The Six Dots Problem/Re-imagining India

Have been thinking about this for the better part of a year now, and this is one of the primary drivers of quitting being directly involved in the creation of farming collectives.

Some of my earlier thoughts for suggested pre-reading though it’s not necessary :

• What Might A Different Economic System Look Like (slightly long)
• The Market Economy and Happiness
• The Farm and the SKU
• The Money Trap
• and finally Permaculture, Abundance and Acceptance

So, what is the “Six Dots Problem”? What are these Six Dots?

Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai and the NCR. Those are the 6 dots.

And the problem, in a very quick summary, is that we have country where everyone (this is a statistical median thing derived empirically, and there will be large sets of exceptions, of course) wants to (eventually, if they can) move to these 6 dots on the map. Or at least head to for work or for trading or selling their skills and produce.

Why does this cause problems? What problems?

The quick answer : these 6 dots represent a systemic reality where resources, skills, people and energy have gotten hoovered out of the countryside, and into ever fewer centres — and eventually and more and more into these 6 dots from the smaller towns as well, in a vicious cycle that makes it continuously worse. The concentration of innovation, skills, value addition (and the huge premium claimed for it), people and resources has led to the impoverishment of the entire country, while these 6 dots are themselves buckling under the weight of the concentration today and becoming unviable in various ways.

Yes there are a few dozen dots outside of these still involved in value creation and with people, skills and energy captured at various levels for various things, but even from there there’s an overall flight and the direction is unmistakable.

For a country of 6 Lakh villages this is a terrible reality to be in, and to keep worsening more and more.

There was a time when skills, innovation, ideas and consequently wealth (multi dimensional wealth as well) resided in many, many, many places across the country. Every village or cluster — at least including the nearest town — was self sustained for most needs and had blacksmiths, weavers, potters, carpenters, dyers, bankers, healers and doctors, singers, actors. Production of goods, services, leisure happened pretty much everywhere, as did their consumption. (At this point I’m not entering the debate whether the overall set of these was as diverse and rich as it is today, but just stating that it was more distributed.)

The value that accrued because of the end needs being met locally and production of finished goods and value addition being done in the region itself was captured inside each cluster — whether as the price of value addition being paid locally, or as cheaper goods available locally. The value captured locally is spent locally as well and in turn sustains other services and arts, and the creation of public goods.

Today that’s broken very severely. Read on.

Sell-cheapest and Buy-priciest cannot work forever :

Over time, more and more clusters essentially became producers only of the lowest level of raw material and produce, lost pricing power and now sell at what I characterise as sub-wholesale prices.

The village potter and carpenter and tailor too got replaced with readymade finished goods (many that are not local needs specific, and poorer in quality, more harmful ecologically, though cheaper) from somewhere else. Even the tiny bits of IP, design and value addition left the cluster. Obviously the value and valuation associated with those left too.

The market elsewhere abstracts the effort and value, aggregates and price-compares across geographies with various realities and pushes value and price paid down to the minimum possible, and then some.

Even as I was writing this, Rishabh who helped create NavGurukul and has seen non tier I India up close, and thought much about it — called me and we had a chat on similar issues. He mentioned an interesting thing — apparently a lot of needs — he guesstimated over 40% — are met by production done within 50–60kms of any place even today, but even for those a LOT of the value is accrued elsewhere in a larger city which controls and manages the capital, logistics or brand, leaving the lowest level and amount of value at a cost-plus basis for the local efforts on all this.

Clearly there’s lesser and lesser value left locally and it cannot fund the arts, crafts, services it once did. So anyone with those skills cannot find a local market and eventually migrates out as well. Making it worse. These folks now earn and spend in the those 6 dots, adding to the value accrued there even more.

The set of needs that the market fulfils has grown in the meanwhile — be it cell phones or bikes or more inputs for the farm or pumps or dish TVs or more use-and-throw junk and so on. Now there’s Flipkart and Amazon and after the producer and base value creator, even the local trader is now being displaced.

For each of these value added products, the pricing includes what’s paid to the folks in labs, designers, marketers, CxOs and many other such layers — and they’re living lives with a very different cost and need structure including coffees that cost 120 a pop and homes with 30k rentals etc.

Each cluster effectively buys for a lot more than it sells. And the gap is funded through what we call subsidies, government funding of projects and charity — and all of it will continue to exist at the lowest possible level for obvious reasons.

(In a sense the 6L dots have been funding the lives and the enrichment of the 6 dots. And their ability to pay for services and more, making the cycle more entrenched and the impoverishment of everywhere-else worse.)

Again, this is a stupid country to create. It makes a large landmass hyper dependent on a few economic engines which keep accumulating and extracting more value (it’s systemic and has happened over time, and let’s not assign fault in the sense of intent). We’re seeing it in the continuous lowering of value, loss of talent, skills and even a workforce — and eventually viability — of large tracts of the country which are now being jokingly called retirement communities.

Interestingly, the 6 dots (and in smaller, slower ways the other dozen or so in the next layer) now have their own set of challenges in terms of livability and quality of life. And eventually, viability of these as well — Bangalore cannot continue to create software or design if the water aquifers collapse or if the air become too toxic to live in.

Damn, that’s Depressing. What Do We Do?

Thanks for asking ;) I’ve spent the better part of 6 months talking to various folks and thinking about this. I don’t have answers — and need to learn a lot more. But to start with, here’s some ground rules and thoughts :

First, let’s all acknowledge the problem. Without blame, or assuming a conflict/battle between the city and the village and suchlike. The fact that the distinction exists is part of the problem. Nope this is not all an assertion that village life is better — the village has degraded and lost much and needs numerous fixes as well.

Next, there are no silver bullets. Abandon the idea of this or that one thing completely solving this. A whole bunch of factors have caused, accelerated and perpetuated this — and a forest of ideas and efforts will be needed to start moving in this direction.

Yes, it’s a direction, not a solution. It’ll also take time — I’ve resolved it in my head as a 150 year project which I will certainly not see through to an “end” but have to merely align with and keep chipping away at in whatever small or big way that presents itself as a opportunity. That’s the only way to deal with and ward off the inevitable frustration because like in every forest, not every idea, effort will succeed — it’s only the forest that needs to thrive, not every single tree.

In a one line summary, we need to try and make 600, then 6000 and then 60000 nodes (10 villages to a cluster, to think of it easily?) a little more attractive or a little less unattractive for a few more (even 10 at a time) every other week — and we need to do this in thousands of places. It’ll start to add up. The how is tough and I’ll try getting there in a bit.

It’s a multi-dimensional approach for sure (like I outlined in an earlier blog — links above). It’s about the various aspects of life becoming a little more attractive there, not just economic activity, that’ll make the place viable for folks there, or trying to be there :

• ecosystem and ecology : without water, health soil, air etc, it’ll eventually get to collapse. We cannot keep accepting “a little worse” and moving towards eventual unviability on these foundational bits — it’ll lead to the fake, stupid economy we have today all over again.
• public services and commons : The idea of public riches and private sufficiency is a strong one, and addresses the limitations of an idea of the economy built largely around scarcity. If most don’t need a lot of money for the basics — education, healthcare, legal redress, some leisure etc — the flexibility in choosing professions, pursuing various efforts already increases.
• livelihoods, (micro) entrepreneurship, value creation. For reasons discussed above — these both support and provide a larger set of things to do for a larger set of people, skills, professions. Have to move away from seeing everything outside these 6 dots as a producer and supplier of raw food at the lowest price alone. This will also help every cluster become more of a market for the services and good made there.
• arts, culture, festivals and other reasons for pride — finally we all like to live in places we have a positive sense about. I recently learned about this amazing village near Dharwad that crowdfunds one of the most prestigious Hindustani concerts in India!

Nuts, Bolts, Things To Do

Reiterating (so read all this in that context)

• There’s no silver bullets!
• This is a long term, directional thing. Assume 100+ years for “solved” of any kind and the whole lessons-from-the-Gita thing.
• It’ll need a forest of ideas.

So — given all this — here’s a few things I think could help

1. Collaborate with everyone who’s solving various problems along any of the dimensions above that helps add capacity and move more value back into a cluster. Bring them all to a common platform and make available what they know, and if there’s help available from them, or their efforts extensible to a new place/space, etc. Make it a platform with the help or idea available like a template or API, with pre-requisites known, evidence, outcomes expected, help and resources available and so on. “How to create and FPO + a CA who helps do this”. “How to get FSSAI certification and produce your first batch of pickles and where to sell them”. “How to get a local PHC to be more effective”. So many problems to solve and so many who’ve solved them. Let’s make these popular and available.
2. Create many many problem solvers who’re present on the ground, are keen and understand the local context well. Farms, organizations, individuals. Let the problems be discovered ground up, not top down. Just help remove obstacles to solving them — ideas, resources, funding. Just ensure all of this goes towards local capacity creation, not charity.
3. Avoid the extractive/destructive ways that have gotten us where we are. Create many more green jobs, and solutions that are aligned with regeneration and restoration where possible, or at least ecologically the least destructive. With problems and solutions for them in the same cluster the abstracting away of the downsides is already likelier to be minimized. But a platform to kickstart and enable green jobs is a pressing need.

This is not final, comprehensive or even super actionable. Much needs figuring out. But this is now a personal journey for the rest of my time on the planet and in collaboration with all those who’re solving the various problems along the same lines and towards the same directional goals.

Maybe, just maybe, we’ll get to 60000 dots on the map that become a viable, attractive choice for living for anyone.