I hope this email finds you healthy and well during this Passover and Easter season. While many of you must be enjoying the onset of spring, over here the summer is full upon us. I have just returned from visiting the NGO where I worked last year in Maharashtra, and am happy to report that everyone is doing well, especially the boys at Yerendi village, who have created a youth group and named it... Su-Shil. Quite flattering indeed. In fact I am so loved by those boys that they decided to cook me some eggs the night before I left, and while I was already feeling quite sick from the the traveling in Orissa and the insane Maharashtra sun, I couldn't refuse. Needless to say the night afterwards I was on the pot with diarrhea all night, and had to be admitted into a local government public health center in the morning. This was my first time in any government health establishment, and at first I thought I would get more sick just going inside. Luckily the doctors were very nice and my friends took very good care of me (thanks Swati), so I was able to improve and catch a same-day overnight train journey back to Bangalore. (This is a much more scary experience than you probably realize, when you have unstoppable diarrhea). However no need to fear, for all is better with my GI system, although I do want to visit an ayurvedic doctor and get myself checked out before I head out.

Recently a group of 20 of us (including women from the microfinance SHGs) traveled from Kerala up to Orissa (in Eastern India), where we had our second annual General Body meeting, this time with the group in Orissa hosting us. We have four member groups in the Just Change network, but up until now we have been focused on the 3 groups in the South. This trip gave us the opportunity to meet our partners in East India, and see their amazing work. The host NGO, Sahabagi Vikash Abhiyan (SVA) (Participatory Development Campaign) is making informed and effective interventions in the local economy, to allow their people's groups (mainly consisting of dalits and tribals) to gain greater control over the market. They are introducing onion storage facilities, to allow farmers to hold onto their onion stocks longer, rather than distress selling to the traders. This allows them to hold onto their produce and wait a few months until the onion prices rise again, when the supply decreases in the market, and then sell. They are also introducing hand-powered rice mills and sunflower oil seed expellers, such that the communities are able to process their own agricultural goods (sunflower seeds and rice), rather than having to rely on rich people in the town, who continually exploit them. Before they would have had to take their rice to the town to get it milled, in order to eat it. Now they are able to do this on their own and keep that much money (which adds up to huge amounts when you take an entire village into account) within their local village economy. We were very impressed with the work SVA is doing and are excited to start trading and producing goods with them. Some of our initial ideas are to send our copra (dried coconut) to them, and they can use their mills to create coconut oil. We will try various interventions like this, in the hopes of bringing our communities of poor producers in South and East India closer together in their mutual dependence and economic solidarity.

In other news I am doing quite well here in Bangalore, enjoying my life and my work in these last few months of "Experience India 2 years and counting". For those of you (still) unaware: the past few months I've been with Just Change, an NGO, that has formed its own company which is trying to take create an alternative market for poor producers. I have attached a pretty good description of it, recently published in an online journal. I hope you get a chance to read the article, it'll give you a better idea of what Just Change is all about. In the past three months I was able to get a scooter license and am now mobile! Long gone are the days of 1 1/2 hour bus journeys to my office, or depending on auto rickshaw drivers who are excellent at exploiting you in times of desperation and charging 5 times the market rate. And despite all the apprehensions of my parents who think I am not a real Indian and don't understand the "Indian traffic mindset", I have even surprised myself at how "more Indian than Indian" I've become. Now I honk, cut people off, and ram myself into the front of every traffic jam like the best of 'em. Plus I love riding the scooter, it's like playing Rad Racer or Need for Speed, with all of the random obstacles and moving objects in the road, including but not limited to autorickshaws, buses, SUV's, small cars, big cars, small people, big people, cows, dogs, and stretches where the road simply disappears. I think that I've probably reached the last level of this Virtual yet Real Bangalore Racing game, and alas I will be moving to Gudalur, Tamil Nadu this coming Monday. We have shut our office in Bangalore and are shifting operations (including myself) back to the Gudalur headquarters. This is exciting for me, because it gives me an opportunity to return to a rural area for my last two months in India, to the beautifully scenic Nilgiri mountains. (Hint if any of you are planning on visiting me, now would be an excellent time!)

Other than that life is great. I am continually challenged and awakened by my work and my family. I am planning to return to the States in mid June, and plans are still quite up in the air after that. Much peace and blessings to you all.

Three broad concepts of more responsible trade are emerging. 'Ethical trade' describes the work of large companies, such as those involved in the 'Ethical Trading Initiative', which focuses on improving workplace conditions, but does not yet address power relations and revenue distribution in value chains. 'Fairtrade' includes the same concern for better workplace conditions, but also addresses the buyer-supplier relationship, as described above. As the consumer is asked to pay a premium, there is an element of charity to fair trade. The Just Change initiative does not involve a premium. In fact, the prices paid by poor consumers can be lower than the market price, as savings are made through cutting out the middleman and the payment of surplus to distant shareholders. The principle is solidarity, not charity. As such, this small initiative suggests a new form of solidarity trading could emerge as a new paradigm for people interested in working on trade for social goals. We could call it 'Just Trade'. The power of naming it thus may arise by provoking us to question what we have hitherto assumed is either 'ethical' or 'fair' in the area of trade.

Just Change is the latest example of the forms of innovation possible as information and communication technologies spread further for cheaper. Business-to-business (B2B) and peer-to-peer (P2P) applications may become sideshows to new community-to-community (C2C) collaboration in shaping 'Globalisation 2.0' by flattening power hierarchies on our planet. Our global village may be creating itself a virtual village market. If successful, in the years to come the best tea in the West may be found on poor council estates, not high-class cafes.

In January the Just Change (India) Producer Company Ltd was launched in Tamil Nadu, India. The company is the brainchild of Stan and Mari Thekaekara, who have been working with the Adivasi ('original inhabitants' or tribal people) communities of the Nilgiri Hills in India since the 1980s. It is the latest step for Just Change, an organisation promoting alternative trading mechanisms that will benefit poor communities in both high- and low-income countries. 'We try to achieve this by directly linking poor communities and encouraging them to trade among themselves,' explained Stan Thekaekara to JCC.

Thekaekara found that, in spite of the successful leap from labourers to producers, the Adivasis he has worked with found they were catapulted from a local wage economy into a global market economy that is extremely vulnerable, due to the market forces determining the price of their produce. For instance, tea prices at the producer level have dropped to nearly half of what they were four years ago. 'It has become evident over the years that the strategy for poverty reduction based on the traditional approach of gaining control over assets can no longer, on its own, guarantee success,' explains Thekaekara, who is also a trustee of Oxfam GB and Visiting Fellow at Oxford University. 'We believe that lack of power and control in markets contributes significantly to poverty all over the globe.'

The launch of the company is the result of connection made in 1994 when the Thekaekaras spent a month in the UK researching community work. In the UK, Stan and Mari found large numbers of long-term unemployed people almost completely dependent on social welfare, living in pockets of extreme deprivation. In spite of government investments into these areas, the condition of these communities did not improve significantly. The New Economics Foundation (NEF) argued that the situation in these deprived areas of Britain is somewhat similar to those of the Adivasis in India, to the extent that, despite public investments, much of the money leaks out of the local economy into large national and global economies.

The Thekaekaras also noticed that poor Britons like their tea, and pay a relatively high price. As the tribal groups in India grow tea, so they thought of making a direct link to the benefit of both poor communities, by establishing a co-operative of producers and consumers. Trading began with the help of the Matson Neighbourhood Project (MNP) in Gloucester, who were working with the residents of a council estate. The Adivasis of Gudalur send their tea directly to the residents of Matson, who package and sell it both to their own community and to other local customers such as the Council.

This initiative is prototyping a new way of doing business. By sharing the ownership of the value chain, and thereby spreading the risk along that chain, the consumers and producers involved are gaining greater control of their participation in the market economy. Producers can retain ownership over their product all along the market chain and can therefore benefit from the final retail value of the product. Consumers can work directly with producers to establish a price for the product that is based on direct communication and hopefully principles of equity, rather than fluctuating and speculative markets.

It is a prototype of a new approach to both business and social change. If communities across the globe could link up to trade directly with each other, they could form a social chain which could be a powerful force for economic, social and political change. 'People need to believe in themselves and in their capacity to take control over their own economy,' states the Just Change website. (link) Their work recognises the problems and potential of disadvantaged people and communities no matter whether they live in hot or cold, rich or poor countries. As such it hints towards a new approach to international development work, as well as a different form of trade.

Three broad concepts of more responsible trade are emerging. 'Ethical trade' describes the work of large companies, such as those involved in the 'Ethical Trading Initiative', which focuses on improving workplace conditions, but does not yet address power relations and revenue distribution in value chains. 'Fairtrade' includes the same concern for better workplace conditions, but also addresses the buyer-supplier relationship, as described above. As the consumer is asked to pay a premium, there is an element of charity to fair trade. The Just Change initiative does not involve a premium. In fact, the prices paid by poor consumers can be lower than the market price, as savings are made through cutting out the middleman and the payment of surplus to distant shareholders. The principle is solidarity, not charity. As such, this small initiative suggests a new form of solidarity trading could emerge as a new paradigm for people interested in working on trade for social goals. We could call it 'Just Trade'. The power of naming it thus may arise by provoking us to question what we have hitherto assumed is either 'ethical' or 'fair' in the area of trade.

Just Change is the latest example of the forms of innovation possible as information and communication technologies spread further for cheaper. Business-to-business (B2B) and peer-to-peer (P2P) applications may become sideshows to new community-to-community (C2C) collaboration in shaping 'Globalisation 2.0' by flattening power hierarchies on our planet. Our global village may be creating itself a virtual village market. If successful, in the years to come the best tea in the West may be found on poor council estates, not high-class cafes.