I am in my second year of graduate school here at Oxford.  I blogged pretty regularly last year.  I blogged on travels, on my studies, on my thoughts, what I was reading, seeing, and more.  This year, I didn’t blog throughout the fall.  I got to India in December and resolved to blog regularly.  If you read through the records of the blogging, though, I blogged once, saying I was going to blog regularly, then didn’t do it at all.  Why not?

Blogging is a funny thing.  When I was blogging every day, I was blogging what I was thinking.  But it’s a weird balance between wanting to share what I am thinking, and realizing that I couldn’t, or didn’t want to get too personal, because anyone in the world could read it.  So it was an odd balance of wanting to be personal enough to be interesting but cautious about just throwing any old thought out there.  I thought I did it well.  And it took a lot of thought, energy, and creativity.

This year, as Twitter and everything is exploding, I ask the question I asked when I was blogging regularly last year: “Who cares?”  Who cares what 140-word updates I would post on Twitter?  Or what I would write in a blog?  The answer is maybe a lot of people.  I had family and friends who would regularly read my blog last year.  Or random links.  But maybe it’s no one…maybe it’s like standing on a street corner, shouting.  I don’t know.

The best blogs to me are those that I care about.  Those that are collators of information, or those that present me with articles, thoughts, arguments, pictures, etc. that I had never seen or confronted before.  But since I don’t necessarily have a grasp of my readership, and I do know that the vast majority of the world wouldn’t be checking in to see what I am doing or thinking every day, blogging seemed to me to be somewhat of a vain exercise.  But to my family and friends that did care, it was a nice way of updating them on what was happening.  That was my thought, at least.

This year, for some reason, I don’t have the same motivation to blog.  I am busier, and blogging takes a lot of time and energy.  I also don’t have as much solitary time for reflection.  I also am out of the habit.  I also am less convinced that people care what I post every day.

So if you want me to keep blogging, let me know.  Or just send me an e-mail.  When I start my full-time job in July, I probably will find blogging relevant again–for the spread of information and ideas.  So I may pick it back up again.  But no promises!  I will only blog so long as I find it making a contribution to other people.  Which I think it can, but I’m not feeling it right now!

Ross

Yesterday, I was looking for a building for a meeting.  Street addresses in India are rare; if you need to get a place, the provided street address is more of a suggestion then a location.  My general strategy when I’ve had a meeting, therefore, is this: I show up about half an hour early, ask around for where I need to go, talk to about twenty people (no one ever says they “don’t know”), and take the average of the difference.

Yesterday, I went to the Naandi Foundation, an organization that works closely with government and private schools across Andhra Pradesh, and the only address I had was “Imperial Towers.”  I followed the general pattern of asking 20 people and splitting the difference.  Along the way, I met a man named Mohammed who stopped everything, walked me around, and ensured I got to the office correctly.  We chatted, exchanged numbers, and he invited me to his house for dinner.

I met him later on at a pre-arranged meeting point, and we got in an moto-rickshaw.  I take these everywhere in Hyderabad.  Usually, they are about 50 cents for a 15-minute ride.  This time, though, we paid about 12 cents for a 20-minute ride, but shared it with three other people.  Hyderabad has no public transportation system to speak of; they have an erratic and inefficient bus system.  In its place, a pseudo-public transit system of auto-rickshaws has cropped up.  The very poor pay very small amounts to travel commonly-traveled routes; to get to Mohammed’s house, we “changed lines” once at a large intersection and paid about 15 cents apiece.  The route is affordable, even for the poorest, and the route is highly profitable for the driver.  Instead of taking one rider paying 75 cents, he takes seven riders who pay, in total, $1.  Over the day, that adds up for a larger profit.

This is the concept behind what we’re doing.  In the developing world, sustained income won’t happen, the thought goes, if you rely on the generosity of foundations and the fickleness of marketing budgets.  There are many dedicated NGOs who do wonderful things, but to get massive amounts of capital/investment in the developing world, many companies and investors need to have a profit-driven incentive because they have the bottom line in order.  This rickshaw example shows how, by creatively packing people into a rickshaw and going on high-demand routes, the rickshaw driver can make a greater profit than he would have otherwise ($1 vs 50 cents) and each rider, though very poor, still can afford the traveling fee.

School finance is not a profitable business taken school-by-school.  But in large amounts, if smartly executed, we can give a ride to millions of students and do it in such a way that investors will want to make that capital available.

Joey writes, “It’s about time for another blog post.”

Easy, easy!

So the answer to the title of this post:

The Mid-Day meal.

The history of mid-day meals in government schools is well-documented. Country-wide nutrition surveys as early as 1980-81 revealed that food deficiency seriously impacted learning outcomes among low-income Indians. Starting July 1, 1982, Tamil Nadu began a “Mid-Day Meal” program, which fed children ages 2-9 in schools in rural areas. In 1982, the program extended to urban areas. Starting in 1984, the scheme extended to urban areas, too.

After Tamil Nadu began seeing growth in student attendance, literacy rates, and test scores, other states began adopting the mid-day meal schemes—mostly the states with larger resources in the South (including Andhra Pradesh). Tamil Nadu is one of the most literate states in India, with a rate of 73.5%, and studies cite the mid-day meal as one of the major causal boosts for that program. In 1995, citing supporting statistics showing the invaluable contributions of the mid-day meal to educational outcomes, especially in Tamil Nadu, the state of greatest implementation, the central government of India announced the “National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education.” All government schools in India, under this program, were given support to deliver cooked meals to children. In the next five years, however, the transition was still not made. In 2001, the Indian Supreme Court, citing the effectiveness of the mid-day meal, directed government schools to provide mid-day meals to the very poor across the state.

Though implementation has been shoddy and imperfect, the staggering results of the mid-day meal are hard to contest. Since its introduction, mid-day meal has boosted school attendance as much as 50 per cent in rural areas and as much as 19 per cent in urban areas. Girls, especially, are more likely to attend school when there is a mid-day meal. As one report notes, “Parents are not generally opposed to female education, but they are reluctant to pay for it. School meals could make a big difference here, reducing the private cost of schooling.”

The average increase in school enrollment across India has been a steady two per cent per year over the past thirty years, but in states after the introduction of a mid-day meal for the poor, there is a striking and sudden increase. One of the major reasons of student absenteeism, cite school operators, are finances. Many students simply disappear if the parents cannot afford to pay the monthly tuition bill.

Many Indian children, particularly those who attend budget schools and government schools, arrive to school on an empty stomach. In the budget schools that I have visited, the school has a lunch break where children go home for lunch, but the principals at the schools I visited admitted that many to most of their students do not get food at lunchtime. Surveys on the effect of mid-day meals in the classroom showed, according to teacher testimony, fewer children falling asleep in class, better attention, and higher classroom control.

Of course, mid-day meals have their problems. Government schools receive inadequate funding for the program, and often corruption and mismanagement do not deliver the mid-day meal funding directly to the schools. Moreover, schools have inadequate facilities—one government school that I visited had a classroom as a kitchen, and a teacher boiling water to cook rice in her off-period. But current NGOs on-the-ground are delivering quality mid-day meals to students, especially in Andhra Pradesh, and it is worth exploring to figure out how to deliver this crucial element of school competitiveness and student performance to budget schools.

The Naandi Foundation, with which we have a relationship, has started a unique public-private partnership to deliver mid-day meals to government schools. Naandi runs sixteen mid-day meal kitchens across India, including one in Hyderabad that serves 964 schools and 106,000 schoolchildren a day. Though Naandi’s involvement is limited to government schools, it is worth exploring through Naandi and foundations like it the prospects for meal delivery to students in budget schools. As we have established, children in budget schools often come from the same socieconomic background in government schools, yet no similar systematic mid-day meal program within budget schools. One way that we could meet a potential need, as well as strengthen the budget school sector, is to explore with Naandi and other potential partners the potential of a mid-day meal for budget schools.

One potential option for action with the mid-day meal program is to work with Naandi or other partners to start a small-scale meal delivery operation to budget schools that fit within the legal limits of the for-profit/non-profit divide of this venture, and to follow Naandi’s model in its own kitchens of starting small and pushing the meal program in a scalable way to encompass potentially interested budget schools.

ERB

When I travel in non-English speaking countries, I wonder sometimes why companies do not hire native English speakers to make sense of their translations if they really want to cater to tourists.  My friend Jenny has a great blog post about Chinese restaurant menus and the great length the Chinese government is going to make sure that the Olympic tourists don’t see horrifying translations of food.  (A common one: “Husband and wife lung slices” for “pork in chili sauce.”  The main thing I wish when I travel, though, is that I knew the local language.
I saw a lot of the same thing today, with a different twist.  Many Indians speak English, but not fluently.  Indian English is sometimes a blend between Hindi and English—known as “Hinglish”—and for an organization to have credibility, Hinglish is sometimes an asset.
Today I was building the website for school entrepreneurs to apply for loans to our organization, and language was key.  I was working with Pushpraj, a  highly talented guy from Hyderabad, who attended a budget school and still lives in Hyderabad, to build the website.  And Pushpraj and I corrected each other—I wrote his sayings in complete English, and he translated mine for a hardly-English-speaking populace.  For example, when I was talking about loan “requirements”, he corrected me.  In Indian English, a “requirement” is a question: “I require your name” is “What is your name?”  So we changed it, at Pushpraj’s suggestion, to “criteria.”
Organizations have got to work with local partners to communicate.

So I visited my first school today.  John’s School—on the 3rd and 4th floor of a strip mall.  The school said that they closed around 4:30 PM.  We went at 4:25, and there was no one there.  We called the proprietor on his cell phone, and he told us to call him back tomorrow and come back—he would be happy to show us off.   A few observations:

1.    Private schools here, of the low-budget variety, are very local.  Parents who send their kids to these schools often work two jobs or one long-hour, low-pay job.  They value convenience over quality. So the schools are essentially down every lane carved out of this chaotic city, and the schools’ credentials are clearly posted.  I spoke with one teacher yesterday who said that the parents would rather send their kids to a worse school with free transportation than a better school that was further away.
2.    On the front of John’s School, in huge letters, is ENGLISH INSTRUCTION.  The priorities, beyond location and accessibility, are often minimal.  A major one, though, is English instruction.  Indians view speaking English as the key to the developing world.  Kids come up to me all the time and chat, wanting to practice their English.  (Even in heavily touristed places in crowds, after I tell them I have no money to give them, they want to chat still.  So we do.)  My Indian friends and hosts here speak English at all times—it is a sign of power and status.  The government schools teach in Hindi and the local language, and have limited English instruction—a MAJOR black mark.
3.    After English and Location have been taken care of, the final criteria is solely “Results.”  On the front of John’s School, the test score and the % of students passing the basic requirements is posted.  If parents have the luxury of choosing between more than one accessible, English school (and parents rarely visit the kids’ schools—they often do not have time during school hours), then it comes to test scores, test scores, test scores.  In a HUGE country, test scores are the greatest key to social mobility.

Tomorrow, hopefully, the timing will work out better.  And we’ll go inside.  But this is what you can learn about a budget school from the outside.

ERB

“The great thing about India is…everything you hear about it is true.”  An Indian told me this today.  He meant everything.  That it is overcrowded; that it is hot; that the food is delicious; that the food will make outsiders sick; that there are many, many poor people; that it is chaotic; that there is a terrible beauty amid the chaos…and I have found in the first few days that he is right.  Especially the getting sick off the food—this incapacitated me yesterday—I spent 20 of the 24 hours in bed.  But I am full strength today!  Pratham, my host, took me to Subway for dinner tonight.  A “safe” call, he said.

Thought of the day: so in microfinance, there is a common back-up of “technical training.”  That is to say, I will give you this loan, but you have to come in for once-a-month business classes and I’ll help you run a business.  In the education finance industry, it would look like this: we give you the loan, and we give you a value-added proposition of  teacher training, school administration help, and more.  Here’s the problem: people who run a business don’t want to be told how to do things better if they think they are doing it fine to begin with.  It’s as if we were playing a pick-up basketball game on a playground, you and I had just met, and I took you aside for free throw lessons.  It might make you marginally better, but you’d rarely listen!  That’s why it’s difficult to pair “technical assistance” with microfinance.

ERB

So the first weekend has come and gone. After my first day of work, I spent the weekend getting adjusted to the chaos of India, adjusting to the heat (though it’s no worse than back home in Georgia), and meeting the other folks here. There are a lot of expats in Hyderabad. It is the nerve center for a lot of the microfinance/social investment/development work that is done in India, so there are a lot of people here, most of whom are on jobs much more permanent than mine. A lot of people thinking outside-the-box and spending years on the ground making it happen. Most of the firms here are for-profit; a controversial part of development, but the people here believe that it’s the only way to go.

Having a for-profit development firm means, according to some, that when you have corporate investment in the very poor in India, you have it as a revenue-seeking device, not a “marketing” device. And if the investments turn a profit, it means that people won’t jump ship when times get tough. Many NGOs start, last a couple of years, and fizzle out (if they don’t have a deadline, say, an election or a campaign, or a permanent funding source, it’s REALLY hard)–so people believe that the capital inflows and investment will be HUGE if there are reasons other than simple change-the-world mindsets going on. I am sure I’ll expand more on this later. I am still thinking through what I think.  Your thoughts?

This weekend was a blast. I am glad that I have had this time to get settled–I feel “adjusted” now. The streets are packed with people, moto-rickshaws, cars, scooters, bikes–anywhere you can fit a person or a vehicle, there they are. Hyderabad is known for biryani, as I said–I tried it today, and it was very good. Hyderabad also has the largest Muslim concentration in India, and we went and visited two of the biggest mosques; a beautiful part of the city. I met this one street-kid who was brilliant. He was eight and spoke about 7 languages. I mean, he knew how to say “Hello,” “How are you,” and “Goodbye” in all the languages I knew, and he was proficient at the languages I knew better (English, Spanish). He said he followed foreigners around all day when they came through and asked questions. I wanted to talk to him all day.

There is a ten-year-old in my neighborhood that runs a convenience-store stand. He is learning English and he also wanted to talk, so we chatted for an hour today. He goes–you guessed it–to a school that charges $6 a month in the neighborhood. This afternoon, I played soccer with Pratham, my roommate, and a bunch of guys my age from Cameroon, Nigeria, Kenya, and Cote d’Ivoire on a dusty vacant lot. And that’s the weekend.

I visit my first school tomorrow afternoon. Till then, stay dry–monsoon season starts this week.

ERB

Folks,

Greetings from Hyderabad! As you notice, we’ve got a new title, a new look, and a new topic. Biryani, not barbecue, is the famous dish of Hyderabad, India, and I am sure I’ll have plenty over the next span of my life. I am writing from my new apartment in a section of the city I am not nearly well-enough acquainted with yet. India is explosive. The sounds, the chaos of the streets (I had to sprint across several streets today, nearly avoiding bikes, moto-rickshaws, and cars), the honking, the spices, and the smells are all suffocating—as is the heat and humidity. Georgia prepared me well for the weather, but not for the chaos.

I will be here for the next five weeks. On the 20th of June, I leave for my other big project, Vote From Home–I will write more about it later, but you can check it out at www.votefromhome08.com.

I have been traveling for the last 24 hours for my new job, which I’ll be doing the next five weeks. Hyderabad is the micro-finance capital of the world, and I am working in education finance, which is a cutting-edge development in provision of education for the very poor. Microfinance works like this: banks or agencies will give very small loans to individual entrepreneurs—usually very poor entrepreneurs, like a woman selling handmade baskets at a shop, or a group of women selling vegetables at the market—and the individuals will repay it. It has revolutionized small business in very poor places, and Muhammad Yunus, one of the fathers of microfinance, won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. Microfinance has its downsides, to be sure—to be profitable, microlenders charge as much as 28% interest—but very poor people are getting economic opportunities that they wouldn’t get otherwise. I am learning about this enterprise every day, and I will keep posting my thoughts.

The program I am working for is really exciting, though. I am working for an education fund set up by the largest individual microfinance investor in the world. He has traveled across India dozens of times in the last ten years, and came across a phenomenon—low-budget private schools for the very poor. He has had a lot of success with microfinance, and is applying the principles of microfinance to systematically supporting these schools. Educational entities in India cannot get funds from the government. When the University of Virginia wants to build a new library or basketball arena, it floats a bond with the Commonwealth of Virginia—that can’t happen here. In India, and in Hyderabad, particularly, education is a very high cultural value (especially in Hyderabad, because it is on a plateau, and there is really no agriculture—education is many kids’ only ticket to success—the jobs aren’t there otherwise. Sound familiar?) But the state provision of education is terrible. The schools only teach in Hindi, and parents and kids want to learn English. Class sizes are upwards of 90 at times. Teachers often don’t show up.

In response, the poorest people in Hyderabad want good education, but can’t get it. There seems to be a market. Many entrepreneurs have started low-budget schools (schools that charge 600 rupees a month—about $14—or, in some cases, as low as $4), and parents are flocking to them. I am working this summer for a firm that is figuring out ways to invest/systematically support these schools, so that’s the project. This model could support millions of low-income kids across the world if done well. This world has got a lot of problems—we need the collective ingenuity and creativity of humanity to solve them (meaning the best schools possible). No pressure, right?

A side note: I am a strong defender of public education in the US. I am against school vouchers simply because I don’t think that the private sector can meet the demand for the public sector, and the poorest Americans won’t have access to private schools—and a mass diversion of public resources will only exacerbate the problem. (I am a strong supporter of the charter school movement, in many cases—I think it’s one of the best shots we have—but that’s another discussion.) But this India case seems to be a place where my intuitions about budget private schools were wrong. In some ways, it seems too good to be true—so I am going to investigate if, in fact, it is.

India is exciting and exhausting, probably mainly because I have been traveling for 24 straight hours. Stay tuned—you’ll notice some changes in the blog (because we are no longer in The Mother Country—in fact, we are in the former Crown Jewel)—and now that I am actually doing something, the blog is a lot more topical.

ERB

Big Changes around the blog.

As I have taken a week post-exam hiatus from blogging (rest, packing, and an amazing trip to Krakow), I am moving on to India tomorrow.  I am working in an education finance organization that is looking for innovative solutions to education of the very poor.

COMING THIS WEEK:

A New Theme.  Since I will no longer be in The Mother Country for the next five weeks, the theme of the blog will change.  I will be in the (Former) Crown Jewel of the British Empire, India.

A New Topic.  Since I won’t be studying, but will actually be DOING things on a day-to-day basis, there should be more evolving action.  Probably less politics and more on-the-ground, in-the-trenches, education in Hyderabad, India.

A New Location: India!

Stay tuned,

ERB