Namaste! Meera nam Bond hai, James Bond.

Greetings from India.

This is my fourth trip to India this year, my fifth in eighteen months, and at two weeks, its also my longest visit yet. You might think I’d be getting tired of it. But if anything, I’m loving this trip more than any other.

I’m almost wholly consumed with work, from getting up at 6am until getting back to the hotel at 7 or 8 in the evening. This suits me fine though. I’m getting so much out of the job at the moment. (And believe me – I’m not always this hard working!) The projects I’m here to develop are really starting to move forward and I’ve got plenty scope to shape the future of these initiatives myself.

I’m recycling photos again – for shame!

Plus, I’m more and more convinced that Opportunity is the right organisation to affect change in poverty in India. Not simply because we do microfinance but because, even within the Indian microfinance field (of which I saw a lot more this week), Opportunity seems to be most closely focused on social impact and really helping the poor. This is immensely empowering.

There will be a break from the work schedule tomorrow. I’ve got the day off and I’m going to the cinema in the morning. Not to see a Bollywood movie I’m afraid, but to catch the new Bond movie. It’s just out here so 11am was the only showing I could get a ticket for. Actually, I hope I bought a ticket for the English showing and not the Hindi-dubbed version. Yikes…

As with every trip to India, I’ve seen a few things that have brought me close to tears. I will never get comfortable with the children who beg at the car windows at Delhi’s main junctions, and live just a few feet from the traffic, perhaps 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I’ve also seen the manic development in and around Delhi (think ostentatious dark-glass tower blocks and luxury malls to rival anything in the UK), which seems if anything to be intensifying in pace. It’s impossible to see a positive connection between these two things – the poverty and the opulence. Some people say that India doesn’t need aid because it is a high growth, rapidly developing country. No-one who spent any time here could make that argument and sleep soundly at night.

Next week will be pretty crazy – Monday is Delhi, Tuesday – Chennai, Wednesday – Hyderabad, Thursday – Bangalore, and Friday – Kerala. Chennai, formerly Madras and sitting in SE India on the edge of the Indian Ocean, and Kerala, on the SW coast of India, will both be new to me. I’ll fly home exhausted on Saturday but I should be pretty happy at this rate. I’m sure I’ll sleep soundly at any rate. Oooh… mind you, I’ve just remembered that dead dog I saw at the side of the road on Monday (and Wednesday). That will haunt my dreams for weeks…

Mo-vember

A quick shout out to Keith who is taking part in Mo-vember. In fact, I'll pass the mic over to the man himself:

"During Movember (the month formerly known as November) I'm growing a Mo. That's right I'm bringing the Mo back because I'm passionate about tackling men's health issues and being proactive in the fight against men's depression and prostate cancer.
To donate to my Mo you can click this link Keith's Mo Appeal! and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account."

Great stuff Keith. Having seen the appalling effect that 3 days without shaving has had on your coupon, I hope you raise plenty.

What an Obama win would mean to me

I've been to the US just once since Bush started his second term (back in September '06). My next visit will be during a Democratic administration, whatever happens this week!

This will be the second US Presidential Election I've followed from Australian shores. Back in 2004, I sat on the beach in Byron Bay and wept into my cornflakes as the American people did the unthinkable and re-elected the worst US President in living memory. That was a real downer, in the middle of what was otherwise just about the best week I’ve had on holiday. A group of us surfed, sunbathed and partied through the first week of Chris and Caroline’s honeymoon.

Times have changed much since then, both on a political level, and on a personal level for this author, (boy have they!!) and this time round I’m having a party on election night. The Grumpy Old Men are coming over and I’ll be supplying them with hamburgers, hot-dogs and a bucket of icy-chilled bottles of Bud – all in honour of an anticipated Barrack Obama victory in the November 4th US Presidential Election.

I don’t throw many parties. The downside of a studio apartment is the difficulty of entertaining multiple guests. So why do I see such a need to celebrate an Obama win? Well, I can’t remember when the choice has ever seemed so stark.

Don't take that from me... The New York Times has just published a detailed account of all the major issues, concluding with a resounding endorsement of Obama. It is a lengthy article, but worth reading to realise just what is at stake, and how feeble a proposition McCain offers. Check out the article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/02/elections-obama-mccain-yorker-democrats

Though I wouldn’t have come near to the outstandingly well written prose of the Times article, I’d have loved to expound on a couple of the issues, but I’ve got a hair-raisingly busy week this week – Melbourne Cup, sailing and Obama nights, aside from a huge workload before I fly out to India again on Sunday. More on that trip soon!!

Halloween Outfit? No...

Hair raising? Arguably...

Hair-straightening? Certainly.

eightsixty

So the need is still out there.

And Opportunity International are continuing with a great series of new and innovative events. Our last official event of 2008 was 'eightsixty', a beautiful exhibition of photography by Rick Carter, taken on his last trip to India with Opportunity.

http://www.eightsixty.org/

I was at the VIP night a couple of weeks ago with Dom, and I thought it was a really atmospheric event, totally in tune with Opportunity's position as an organisation that offers something different, and full of care, attention and respect - something that's also embodied in Rick's photos.

The book is still available to buy on the eightsixty website. All proceeds from the book will go to Opportunity International's India program.

Dom loved the event too and had a few stories of her own, from a trip she took to India a few years back. Four months of travelling and painting as a single woman in India sounds rather adventurous to me, but led to a successful exhibition of paintings in Melbourne. Maximum respect.

In times of need.

All picture in this update are from a visit to the 2008 Sculptures By the Sea exhibition last Monday.

One view of the world.

It’s 2008, turning into late 2008. Markets crash, then countries crash. Your workmates suck their teeth and tell you that the ASX has fallen 10%, then your friends invite you to share their disbelief – ‘haven’t you seen that the ASX has fallen 20%?’ – and then your mum tells you that the SAX has fallen 40% and so you reckon you’d better start following this ‘credit crunch’ yourself.
So you start reading the business news section of the newspaper. But by this time the business news has become front page news.

It was bemusing when large banks with vaguely familiar names bit the dust. It was downright alarming when your bank went bust. Now it’s nothing short of bizarre – are you reading that right? The government is buying your bank and you’re about to become your own bank manager...?

Who’s going to pressure you to cut your spending when you’re your own bank manager? Well, no need actually. Peer pressure will do that alone.

The Australian last weekend ran their ‘Melbourne Cup Fashion Tips’ article. Headline – ‘how to look like a million dollars on a hundred dollar budget’. Frugality is this season’s flair.

If cutting back has gone beyond need and is now fashion, it's time to ask what to cut first? Well the mortgage payments might be falling (the one plus-point of the credit crunch so far) but they’re not crashing. Maybe the holiday will have to go, or it’ll have to be 4 stars again, not five. And maybe it'll be another 6 months before it's time for a new car.

One cut tends to be implicit though.

Charity.

Why? Well, in the hard-nosed economic view of the world 'Discretionary Spending' is the first thing to be cut when times are bad. In this context, discretionary means optional, expendable (or non-expendable!) – essentially… ...non-essential.

And if there’s one thing that’s not essential, then surely it’s giving money to charity.

One view of the world.

Another view of the world.

What role for the poor in all this? The credit crisis is hitting us bad, but what about the poor? After all, they don't have shares, or pension funds, or banking jobs.

Inflation pushes up the price of food - the poor spend 75% of their money on food, compared to 15% for Australians. The economic slowdown is reaching even the developing countries now, with growth in India stalling and interest rates rising. And those interest rates affect the poor too, through their impact on the Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) the poor rely on. The credit cruch has pushed through the roof the rates that MFIs borrow money at, and this affects the interest rate that the MFIs pass on to their clients.

Even in good times, life is hard for the poor in India. Half of children under 5 are stunted or too short for their age, 20% are too thin, 43% underweight. 7 in every 100 will die before the age of 5.

When times are good, most fair-minded people expect that there will be some effort to spread the wealth around, as Obama would say. Implicit in this is the idea that when times are bad, that charity will dry up.

But I hope that won't happen this time. I hope that crashing markets and shrinking investment funds will bring about a more fundamental shift in people's attitudes to charity. I hope people will see value in other things aside from a new car and a fancier holiday.

What greater achievement than to help end poverty.

And finally…

A recession is when your neighbour loses his job, a depression is when you lose your job. Is a credit crunch when you go broke without even losing your job?

Talking of which, where are all those job losses? Does anyone know anyone who’s lost their job yet? Well obviously we’re told that the financial sector is ‘hard-hit’, but surely a depression means more than financial sector job losses?

I think they’re coming. It will get worse before it gets better. But if this is a chance for a fundamental shift maybe better could be much much better.

That’s something to hope for.

The economy might be off the rails, but I truly hope it's not the end of the line yet for charitable giving...