Part V: MBA Student's Research Financial Access At Birth

The following is written by Brent Peterson MBA 2011 for his Applied Management Research Project:

December 20, 2010
We came back from Jharkand on Thursday and found Lena at the hotel. We stayed at the Ramada Plaza which is a real five star hotel (made affordable by once again putting all four of us in one room!). Thursday night we went to Olive and then to Urban Pind. It’s a club that has expat night every Thursday night. We got there and the bouncer asked… “Are you here with Fashion TV?” “Yes, Yes we are!”. I love it. We got some good photos. There were a lot of Russian models there. Lena tried to introduce me to them but it was just really awkward. They didn’t really have much to say and I didn’t have much to say. Friday night we got into the grand opening party for the new club at our hotel and it was full of Bollywood stars. We met a bunch of stars and one of them hung out with us for most of the night. The pictures tell the story.
Saturday morning we visited the Jaipur region. I didn’t have high expectations, but it was amazing. We agreed that the Amber Fort on the hilltop was more impressive (if not more beautiful) than the Taj Mahal simply based on the size and ambition of the construction. It was fun to hang out with the whole team in a more relaxed setting. We drove back Sunday morning. Jack left Sunday night and Team FAB was downsized to three.
We went and spoke with Rajesh at UID again. He lined us up with key appointments for the coming week. We had some great Indian food for lunch and then went to meet with a bank. I was surprised about how well the meeting went. We came back and I took a couple of laps around the pool. It was outside, so every breath was of brown pollution.

Part IV: MBA Student's Research Financial Access At Birth

The following is written by Brent Peterson MBA 2011 for his Applied Management Research Project:

December 16 2010

We met the man in charge of rural development. He told us how UID is enabling the government to quickly reduce the costs and time of delivering employment benefits in the rural areas. He showed us the current steps and how long each takes. It generally takes 8-10 steps to get a payment out to a person in a rural area and one to two months. UID enabled accounts will make it three steps and the goal is to bring it down to one week. That would be a huge difference since most rural people don’t have access to credit that allows them to eat if their payments are late. He said that the government hasn’t quantified everything in terms of money because some of the savings is in time and convenience and nobody has a good grasp on the monetary value of this time savings.
We got dominoes pizza again. Being in Ranchi though was educational, but I don’t think I plan on living there any time soon.

Part III: MBA Student's Research Financial Access At Birth

The following is written by Brent Peterson MBA 2011 for his Applied Management Research Project:

December 15, 2010
Today started out poorly but redeemed itself in the end. Lena missed another flight when the airline screwed up and got stuck in New Jersey. Our driver was late so we only had time to go speak with Arvind. Professor Chowdry warned us about not getting too stressed about packing a lot into each day because there would be delays. We didn’t have to deal with it too much yet until today. After our meeting we went to an enrollment site in a rural area. We waited around for the guy to lead us to the site and then ended up driving with a guy from another agency that was bidding on doing enrollments in another region. The government itself doesn’t run the enrollment stations. Instead, they put the contract out to bid for third parties, and the winner gets the right to enroll people in the region. The agency is paid on a per-person basis once their data is uploaded to the central government database and validated. This method seems to be a critical factor behind the speed at which UIDAI is ramping up operations.
The last site visit was my favorite thing so far. It was really interesting to talk to our new guide about what the agencies took into account when they made their bids. I think the going rate was about 25-35 rupees per head in these areas. That’s about 55-75 cents per head. They get 50 enrollments per day, so they would only be making roughly $20 per day in revenue per station. It was the first time that we got fresh air in India, which in itself made the place beautiful. We filmed a little bit more of the process. Some of our best pictures were taken in this area. The rollout itself was very chaotic. There was no clear order to the steps in the process and people piled up against the gate trying to get their application started. They had several stations, but very few of them were being utilized at any given time. After filming a little bit, Jack and I went out and played volleyball with some local kids. After we drove back, we went to Domino’s for a much needed break from Indian cuisine. Crossing the street was another near-death experience. It was like a high-stakes game of Frogger.

Part II: MBA Student's Research Financial Access At Birth

The following is written by Brent Peterson MBA 2011 for his Applied Management Research Project:

Incredible India! That was the sign at the tourist office in LA for India… and it is! Today we left Delhi and flew to Ranchi in the state of Jharkhand. It’s called the “wild west” of India. The main industries are mineral and coal extraction. There is a ton of smog everywhere in India and even in the countryside surrounding this city of 1.3MM it is no different. When we got here we tried to put all three of us in one room to ease our budget, but 15 minutes later the front desk called us back and told us we couldn’t do that. It’s against the law for unmarried men and women to sleep in the same room. After settling in we went to a festival in the town center where UIDAI had an information booth. We met up with Arvind and he took us there. At the booth, they took my eye scan and my fingerprints to demonstrate the UIDAI enrollment process. It’s a pretty cool system they have going and I was really excited to be watch it in action. We walked around for an hour after and saw the other booths including a weaving machine, which was surprisingly neat. The region was known for producing the cloth that Ghandi used for his signature garments. The entire production process was on display from raw wool to finished cloth. Also they had a very dramatic play going on. We didn’t understand a word of what was going on, but it looked pretty entertaining and elaborate.