And that's disgusting.

PS: From Sajini, here's a CBS TV segment on the same topic.

http://youtu.be/sUr2E4dfs0Y

On the cost of clothes

Sometime back I started thinking about this idea below of evaluating how one spends money on clothes. I mentioned it in one of the earlier posts on the blog, but then I continued to think about it and found it more and more interesting, so here's the idea now fleshed out more. The intention to keep detailing it out until I can get something to publish in a peer-reviewed journal :-) ( the Journal of Consumer Economics ?)

==

You could evaluate your clothes by dividing the cost of an item by the number of times you wore it. You'd look for a low number to come out of the ratio as that would indicate that it didn't cost you much and you used it a lot, therefore good value. We could call this number the cost per use (CPU). It seems an interesting way to evaluate the worth or the value you get out of it.

I've continued to think about this and find it very interesting. Firstly, you can think about how much money you're wearing everyday. This is the total cost per use of all the things you're wearing (lets restrict it to just clothes, including undergarments and footwear but not jewellery and accessories). I was surprised by the number that I estimated, in my case: greater than 50/-. I wouldn't have thought I was spending that much on clothes every day ! Take a 1500/- Rs pair of jeans which I bought recently ; I'd have to wear it a 100 times for the cost per use to come down to 15/- . I think I'll probably not use it so many times, perhaps 75 times is more like it. So cost per use is Rs 20/-. For other trousers I expect I'll use them even less than 75 times so if they cost the same, the CPU is even higher. A similar calculation for shirts, which could cost 500/- to 700/- for the kind of shirts I wear to work but which I would wear less number of times than trousers before discarding or giving away, perhaps 30-50 times (so CPU average around 15/-). Then calculate the cost for undergarments , shoes/socks, belt . And an unexpected extra, the cost of washing and ironing. Ironing now costs 4/- a garment for me, so that's close to 10/- for ironing itself ! So as I said, adding it all up, a total of Rs 50/- per day.

Its an interesting calculation to do.

The one thing that cost surpringly less for me was footwear. The current pair I use is from Bata, a fairly nice piece that is very reasonably priced at around 450/-. And since I use it everyday pretty much, I've probably used it more than 100 times already, so the cost per wear is down to 4.50 /- already . Very low compared to shirts and pants ! And its in pretty good shape still and could easily go for another 6 months, so the cost per wear is coming down even further. It seems I could cut down the amount I pay on clothes and splurge a little more on footwear, to reach a more optimal point.

For fancy clothes that you wear for special occasions, the cost / use would be much higher than for daily wear clothes. This is because these would be pretty expensive clothes, that we would wear it very few times, so double the effect. For eg. all the suits I've bought, I've used only a couple of times, and then they've gotten too tight for me :-( .

You can start doing this for the other things you buy and use. For example my cellphone cost is horrendous ; each time I've bought a high end phone (both Nokias), I've enjoyed using them a lot but they've lasted relatively short. The first one for eg. cost about 13000 and lasted for about 18 months, so that's close to 750/- per month ! No more expensive phones for me!

Rework The World

I went to the Rework the World conference, www.reworktheworld.org in early June, representing Arghyam. The conference was in Leksand, a lakeside resort a few hours north of Stockholm. The conference was a very good experience. The next and last edition of the conference , which is one of a series is going to be held in Alexandria , Egypt in 2012 and I heartily recommend that to any young person, though needless to say, it would be quite expensive.

As luck would have it, my passport was quite close to expiring and I needed to get it renewed. I had a difficult time getting the renewal done ; worth its own blog post!

I flew out of Delhi and back to Delhi which make the overall trip more strenuous.

The event was on youth and social entrepreneurship. It was co-organised by two interesting groups the Yes Foundation (one of whose key people is an Indian American, Poonam Ahluwalia), and the Tallberg Foundation, a wellknown think-tank in Sweden. The trip expenses were sponsored by the organisers which was really nice of them, though I think they were hoping I would play a more active role than I did.

From Stockholm Airport, I drove down to the conference location by car with Thomas Bjelkeman-Petersson of Akvo.org, who's visited us in India a few times. It was a great drive through open sparsely populated countryside. A very welcome break from the crush and the dirt of Bangalore and India which gets to me.

There was a huge amount of infectious energy in the gathering ; so many people, especially youth (1500+), all trying to make the world a better place, all over the world.

Lots of particulars that bear a passing comment but maybe in a later post.

Some videos below:
1.) The Max hamburger chain in Sweden now tracks the carbon footprint of each kind of burger and lets you know !



2.) There was a lot of great music at the event:

The Times of India

I recently began subscribing to the Times of India. The reason was a bit stupid and the kind of ass-backwards decision-making that I sometimes indulge in -- I find the Hindu so compelling to read that in the morning, I get absorbed in it, so that it both makes me late and distracts my mind. A bad way to start a work day. So finally I decided not to subscribe anymore. But my wife still wanted to subscribe to a newspaper so that she could keep in touch with what was going on outside Vibhat-world ; so we subscribed to the Times of India instead. It seems to be working out; I am definitely not absorbed in the newspaper in the mornings nowadays.

Subscribing gives me an opportunity to take a closer look than when I would just pick up occasionally at the office or elsewhere. My observations backs up that of many others, that The Times is a breathtaking newspaper and I feel compelled to add my notes to the reams that have already been written about it. This is hopefully just a beginning.

The first thing to say I think, is that a simple switch of context makes all the difference when thinking about the Times. Its as follows:

The Times of India is a business: then it becomes a predictable, sensibly run, run-of-the-mill, moderately interesting entity which is not very special compared to all the other zillions of businesses in India.
The Times of India is a newspaper: It becomes a jaw-droppingly amazing, completely crazy, death-of-satire, evil-empire, laughing stock, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, death-knell-of-Indian-civilization entity.

Again:
business -- nothing special
newspaper -- what the **&&^&#(@*@*!&&!!* is going on?!
Moving on:

the paper design seems really bad. Actually I have not been really looking at the paper with a critical eye, I've been just reading it, so to say, since we started subscribing, so this post will be more off-the-cuff comments. Having said that, the paper is just a mess. The pages are a loud clash of colours from all the ads and the colors used in the articlespace too. I haven't yet figured out the logic of the newspaper in terms of what kind of articles go where or on what page, because the cues towards this are not there or not strong enough. The mixing up of editorial and advert makes the jaw drop lower each day.

Today's front page had a truly stupid artistic illustration of a big-boobed woman being flagged at airport security, because of some news that the new airport security detectors are set off by silicone implants. I mean... really, this is too idiotic.

More often than not, upto 30% of the front page is taken up up by a single ad which completely distracts the attention. Today its about 25% distributed between several ads. A couple of days back there was some absurd article of less than 12 column-lines on one of the pages, and all the rest were ads. Today the first "City" page has about 5% of articles and 95% of ads.

On the plus side: generally they seem to have a lot of coverage of water issues, and not competely superficial which I can vouch for, since I keep an eye out for this. So they do have some news going. For a couple of days now they've had a lot of coverage of the naxal issue, ("Deep Focus"), though I haven't had the enthu to read in detail.

Today's "Global" page, had an "Around the World" section (probably a standard feature. It had a.) a picture of an unknown (but stunning) South Korean actress, b) "Teri Hatcher looking for love" c.) "Postmen boycott UK house because of cat".

Swaminathan Aiyar, one of their usual columnists had a stupid article on irrigation, something about using piped or drip irrigation instead of canals. Not a single figure about how economically viable this might be.

They've expanded their "Speaking Tree" column into a full Sunday supplement and are running a slick, nicely designed, but, to me, predictable ad about it in the main paper for a while ("Visit yourself, once a week", "If you listen, you hear", "Somewhere between our head and heart (Ed- our neck?) lies a land we rarely go to")

Enough of Times bashing for now.

Shvoong.com

Currently I am getting mildly obsessive about the possibility of making some money doing things that I like to do, during this 'sabbatical' of mine. I found out about this website called Shvoong today. These guys are positioning themselves as a site for "Abstracts". Ie, they want to have short summaries of every book/essay that was ever written, or basically of all human knowledge. The model is that the summaries can be written by anyone, and they get paid royalties depending on how many people read the summary and how they like it. The website makes its money (and pays the royalties) from (you guessed it!) advertising. The same old game again.
I think the business model of this site is pretty shaky given the amount of free yet quite reliable material on the net (eg. wikipedia, which I've found pretty good on occasion and book reviews at amazon). Nevertheless I'm tempted to give this site a spin since I anyway read a lot and like writing reviews. Take a look at the site : www.shvoong.com

Comments ?