Who, what, where and why. An introduction...

Bombay. Beautiful Bombay. Exotic, colourful, enchanting. One of those rare places on earth that at once evokes feelings of despair and optimism, apprehension and excitement, bemusement and wonderment. Bamboozling Bombay all right. Just on hearing the name all but the most ingenuous foreigners amongst us can’t help but to feel a sense of awe in this great historic city. A place where around 14 Million humans (and some estimate as many animals) call home, get up in the morning, go about their daily business of work or plain survival, consume immeasurable amounts of goods and raw materials, before finally laying to rest for the evening under a mostly hot and humid sky. Close your eyes and it is easy to visualise this near overwhelming immenseness of sheer humanity.

Bombay is a city transforming. Some say on the cusp of greatness. Like a caterpillar emerging from its cocoon, Bombay – or as it is these days known as, Mumbai – represents a caricature of India’s rise out of the abject poverty and misery that has blighted the nation throughout much of the last century. Entrepreneurial, growing, modernising and moving forward in every conceivable way. A proud, shining example of how a (relatively) liberal democracy in this age of globalisation can lift millions out of poverty and provide new hope along with middle-class lifestyles in a sort of urban utopia. In this new decade most economic commentators expect the butterfly to bear its beauty to the world, showcasing Mumbai as the epicentre of the nation’s ascendance towards the pinnacle of commercial innovation and power.  

Unfortunately development and modernisation does not normally advance evenly across all society. For many across India, the development boom has yet to yield significant gains in literacy rates, reductions in fertility, nor significantly improved health and life expectancy. Furthermore, modernisation in cultural norms and attitudes have, in some sectors of Indian society, failed to keep a pace with modernisation in superficial elements of society such as infrastructure, consumer goods, and military capabilities. For example, the caste system, while officially rejected by government, is still very much evident amongst the poorer sectors of society, particularly in rural areas. Caste pre-ordains one’s future based on family history, whether it be as a pot maker, mid-wife, or spiritual Sharman. It determines what rung on the ladder you and your family will sit and which order of society you will remain. Those from ‘untouchable’ castes get a particularly rough deal and often struggle for community acceptance and ultimately survival. Added to this, beliefs and social construct founded in religion. Hinduism is the dominant religion, however Islam, Sikhism, Christianity, Buddhism and dozens of other belief systems exist, often with centuries of tension, conquest and bloody competition. What does all this mean for this day and age? Basically, India represents an exacting melting pot of cultures, religions, races and creeds. All growing and advancing at an uneven rate of knots.          

So I hear you ask, what brings to me to such a place? Surely I’m better off sticking to Sydney. It’s comparatively clean, safe, has a lovely harbour and beautiful beaches to sit back, relax and enjoy my comfortable middle-class lifestyle. I’m on ‘holidays’ after all from an intensive MBA degree. My last chance at an extended 3 month break in work before completing my university studies and venturing into a office somewhere to work 9am to 5pm (or more realistically 7am to 7pm) for the next 30 years. Fundamentally, it is a deep sense of desire to explore, to experience societies and situations different from what is familiar, to learn how the rest of the world ticks. In the words of one of the most famous (and in my opinion most insightful) reporter on travelling faraway lands, Polish journalist Ryszard Kapusinski, “as we travel, we can feel that something important is happening, that we are at once both witnesses and creators, that there is a duty incumbent upon us, and that we are responsible for something... as we travel we concentrate, we focus our attention and sharpen our hearing. The road we are on is very important, because each step along it takes us nearer to an encounter with the Other, and that is why we are there.” In other words, travelling is a route out of one’s comfort zone, to deliberately stimulate the senses by encountering the unknown.      

Just as important is the hope of gaining new knowledge, which brings me to the main raison d’être for this trip. Fundamentally, I am concerned with finding solutions to achieve sustainable economic development. How to further assist India’s poor (and for that matter poor people everywhere) to live better lives, out of poverty. Micro-finance has emerged as possibly one of the most critical innovations in poverty reduction of recent decades. As highlighted by Grameen Bank founder, Muhammad Yunus, winning the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Micro-finance essentially provides ‘un-bankable’ poor people with access to financial services such as savings accounts, loans, and a growing array of financial services. From middle-class society, it is hard to fathom just how difficult life becomes without the ability to save money, receive loans to start businesses, or to insure life and property. People are mostly reduced to daily subsistence, restricted in their ability to grow in order to break the shackles of poverty. While micro-finance has undoubtedly changed the lives of millions, it is no simple silver bullet. It is a complex industry serving complex societies.

My university, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), through a scholarship as part of the Beyond UTS International Leadership Development Program (BUiLD), has given me and seven of my colleagues the opportunity to travel to spend three weeks living and working in and around Mumbai, working with a number of micro-finance institutions in partnership with various social businesses. Additionally, once the internship program is completed, I will travel to the southern state of Kerala to explore the ancient city of Kochi, the rural ‘backwaters’, and perhaps the remote Western Ghats region. These experiences will hopefully provide me with a deep insight into micro-finance and complementary social businesses, the mystique of Bombay and the wonder that is India.

In this blog I hope to educate and entertain. Myself as much as the rest of you out there. A blog is a new concept for me and with this I aim to describe various people, places, events, and businesses that I encounter during my time in India. I am by no means the first middle-class, foreign student commentator to ever spend any considerable amount of time in India, nor will I be the last. This is my account of things as I see them through the lens provided by the thirty years of socialisation and many years of Western education I’ve had to date. It will not be a daily account of what I had for breakfast and how many bowls of curry I ate for dinner, but a mish-mash of commentary and images of what I find interesting. Because of this I cannot make any guarantees as to the exact content or frequency of updates. It very much depends on what I find along the way. That said, my goal is to update at least once every week.    

So, if you’ve read this far, something about what I have said has triggered at least a tiny element of interest. For this I am happy, honoured, and pleased to invite you to check back or bookmark this blog, make comments (clean comments only please), ask questions, add further information, and forward to friends. I hope I can, in some small way, provide you with a taste of my experiences.

Cheers

N.R.J. Wiltshire