Stakeholders turning into a new leaf

MR AYYAPPA:




Front view from the bakery




Mr Ayyappa, the owner of Ayyappa bakery and sweets owns a bakery just opposite to the Vidyaranyapura Bus Stop. As you can imagine with a bakery opposite to a crowded bus stop, there seem to be tens and thousands of people coming everyday. He is relentlessly running around all the time serving tea, puffs and many other snacks to his beloved customers. He is in the bakery 16 hours a day and 7 days a week. A honest and hard working person. But the problem in his bakery was none of the products were new or innovative. Adjacent to his bakery was another one where they seemed to be making deep fried huge burgers and selling it at Rs 20 attracting many people.

INTERACTION:
Since his business was not running very well, I asked him if I could make a new product for him. He was willing to try and told me to get a few samples. I handed him a few pieces of Steamed Spinach Sandwich which contained boiled potato with salt and chilly powder in steamed spinach with ketchup inside two slices of bread. The expenditure of one SSS was Rs3. We sold it at Rs4. His thoughts were that the customers wouldn't really go for it since it is new and wanted something sweet. However, we tried selling and on the first day, having made 10 pieces 5 were sold with Ayyappa making a profit of Rs5 on that day.

AREA OF EXPERTISE:
Mr Ayyappa seemed to be an expert in cutting and toasting bread. He moves very quick, sharp skills and hard working.

CONTACT:
Ayyappa bakery and sweets opposite Vidyaranyapura Bus Stop


CHANDRASHEKAR AND SANATH KUMAR:

Stakeholders at Stake!

After trying hard with grape leaves almost all street vendors in Vidyaranyapura didn't want to use grape leaves.
Reasons being:

• Hard to chew, since it wasn't the season and grape leaves didn't taste good
• People didn't want to turn to a leaf especially when it had a possibility of containing pesticides
  

Getting professional

Here's how dolma is prepared in a traditional Iranian manner:


Tender hands!!! You need to select tender leaves


A better look! Leaves must be light green and soft


Wash these leaves really well


Boil in water for 20 minutes. Meanwhile soak 100g channa in water


Boil the channa and if you're non-veg, add some meat


Chop 2 onions into small pieces


Remove the leaves, they'd look like this


On the left, soak 50g of horsegram in water, on the right boil 100g rice


Wash a handful of coriander leaves


Get a tablespoon of the following spices. Clockwise from top:
Salt
Avishaniya (An Iranian spice)
Chilly powder
Pepper
Turmeric


You should have all this(From left):
Rice, horsegram, pomogranate sauce, spices, onions, channa, coriander and grape leaves


Start frying everything in a pan of butter, except the grape leaves.
Onions added first




Add half a glass of water while frying


The mixture would look like this in the end


Add a tablespoon of the mixture into the rough end of the leaf


This is how it should be tucked


Fill all the tucked leaves in a vessel in a brick style arrangement
Add some oil and boil for 45 minutes


READY TO SERVE! LETS SEE WHAT THE CHEFS SAY


"Leaf is well cooked, chewy and everything inside is well balanced"


"Nice"

First try

In order to keep it simple, we tried a simple way of making Dolma:

• Soak 20 grape leaves in water for 10 minutes
• Make a paste of tomatos, onions, chillies, boiled rice, some salt and pepper
• Add the paste in the leaf and fold doing the same for all leaves
• Boil in water for 10 minutes

This is what came out:



A COMPLETE DISASTER!!

Overlooked leaves

Grape leaves are used in mediterranean countries in stuffed and steamed dishes. It is often disputed as to where this dish originated from. However conventional wisdom traces it back to Greece. It was and is known as dolmades.
It is also eaten in Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran and in Arab nations.
They were used 6000 years ago as medicines to stop bleeding and pain, to treat sore throats and had various antioxidant properties.

IN BANGALORE:
In Bangalore, there are plenty of fields growing grapes, especially on the way to Doddaballapur. Fields growing these use the fruits for eating, salads and most of them for making wine. So what's neglected are the leaves especially when they can be used to make dolma or medicines.
If popularized, creates a boom to the vineyards as the leaves are sold in addition, without investing much of capital. People get to eat something new as the grape leaves can be steamed in salt water and eaten with rice. Not much preparation!
Grape leaves contain a lot of Vitamin C and Vitamin A, but on many occasions, pesticides are sprayed in the vineyards, especially on the leaves, if those are eaten you'd lose the Vitamin A and C you already own.
The good thing about grape leaves is that they do not get dried so easily. If preserved, they can be preserved for over a year.

SWOT:
Strength: A lot of benefits, room for optimism
Weakness: Brief contradicts itself, one hand can act beneficial, but on the other....
Opportunity: Gives rise to a new cash crop to be used in a different way
Threat: Seasonal, grape leaves are nice and tender only in spring

Objective:
To come up with an edible dish using grape leaves and to find other uses for grape leaves.

Tasks it must fulfil:

• Must be really cheap and easily available.
• Must be good for health and not infected with pesticides.
• Should make someone's livelihood better preferably of those workers in vineyards.
• Must be available in restaurents.
• Could have alternatives such as grape leaves used as medicine.
  

SWOT:
Strength:Many options and alternatives. Clear-cut and flexible
Weakness:If the brief goes out of hand, hard to recover
Opportunity:Something new hasen't been done
Threat:Requires a lot of research. If someone dies because of pesticides!!

Evolution's controversial creation

This includes the possible brief for the creation of the product 'human being'. Human beings, of the species homo sapiens sapiens is a product of evolution. Why did evolution create this product? All info here:

• Evolution from Australopithecus, a species resembling modern apes.
• Composes to two hands, two legs, a body and a hand(with lots inside it)
• Comes with two genders with different features for each. Both contribute to a process giving more human beings known as reproduction
• Needs to consume water and other species for survival and energy

OBJECTIVE:

Needed to create a species that can adapt to different situations for a living by using the brain.

STRENGTH:

• Ability to dominate and put oneself on top of all other species
• Can enjoy pleasure and ability to love and care for others
• React instantly to a situation and prevent & cure mistakes

WEAKNESS:

• Oh there's lots! Fighting with oneself over religion, gender, caste, language, land, possessions due to greed
  
• Make life miserable for the environment through its depletion and creation of weapons that could destroy entire eco systems.
• Only species without which there wouldn't be an imbalance in the ecosystem.

CONSTRAINTS:

• Individuals of the species must not be immortal
• Has to consume for survival
• Must be able to reproduce giving rise to offspring

OPPORTUNITY:

• Can also think in a more liberal direction

SWOT ANALYSIS:

Strength: Minimalistic, hitting to the point
Weakness: A lot of constraints more than strengths
Opportunity: Brings about realization of what's going on
Threat: Undermines evolution's ability after creating a beautiful world

Filming expedition - Channapatna

Having known the place pretty well by enjoying previous visits we wanted to give something back to Channapatna and bring Channapatna to the outside world. This could be done best through a documentary and fiction
The theme of the documentary was on the future generation's view about the toys. Did they want to continue their parents' business of making toys or whether they wanted to move out and get into other streams.
The fiction was based on modernization of Channapatna toys. What if McDonalds came into Channapatna and started selling cheap happy meals with free plastic toys? Would the kids get addicted to those plastic toys and allow the wooden industry to be to rattled? Find out in the fiction

Having headed back to Channapatna on the evening of 28th July, we took off to Kalanagar and started asking the kids what they wanted to do when they grow up. They may or may not end up doing what they said but that is what they aspired to do so. Most of them wanted to be engineers, doctors or police officers. One mentioned businessman which included the business of toys but apart from that, no one else 'aspired' to be a toy maker.
Soon we spoke to Mr.Amanullah, a toy maker in Kalanagar. He gave us his views on the industry. Having accepted that the industry may not be in a good state, he says people shouldn't be complaining very much. "People keep saying the govt dosen't do this, the govt dosen't do that , then you should go ahead and do it instead of whining all the time". Those were his strong views. Making at least two new toys every week, most of his toys are exported to Singapore and many European countries.

The day we shot the fiction which included places like the Kushal Toys, Primary School close to Maya Organic, Mr Hanumantha's (Another toy maker) home, people working in Neelsandra and interaction with kids at Neelsandra. Everyone seemed to be very cooperative and loved acting in our movie. After all, telling these people you'd come on Udaya TV really works! The experience was fascinating, kids and adults gave two different perspectives. Nobody really threatened us or got angry at us (except one water buffalo) although a few of them were curious seeing what we did. The day ended in a splendid manner with kids showing us how to climb trees and showing us their lake. Boy, did they know their village very well!

On the last day, we headed off to a nearby lake in Channapatna were we had to shoot one scene of me releasing the wooden toys in a lake. It took longer than expected and we lost quite a few toys in the process, but somehow it was quite tiring as I was chased all over the lake by a buffalo whose front leg was tied to its horn.
Later on, we met Mr.Azzamullah, trophy maker in Kalanagar. He seemed to be a little more pessimistic, especially of the fact that govt is not really doing much to keep this craft alive and Chinese toys invading into India. It was interesting listening to him, one cannot ignore the facts on the ground especially the one that hurt, although he seemed to be exaggerating them to a much larger scale. Heading back home we created a small animation of the toys and reached home in Bangalore at 12:00am in the night. Having edited the movie form 12:00 am to 8:00 am, we died the next day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RQB2z8eoRw for the documentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RQB2z8eoRw for the fiction

Filming expedition

A documentary and a fiction of a livelihood was our task. We had to choose a spot for making these. Here's where we (Pratyush, Shreesh, Aniruddha and me) went:







Initially we visited a brick factory. The location was ideal for making a horror fiction and to document the state of the workers who arrive at 6:00 in the morning working till 8:00 in the night. However, the owner for obvious reasons did not let us do any kind of filming there.

A few hours later, we headed off to Silvipura, a village north of Bangalore where they practice farming of cash crops and people work on pottery. It was not really worth a documentary.

This is where we decided we'll be filming:

Week 3: Drowning in toys (Continued)

On the 3rd day of this week, we decided to head back into Channapatna, with a bigger aim of creating a brief of anything specific in Channapatna.
At first we headed to Kalanagar, a Muslim predominant area in Channapatna. The aim here was to notice the differences and similarities this area had compared to Neelsandra.

• Most of the toys here were made using machines making this area more dependent on electricity where as in Neelsandra everything was hand made.
• A lot of Chemicals were used for colouring the toys compared to Neelsandra which used more vegetable colours.
• The toys made here ranged from simple toys of animals to much more complicated ones like big trophies and idols while most of the toys in Neelsandra were simple hand made toys, the max they would go up to were car seat covers.
• Located close to Maya Organic, which provides training for youth for toy making but there was no special training provided to anyone in Neelsandra. The next generation would either learn from their parents or would leave the village and industry of toy making to join IT or engineering.

Pretty sad but that is the current state of Neelsandra. In fact the situation is similar in Kalanagar. The future generation do not seem to be interested in making toys. The parents too prefer their children studying high tech engineering or joining IT firms in metropolitan cities. This has taken a toll on an industry which had been blooming for over 500 years. So, we decided to get the children's perspective in and around through a different medium










These little drawings here were done by the kids bringing out whatever is in their minds regarding Channapatna. I guess these are self- explainatory. You still see toys at a large.

This day may not have been really productive but it gave us a foundation for what we wanted to do next week.

Week 3: Drowning in toys

This week a few of us paid a visit to Channapatna. It is a town located in the Bangalore Rural district of Karnataka. It didn't look like fun at the start as we had huge survey sheets that where needed to collect facts on the ground. These included questions regarding conditions of the families, whether they had members working in panchayat, how much land they hold, how many farm animals they own, their educational qualifications and their wages.
In Channapatna most of these questions turned out to be irrelvent as Channapatna and the surrounding villages did not practice large scale farming.

The Toy Industry:
After arriving in Channapatna, thanks to Sudipto we landed into Mr Srinivas' house, the owner of Kushal Toys. He told us quite a lot about Channapatna. More than 80% of the town is involved in the toy making industry. The toys are made of halle wood, a kind of ivory wood. The speciality of this is the tree grows very quickly after cutting it for wood. They are coloured using coloured lacquer sticks & polished with leaves of the Thale palm. The colour given to the lacquer may be a vegetable based dye or a chemical dye.

How the business works:

• Local Turning or Manual Lathe: doesn't require much finish and mechanisation. Can be seen in the bead making village of Neelasandra..
• Fixing & Painting: Involves assembling of pieces created on the lathe, colouring & varnishing them. Seen throughout town in small houses.
• Fine Turning or Machine Lathe: for export quality products. It is a difficult task which requires a very smooth finish and no black patches on the wood. Requires the use of machines. eg. napkin rings made in Kalanagar
• Cutting: making parts that don't require turning. eg. parts for toy horses.

Enhancing a business

Having had a look at these livelihoods and businesses, I've always wondered if I could do something to make these two better, not only in this course but also throughout my life. One of them I'd pick is Mr Vinay, the fruit seller.


Ya thats the dude up there. He told us his business was running well and he was doing well to sustain himself. But he could do better with some expert tips:

• He has his cart full of fruits on the side of the G.K.V.K agricultural campus road. Not many people enter into G.K.V.K. Those who do get there do so to get into the university as a student or as a professor of the university. If he could get his cart out the entrance zone and move around Vidyaranyapura selling fruits then he would profit more and it wouldn't cost him very much either.
• Mr Vinay seems to be growing these fruits on an organic farm and there seems to be nothing that signifies that. If he could have a signboard saying these are organic and add nutritional values to each fruit, things would get better without adding much to his cost.

Well, having tried this out there were a few constraints. He prefers exporting his fruits rather than selling them in and around. People seem to have a bad notion of an organic fruit, he says. He'd rather sell his fruits without claiming it to be organic. Anyway people like it and its good for the business and the environment, so let it go on and let people realize on their own.

Persona and Scenario of an astrologer

Try asking an astrologer, what would happen to him in the next five minutes?
Here, we deceided to create a persona and a scenario of the astrologers who sit with a parrot inside a cage on the road to the temple. People pay them Rs 10 to get their future told. The astrologer has a bunch of cards embedded with gods faces on it and the parrot in the cage decides which card it needs to pick up and depending on that the astrologer tells the future.

This might stir up rage from environmentalists, the parrot had its wings cut off and had to pick up cards throughout the day but to us it looked quite happy as it was well fed

Visualization

This was mainly done to get a practical idea of any of the businesses and visualize it very well knowing every inch and mile. I chose the mahout, Keshavan for this and created an interactive game where in you choose Sree Durga as a character.
Playing as an elephant, you gould go to:
The Shed
Temple
Fields
Lake
Free in the forest
Once you enter into the shed, you play as the mahout. You are given a choice of how much you'd like to feed Sree Durga. Feeding it little would not provide it enough energy to move around other places. Feeding it too much would require more rest in the lake. More than that would lead to the elephant's death. So would not feeding it. That would bare a cost on your livelyhood.

Similarly, in the temple you play as the mahout. Here once you allow people to worship it, you earn some cash. There would be kids who'd like to sit on the backs of elephants. You can charge a fee for them to play on it. This task isn't easy. There's something known as Frustartion Level (FL). Sree Durga isn't always patient. As more and more worshippers arrive, the FL increases. Kids playing on the back could rapidly inc the FL. So don't get too greedy, if the elephant gets too frustarted it could go on a rampage killing everyone in the temple and you'd lose your job.

Sree Durga must be taken for a walk for three days a week in the fields and must be set free. This would dec the FL in the temple. Again when its free, carefully moniter what it does and dont let it go out of the fields. You know what would happen to you if it does?

The lake is a scenario where you as a mahout and the elephant can spend quality time together relaxing. This would inc Bonding Level(BL) and dec Frustartion Level(FL).

The last option is releasing it in the forest. The game ends here. On one hand, you are setting a life free of troubles, i.e for Sree Durga and on the other you cost a whole livelihood for Keshavan which could lead him to take drastic measures.

The game is not yet up for grabs, it'll req some more coding but here are some pics:

An advise to these guys

Anyway, most of these livelihoods have done a lot of iterations in their business. They have been successful and have sustained their business for more than 5 years. Their profit margin has gone up.
But here's what they can do, so called destructive criticism. Mr.Keshavan takes his elephant for a walk 4 days in a week. He basically takes it to a garden to feed it sugarcane and for it to relax. Mr P.K Rajagopal cleans his beautiful swimming pool every Thursday evening. The waste water goes to the farm all around the pool. Elephants love water, don't they! If Keshavan could take Sree Durga to the pool every Thursday evening and probably charge people for watching it bathe, the elephant could be much cleaner for the temple. Anyway, the water would go to the farm. If the elephant shits around or pisses, it would work well as the manure for the farm. Since the farm grows fodder, some of the fodder can be fed to the elephant making it healthier.
Both these businesses would benefit from such a skin and the elephant would get a better life.

Livelihood dependent on innovative business

Here we'll have a look at how innovative business plays a major role in livelihoods of certain people. In most of these cases the people have been successful.

Majestic Mahout













The small shed you see on top is where the temple elephant of Vidyaranyapura is kept. The mahout wasn't willing to let us photograph the elephant unless we had some kind of permission which we did not, but I'll be putting up a picture soon.

Name: Mr.Keshavan
Years in business: 9
Tools: Elephant req 80 litres of water and 200kg food per day
Earns: Rs 5000 a month
Mr Keshavan has been working as a mahout for around 9 years. Born and brought up in Tamil Nadu, his ancestors have been mahouts for 3 generations. Sree Durga, a 12 year old elephant is taken to the Durga Parameshwari temple 3 -4 times a week. The rest of the days, she is taken for a walk for nearly 20km per day. The elephant is fed sugarcane and grass.
Asked about how well she is taken care of, Keshava replied by saying that the elephant is monitered by Mrs Ganguly from CUPA. Elephants have a life span of 120 years in the jungle.
One wonders whether Sree Durga can live that long in this situation. The space and shelter provided was very poor.
Hindus pay respect to Lord Ganesha through the elephant and kids certainly seem amused at the sight of an elephant in a temple. Sree Durga may not be.
But this certainly is an innovative way of building a livelihood for Keshavan. Though he may not be earning much, he seemed happy with his job.

Fruit plantation













In our next trip, we take off to GKVK(Gandhi Krishi Vigyana Kendra) which is joint with the UAS(University of Agricultural sciences). Large areas comprising of cash crops, the GKVK is a foundation for many livelihoods.


Name: Mr.Vinay
Years in business: 6
Tools: All kinds of tools needed in farming
Earns: Wouldn't reveal
Meet Mr.Vinay, a 40 year old family man who seems really confident about life, dosen't give a damn to any criticism he receives. And why not, he has a degree in Science, was into chemical networking later on and now owns a 500 acre farm. Wild chikoos, Mangos of the variety Mallika and Arampoli, Guavas, Papayas and Coconuts are grown on his farm. These fruits are sold in small shops and sometimes even exported.
Two special things we saw in his farm were, it was completely organic with absolutely no use of insecticides or pesticides. This keeps the soil intact and fertile and the fruits turn out to be tastier than what you buy in conventional stores like food world. Other speciality, students from the UAS are free to conduct study on his plantation.
Mr.Vinay, like any good businessman would not reveal his profit when asked. He sold us a kg of Mallika for Rs30 and gave one mango free, great generosity?




Swim n Save


Thindlu, also known as the tennis village in Bangalore is where Mahesh Bhupathi learnt tennis as a kid. Next to the tennis academy is a swimming pool, which is not just a swimming pool. We'll have a look.
Name: Mr.P.K.Rajagopal
Years in business: 5
Tools: Water, chlorine and other farming equipments
Earns: Rs 500 a day in summer as a pool owner
Fortunately for Mr.Rajagopal and unfortunately for us, this is not his livelihood. He is a BJP worker and owns this pool know as P.K.Rajagopal Swimming Pool. Innovative?
Nevertheless, here's an interesting set of events which occur mainly during summer.
The pool opens at 7 in the morning. Subsequently kids uptil the age of 20 rush to take a dip. They need to pay Rs.25 an hour. The number of people is maximum at the peak of the afternoon. This is when you see more heads than water and you can literally walk over the heads to get across. It gets closed on Thursday.
All around the pool is around 250sq feet of farmland. Yes, you guessed it right. The waste water from the pool flows into the farm which is used for growing ragi, rice and all kinds of fodder for cows. Not a drop wasted!
Asked about the impact of chlorine, Mr Ravi, a colleague of Mr.Rajagopal told me that chlorinated water dosen't affect the soil. Having researched on it I found that to be true.
A great way of giving a good time for poor kids and feeding many families and animals. Unfortunately though, this pool is being shut down with real estates grabbing this part of the town. That may not be innovative.


South Indian Chaatwala



Having had a wholesale shop which did badly in business, he did not lose any grip. Went on to invent around 480 chaat items. This shows how one can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat when you keep your heads high up.


Name: Mr.Sanath Kumar and Mr.Chandrashaker
Years in business: 13
Tools: Different crunchy items needed to make chaat
Earns: Approx Rs 20000 a month
These two names mentioned on top might be the greatest ones in chaat history. They started making chaats 13 years ago on a small cart with only 5 items. Since then then, they've moved on adding more and tastier ones. Soon they were able to purchase a fiat car for selling chaats and now they do it in a Piaggo. Selling chaats in a mini-truck, marvellous!
With over 480 different snacks right now, one cannot question their creativity. What else? They have cool drinks too. One of them being masala pepsi, pepsi with jaljeera and chaat masala. May not be healthy but the drink is refreshing and worth a try. Another snack I would recommend is the bun nippat masala. Contains two layers of thick bread, nippat inside it with all different kinds of spicy items which include spicy groundnuts, chillies, cucumbers and tomatos. Nippat is a snack from Karnataka which could be compared to the kakra but beig much harder.
You could also call these guys in case of a birthday party or a wedding. They bring their vehicle with chaats in it at any spot.
Selling 480 different chaats in a mini-truck and earning Rs20000 a month has made a great livelihood for these fatsos.



Road to your future


Here's another person who doesn't like others taking his picture or documenting him. Well, all astrologers wouldn't. We decided just to carefully observe him.
Name: Unknown
Years in business: Unknown
Tools: A pack of cards, a parrot in a cage
Earns: Approx Rs 200 on Tuesdays and Fridays
The road to Durga Parameshwari temple in Vidyaranyapura is full on Tuesdays and Fridays being auspicious. Like what we did with jackfruits, many people gather on both sides of the roads selling various items, especially creative ones. This astrologer sits on the footpath with a parrot in a small cage and a pack of cards. He takes 5-10 minutes to read your future and charges Rs.10. Cheap, isn't it, well ya he could charge much more. Through our observation, we saw him reading a person's hand and decides that person's fate. In the middle of it, he asks the parrot to pick a card and the card decides the persons future. May not be a good sight for organizations like CUPA or PETA but a mild business for the astrologer and a livelihood as well!