Nandan had told me that he was working with a British documentary crew and that things were cool. He has worked with with film crews before and he seems to enjoy it and some good work has been done.
Nandan Upadhyay and Richard Dawkins in Varanasi, August 2011
The day before the shoot they say, “Oh, Richard Dawkins is hosting this. You are his translator for interviews.”
Things went well today and presumably will go well tomorrow. I seriously feel bad about not being there in Benares and not setting up a proper office infrastructure considering how often we deal with top clients.
One minor problem with this is an ethical concern that arises repeatedly. Dawkins’ film crew discussed money with Nandan. Nandan asked for about $175 a day and they asked him to accept about 20% less. This has happened repeatedly to us and I know that they do not want to get cheated and they know the local rates for things, but Nandan has a heck of a lifestyle to maintain and he has a lot of foreign people like me to support.
I know the problem – our presentation is bad. Nandan has to have a USD $1000 camera to take still pictures. He has to have multiple fast laptops and an office in his home. He has to travel a lot and when he travels he has to stay in a nice hotel and not live like an Indian salaryman. His cellphone bill includes overseas calls. He has to buy foreign goods and have them shipped to Varanasi. On one hand, people want to hire a local person who participates in local culture, but on the other hand, they expect this person to know and experience and understand foreign culture, and they often think this can happen with just a modest increase on the average salary for the area. This is not the case.
Nandan already far undercharges for services and I am glad that he gets to work with top-level professionals but we do not get proper respect for our operations and the fault is entirely ours. After this is over I am dumping money on him and we are getting professional looking presentation and sales materials, because I think this is our biggest problem. If anyone asks Nandan why he needs to get paid more than his neighbors then we need to have materials ready to show that his neighbors do not need to pay to buy foreign means of work production.
Nandan tells me that the film crew is awesome and that Dawkins is a pleasure, and that everything about every part of this is lovely. I totally respect them for wanting a discount – the problem is that they do not understand our need and that is only our problem and not theirs.