Farewell Coimbatore!  It's been an amazing experience, one I'll never forget. I've learned so much from this incredible country, our great clients, and most of all, our truly amazing team.

A Sankara surgeon in the operating room

Today's my last day in India... and this morning a group of us went to visit the Sankara Eye Hospital, one of our team's clients (see my first posting).  Sankara was started by Dr. RV Ramani and his wife back in the 70's, initially providing free medical care two days a week in their clinic.  Over the years, their focus became ophthalmology, with the mission of eliminating preventable and curable blindness in India.  Sankara currently has 11 eye hospitals, with the goal of 20 hospitals by 2020.  They operate on a sustainable 80/20 model, with 20% of upper and middle class paying patients supporting the surgeries of the 80% non-paying patients from rural villages.

We learned about the entire process of selecting patients in the rural villages through 'eye camps' on the weekends, bringing patients to the Sankara Hospital in Coimbatore, the operations and recoveries, as well as follow up.  We also got to see the operating and recovery rooms, and afterward, the founder Dr. Ramani, met with us.  Dr. Ramani is an amazing man, and when he found out I lived in San Francisco, he told me about Sankara Eye Foundation in San Jose, CA, which is run by volunteers to support the hospitals in India.  I'm excited to make a visit down there!

Patients in the recovery room

35,000 surgeries in 2011!

Final lunch with Shanthi, Mamtha, Kabi and Prince

We made our final presentation to our client today and everyone was really happy with our deliverables.  We had an audience of 16 people - pretty much all of the ABT executives we've worked with over the past month - it was great to see them all together in one room.  And in honor of Women's Day, we dedicated the presentation to the women farmers we've been working to help.  Everyone was very happy with our presentation, and it was clear this is big priority for the company.  We'll stay connected with our clients for at least three months after returning back to our home countries, and have provided them with a detailed roll out plan to implement our recommendations.

In addition to the ABT team, two members of IBM's Corporate Citizenship team in India flew in for the presentations and they were a great addition to the discussions.  IBM's doing some amazing things in India and their perspective really helped frame our concluding conversations.  I still can't believe we're almost at the end of the month!

This was our last full weekend, and everyone went off of their own to explore various parts of India...  a couple people went up to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, a few went to Ooty, the nearby hill resort, some stayed in Coimbatore, and I went up to check out Bangalore.  Bangalore is everything I'd heard it would be: modern, efficient, tech-focused, and much more Western than the other Indian cities I've seen (of course these are all relative comparisons :). 


I visited with some family friends who live in Bangalore, which was really great.  They were incredibly generous and had me to their home to meet their entire extended family, fed me amazing food, and told me all about Bangalore's history.  I also got to see my co-worker Vish, who just happened to be in Bangalore for work - a crazy coincidence!  It was pretty surreal seeing someone I know from back home here in India. 

On Sunday I visited the City Market, an amazing flower, fruit and vegetable market in the center of town, where I saw more flowers than I've ever seen in my entire life... piles and piles of them.  I'm fascinated with the big Asian markets - I could wander them forever.  And I went to see the Bull Temple, which is centered around a huge statue of Nandi Bull, of Lord Shiva, which is supposedly carved out of a single rock.  I also checked out some of the shopping areas - it was almost like being back in the States, with every high end store you can imagine - very different than Coimbatore!

Bull Temple

Only in India....

Today was one of my favorite days yet.  We visited several landless farmers - these are generally very poor families who have no land holdings and who typically lease small plots of land to raise their cows.  Most of them have taken out loans to do this, but because they don't have land as collateral, they're usually stuck borrowing from private lenders who charge interest rates twice those of the banks.  But despite all their hardships and their truly tough lives, these farmers were by far the happiest, most content of any that we've met.  And literally, within minutes of arriving we have an audience of 20-30 people...  we were joking that someone in the village must have tweeted about our arrival...

We also visited a Collection Center, where farmers bring their milk twice a day (after the morning and evening milkings) to be measured and tested.  We were there as all the farmers were bringing in their milk for the evening, which was great to see.  The arrived on foot or on two wheelers (moped/motorcycle) and were all completely fascinated by us - most of them have seen few if any Westerners in their lives.  Once we're finished asking them questions, we always ask if they have any questions for us...   we've had some humorous questions... and received many dinner invitations ;)

This weekend our group made a trip to the Kerala coast.  Kerala is the next state over from Tamil Nadu, and is one of the wealthiest, most educated states in India, with a 99% literacy rate.  You can see the difference as soon as you cross the border.  It takes about 5-6 hours to drive to Kerala from Coimbatore - it's only 230k away, but the roads are pretty rough and packed full of cars, buses, rickshaws, ox carts, bicycles, pedestrians, cows, dogs, goats and anything else you can imagine.  After all the driving we've been doing for our interviews with the farmers, we've finally stopped covering our eyes every time we see a large vehicle barreling toward us head on...  but it's always an adventure ;)

Fort Cochin

Chinese fishing nets in Fort Cochin

We rented a great villa in Fort Cochin, the old town within Cochin, which is beautiful, and relative to what we've seen so far, quiet, peaceful and calm - it's a huge but welcome adjustment for a couple days.  Our villa owner is an Indian named Russell, who spent his first 40 years in the UK and speaks with a great British accent.  Compared with Coimbatore, Cochin is full of tourists and westerners...  Before coming to Kerala, I think I saw maybe two Westerners during my entire time Coimbatore, so we really stand out.  But we've decided we all kind of like it this way, it makes for a pretty unique experience. 

Cochin has a strong Portuguese and and Dutch influence - Vasco da Gama landed there in 1498.  We visited the Mattancherry Palace and Santa Cruz Basilica, and (as we seem to do everywhere we go) did some shopping ;)  Some of my favorite experiences in India have been meeting the shopkeepers and hearing their stories.  We met a great guy in a silk store in Cochin who was from Kashmir, a place I'd love to visit someday.   He was so proud of his hometown and loved that we were so interested to learn about it.

We also went down to Alleppy for a boat tour on the backwaters, an almost endless network of lagoons and canals that start at the coast and extend inland.  We spent several very relaxing hours cruising through the waterways past villages, farms, and fishing nets - probably the most quiet I've experience since getting to India.  The sunset was absolutely gorgeous!
 

A group of school girls we came across

Today we visited several groups of women farmers.  There have been several types of cooperative groups deployed in the agriculture and dairy industries in India, and this is one of the things we're looking into as a potential recommendation for ABT.  Countries like New Zealand and Israel are particularly successful examples of this, and we're doing a lot of research into these and other similar models.  These are marginal farmers, with roughly 2-3 cows each, and struggling to grow green fodder and buy concentrate for their animals.  They're highly dependent on loans to purchase their cows, and really live a very hard life.  These groups are the target beneficiaries of our efforts here, and for good reason.

Wherever we went in these small villages we seem to attract an audience...  it starts small, and one by one, we'll have an entire entourage.

Some of the women farmers we spoke with