Values

Continuing on the subject of values this was my recent experience.

I have started my gardening after shifting to Mysore. I was looking for raw materials like cow-dung and sugarcane bagasse. I will write about my gardening experiments separately but restrict this post to my attempts at procuring sugarcane bagasse. I went to a sugarcane juice vendor who said somebody had already taken it and I could come the next day; he would keep it for me. Accordingly I went the next day and he had a cement bag of bagasse. I took it and asked him what he was expecting for the same. He answered that I could give him whatever I was giving earlier. I could not elicit a figure from him and finally gave him Rs 5 which was what I was paying to the vendor at Bangalore. At this point he seem to be "ashamed" to receive such a low amount. Finally he said that the other person (who takes it to feed his buffaloes) pays Rs 20 independent of the quantity! So finally I handed him Rs 15 (which was the change I had) but with some reservations in my mind. Somehow it became a business transaction without goodwill and my mind was already thinking of looking up an alternate source. Perhaps he did have a customer who paid him Rs 20; I had no means to verify but I felt he was overcharging me for what is essentially a waste product of his main business - vending sugarcane juice.

I always felt that whoever is recycling waste is doing a service to the society and hence should be encouraged. We did the same with my old newspapers. We always gave away freely to the raddiwala who came by since I felt that we are paying to read the news content of the newspaper. If the raddiwala can make living out of it we should not cut into his meager profits. But this had the side effect that each raddiwala wanted newspapers to be exclusively reserved for himself while we did not have any preferences! This created a goodwill that even now when we visit our old house if a raddiwala is passing by he recognizes and has a conversation.

Now back to the sugarcane bagasse story...

I located another vendor and asked him about the bagasse. He said he just puts it in the vacant site behind and whoever is interested can pick it up. I handed him a bag and requested him to fill it up which I would pick up in the evening. When I went in the evening he pointed to the bag and was about to leave. When I tried to pay him he refused and rode off on his two wheeler! So I was left standing there with a sense of gratitude or goodwill and respect for this person.

Now from an economics point of view it seems foolish on his part to not seize this "business opportunity" to create monetary value out of his waste. But in terms of human values and goodwill generate I feel he has gained a lot more.

To share or not to share...

This is a big debate in the software industry freeware, shareware v/s proprietary software. Here I am confining to more mundane physical matters (hardware if you please).

I am reminded of a travelogue by Dinakar Desai a great chutuku writer in Kannada (chutuku is a small four liner with a hitting message) about his experiences in England when he went to attend a conference (in the 60s I think). In a bus or train he asked another passenger (English) permission to borrow his newspaper, this being a pretty common practice in India. The Englishman haughtily answered "We don't lend papers, we buy them". In his writing Desai appreciates their sense of paying for a product/service.

However the question remains in my mind - what is right? It depends on the context of-course. In the context of the economy, the producer is happy with as many of his products are sold. But in the bigger context of the environment and the purpose should it be so? Is it not okay for more than one user to take advantage of a product already produced thus meeting their need while also reducing the burden on the environment?

In our school days it was the norm to pass on text books to younger children. These days in many schools books have to be bought as a package (good for the school and the publishers but a burden for many parents) and so there is no question of reuse. I tried to offer my son's books on Freecycle but there were very few who were interested and only once I managed to give them to be reused. They ended up with the raddiwala on all other occasions. Another dimension to it is that the way children maintain their books (another related post on the load they carry which impacts the condition) it is a wonder that they last the whole year forget being used by others subsequently!

So going back to the question perhaps we need to look at some way give credit to producers who make things that last, which can be shared thereby reducing the raw material consumption as well as the load on the garbage dump. Otherwise the current Economics favors greater production and greater consumption alone ignoring the limits (remember the 'linear system in a finite world' statement Anne Leonard makes in Story of Stuff?). Alternately there should be a disincentive to those who consume and waste more. Until we citizens of this earth realize this and bring it into the systems in place there is no hope!