Miss Krista, an American PhD candidate working on her thesis, has been in the house with us for a couple of days now and she is everything I want Nandan’s houseguests to be. She has research to do, she can tend to all her own needs, and she nows how and when to ask for help. I like having her around and I think she is good for Nandan.
Yesterday Nandan and I took her to a nearby Coca-Cola bottling plant. An activist lived nearby and we had an appointment so we did not try to check out the facilities. Krista is doing her research on something related to foreign corporations taking water resources in India. The story here and elsewhere is that local farmers use handpumps to draw groundwater, but companies like Coca-Cola use machine pumps continually. The water level drops, and then the farmer’s wells become useless. Then they die.
A lot of people blame Coca-Cola for being unethical, but the other issues at play are the lack of legal infrastructure within India and the willingness of local leaders to abandon their townsfolk by signing over anything for small amounts of money. It is not that they are traitorous, but more that they are completely ignorant of what it means to sign a contract with a multinational corporation.
I went with Nandan today to the U.P. Tourist Ministry. His father has a friend there by means of whom he procured a form which will entitle their house to be nominated as one of the five Benarasi buildings which will get a guest house license this year. The committee which issues the licenses sits once a year and only approves five houses. To save their concentration, only five applications are granted and those typically are had by bribe. Nandan’s social contacts based on familial relation are in excess of anything I can imagine in America.
We went and inquired about getting an export license today. The office issues those for Rs 1000 ($22), but the man explained “That’s the amount which goes to the government.” This means that he wants a bribe in addition. The license is for life and must be in Nandan’s name, although my name can be put on the paperwork as some kind of marginally connected associate.
We are looking into getting a business license together. I still have to go to renew my visa, so presumably my entering into legal partnership with Nandan would require my getting a business Visa. We have been to an advocate but he needed more time to think about the ramifications of an Indian partnering with a foreign citizen.
We went to BSNL, a broadband provider, and inquired about getting connected. The rate is Rs 500 but it will take two weeks. Possibly a bribe could speed this. The other major player, a provider called Sify, wants Rs 3000 but they do it in two days. Krista wants the connection but not the connection charge. For either of these, unlimited access is Rs 900/month ($20). Both of these also have plans through which one can buy metered net access which charges 50 paise ($0.01) per megabyte. Undoubtedly if my American habits were in place under such a plan the costs would be phenomenal.