Yes, the first is about agricultural productivity, that still-neglected issue:
Ajit Singh, a farmer in the poor northern state of Uttar Pradesh, had never seen a computer until four years ago when ITC, the Indian agribusiness-to-hotels conglomerate, installed a PC in his village, Kurthia.
Now the thin 47-year-old farmer visits the ITC station, known as an "e-choupal" after the Hindi term for "gathering place", every day for online access to news-papers, crop prices, weather forecasts and farming techniques. As ITC’s village manager, he passes on what he gleans to fellow farmers.
Knowing the fair market value of crops allows farmers to fetch better prices and circumvent local traders who used to dictate terms. Farmers can also sell wheat and other crops to ITC.
The result has been a big jump in crop productivity. Annual incomes in Kurthia have risen from Rs40,000- Rs50,000 ($1,000-$1,230) before e-choupal to Rs100,000- Rs120,000 now, says Mr Singh.
Here is the link. Here is the second story, with photos at the link:
Mukesh Ambani, the fifth richest man in the world, is building the most expensive single family residence ever, a $2 billion — yes, BILLION — 27-story skyscraper in downtown Mumbai.
keep in mind ,mr. singh has an obvious incentive to
overplay the benefits. itc still does plenty of good
in book though. it’s less obvious that they’ll make
any profits out of all this. just sayin’ as a shareholder.
These “cut out the middleman” stories are not about ag productivity per se, but the role of information and market power. (I am enthusiastic about them.)
Now all we need to do is cut out the middleman in international aid, e.g., the Bank and other Sachsian enterprises. I do not mean money transfers, but information and technology transfers. It’s the difference between push (the past: “this is what you need”) and pull (the future: “this is what I want”).
1. TC, 1 Indian success story and another story about a successful Indian.
2. Second JPF re: modest tech. advances leading to large improvements. Given the modest cost of these improvements, I wonder if such stories are more common and underreported or as uncommon as anecdotal evidence suggests.
3. I move a lot and strangely, care little about the square footage of my abode. Maybe that’d change if I was as wealthy as Mr. Ambani.
How much have crop prices increased in these four years? I expect that currently high commodity prices explain a substantial chunk of the increase in *revenue* experienced by this noble Indian farmer.
This sounds like an unrelated point, but knowledge cannot be stored outside of an individual. Knowledge, of the type created in Ajit Singh when he reads online price and market information, is transferred to him through online media, now cheaper and easier to access. Mr. Singh can read, remember previous info, reason, and problem solve through that information. He then communicates his version of the information to his village passing along his edited, perhaps more valuable, information to them. It seems like a fine point, but knowledge production in Mr. Singh’s head is very valuable because it lets him be more productive in passing along information to his audience.
Information, in economics literature, often fudges this simple distinction as if information is knowledge. Knowledge production, the cognitive process of taking in and refining information, is actually crucial in development economics because there is a key requirement for the Mr. Singhs of the world– they must have literacy, numeracy, information management skills, and access to info resources. Adding information resources (like seemingly simple cell phones and internet access) is important because they make knowledge production easier and faster– if that is then translated to others and they in turn learn new things about their resources, opportunities, and the like, then they can use the new information to build wealth.
Without key learned skills, access, and incentives to use it, information is just noise. Building schools in regions without information resources or access is like planting rice in the desert. In the US we have torrents of information resources pouring over a society ill trained to manage and build knowledge with it.
Futures trading in wheat and rice have been banned for some time. Also recently the government banned futures trading in four other agricultural products.
So much of the benifit of the e-chaupal will evaporate.
And the more cheap cabal gold is very good for you.
hey bro amazing information about Two Indian success stories thanks!
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