Cain shares thoughts from India internship
10/1/2011 3:09:00 PM | Women's Soccer
Here is Megan Cain's journal from week four in India. See what she had to say as she shared her experiences from a summer to remember.
Monday: I attended a meeting about a plot of land, which Viva already owns that is being encroached by 30+ slum dwellers. Because it's monsoon season, it is in-humane to force them to move out and be homeless. Unfortunately, notifying the Government is useless because they would advise Viva to kick them out. Viva has chosen to relocate the slum dwellers by giving them alternative housing options free of charge. This is a charitable donation and Viva will receive nothing in the form of a tax write-off. After meetings, I visited the Ascent Advertising office in Mumbai, which is the company that Viva uses to do all of its advertising.
Tuesday: I visited local job sites in Virar and Vasai. The Indian construction site compared to the American construction site is vastly different. First of all 'the crew' working on one particular residential building consisted of roughly eight people for a ten story building. No one was wearing hard hats or steel toe boots and there were little children running around everywhere. The mothers were in charge of filling the cement mixer with a mixture of type I and II stones and cement mix. The pace of work seemed extremely slow and inefficient. After site visits, I attended a meeting at the Municipal Corporation (Town Hall) and met with a city planning representative to go over some of Viva's future plans to make sure that clearances were up to code.
Wednesday: I visited two pocket slums in Mumbai that are a part of Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA): one in Malad and one in Dahisar. I was also able to see temp housing that slum dwellers inhabit during the construction of their new homes. At the end of the day, I went to a Viva Redevelopment office in Mumbai. Redevelopment is similar to SRA except that it's for old dilapidated buildings that are more than one story. Both schemes are extremely time consuming and require numerous 'permissions', however in the long run they are very valuable programs that will help to clean up Mumbai.
Thursday: In the morning, I attended a meeting between Viva and an individual entrepreneur looking to form a joint venture. The individual recently sold a company in Singapore for black money (cash) to avoid paying any taxes. Now, realizing that he made a poor decision for the long term, he wishes to collaborate with Viva to turn the black money in his possession into white money. Each party will invest 50-50, however because Viva is driving the project and assuming all the risk, the individual is required to give 30% of his profits to Viva. He will claim the remaining 70% in the form of checks (white money). Apparently, this type of transaction is very common in India. Later in the day, I traveled to Pune, a small city three hours east of Mumbai, to visit two residential sites geared toward the upper middle class. Pune has more space than Mumbai, so developers are able to create communities with club houses, tennis courts, pools, etc. I also met with the partners of those developments and discussed the current progress.
Friday: I am traveling to Mumbai to meet with Knight Frank, one of Viva's primary partners, to discuss the progress of the multiple projects that KF/Viva are involved with such as: the implementation of taxis into Mumbai, the development of a fuel cell company into one of Viva's recently acquired industrial parkways, and finally, the steps necessary for Viva to take in order to become a housing finance company.
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