The Superflux Blog

The idea of a having a supermarket at your doorstep, or selling products door-to-door as a form of ‘customer service’ is very popular in India. In most parts of the country fruit and vegetable vendors go in their carts, carrying fresh supplies for the residents. But apart from these usual suspects, we also have unique products being sold at our doorstep. One amongst them is the ‘edible gum selling service’.

Meet Hari, a lanky 23-year old, father of one, who walks several miles from east to the west of Ahmedabad,  selling special kinds of ‘masalas’ or spices such  edible gum which is used as a binder in several sweets, cinnamon sticks, black pepper, dry dates and dry mango powder.

The system: He is hired by the grocery shop owner in east Ahmedabad, to carry a little bundle of spices and travel to the west of the city, for a daily commission of 25%. At the end of the day Hari manages to sell goods worth Rs 200 – 300 (£4 approx) and gets Rs. 50 (75p approx) for his work, just enough for his family’s evening meal.

Hari believes that his strongest assets are his ability to walk long distances, and his loud, compelling voice that attracts young children, who love chewing on dry dates. His other loyal clients include mothers who plan to buy edible gum for cooking sweets, specially during the festive season. (approx one every other month). But he also explores new neighborhoods in the hope of attracting more clients.

Hari is a service provider, a physcial ‘touchpoint’, an entrepreneur, a labourer and much more. There are loopholes within this service, functionally, legally and ethically. How does the grocery-owner trust Hari to stick to the same prices, and not sell the goods for a higher prices to his customers? On the other hand, why doesn’t Hari demand a bigger commission?

Many such small ‘business-services’ fit into the networks of our daily life in India, with deep connections to the food we eat (including sweets bound with edible gum!) and the social structures we live by. Often these are exploitative and corrupt, and India’s feudal heritage is often blamed for these flaws. But these loopholes allow for a large population without a home address and a bank account to earn a living, which otherwise would have been impossible. And importantly, this seemingly ‘organic’ system also creates less waste, minimal packaging and almost no carbon footprint, making it highly sustainable.

Featured in this month’s Wired UK, with a rather interesting title!

First up in our investigation into local Indian services is the rather unlikely ‘Blood Selling Service’, available as an ‘underground service’ in many large cities.

Teen Darwaja, one of the most populated areas in the old Ahmedabad, used to be one of the hangouts for the ‘donors’ and agents.

Few years ago I had worked on a project with GAP (Gujarat Aids Awareness and Prevention Unit), working closely with the blood-selling homeless people of Ahmedabad. For a small payment, they sold upto 6 bottles of blood every month. The service was wholly managed by touts or agents, who gave every ‘commercial donor’ a code number. Once every week, the tout would go to the specific areas where the donors were likely to hang out, and shout out the code numbers. Some of the donors who turned up, would be driven in a van,  to the buying organisation for ‘donation’. The system was profitable to all involved. The donors received a small ‘compensation, that helped them buy food and drugs. (Ofcourse, consequences on the health of the ‘donors’ as well as the ‘recipients’ of this blood were fatal, but profitability and survival needs overruled that.)

Rows of homeless people waiting outside this shop serves ‘Ram Roti’ or free food every evening. Donations are made to the shopkeeper from people who wish to help homeless people, and based on the amounts received, people are fed.

Over the last few days, we went back to places in the walled city where we would be able to meet and talk to some of the ‘blood sellers’. But things have changed. The atmosphere was a lot more chaotic, and people seemed angry and reluctant to talk. After a few inquiries it became clear that the ‘touts’ or ‘agents’ who manage this service, were certainly not interested in talking about this either.  I also learnt that the founder of GAP, Radium Bhattacharya, who would be able to help me get in touch with these agents, sadly passed away a few months ago. Our deepest condolences to the family.

For our project, we had spent a lot of time here, as many of the people coming for Ram Roti would also ‘commercially donate’ their blood during the day.

The idea of selling blood commercially dates back to the 1940s when the blood transfusion system developed. In fact the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza depended partly on forcible ‘donations’ from political prisoners to stock his commercial blood bank, which was licensed by the US FDA, and exported its stock to the US and Europe. Today this is a crime and unacceptable in most parts of the world.

But here in Gujarat, this activity is prevalant, as a recent report quoting the Chief Medical Officer from Gandhinagar states. And our exploration into this ‘edge-service’ continues…

We are working in India currently, which gives us an opportunity to observe the local services and the service economy that thrives in our country from a ’service design perspective’. Specially becaus ’service design’ as a new ’saleable’ design service is only just getting attention, while age-old services designed from necessity, often through ‘jugaad‘ are highly innovative and sustainable.  Stewart Brand also talks about some of these ideas in his recent Long Now talk.

While all this has been said and heard many a times, we are curious about how each of these individual services actually thrive profitably within the large network. We are also curious about the lives and stories of some of these service providers. And so, over the next few posts, we will be documenting and posting some of these encounters.

The title of this post is inspired from the famous Schrödinger thought experiment. A cat is placed in a sealed box with some poison, whether the poison is released or not is controlled by a random ‘quantum event’ such as radioactive decay. In the experiment, the cat must be simultaneously both dead and alive until the box is opened and the cat is observed.

The reason for mentioning the cat-in-the-box experiment is that we are currently working on a very exciting project exploring ‘Quantum Futures’ and what Quantum computing tells us about the nature of universe. Super-challenging-brain-bending physics.

Energy and matter exhibit both wave-like and particle-like properties.

The project is a collaboration with scientists from Oxford University, as part of EPSRC’s IMPACT project, to make science open for public engagement and debate.

Our Quantum World
At a molecular level the world is very different from the way we experience it. For instance, particles may become entangled and exhibit what Einstein called spooky action at a distance. Or a particle can be in a superposition where it is in all possible states simultaneously. These concepts are presented as abstract mathematical equations like this one. While all this may seem bit far removed from everyday reality, we know that abstract mathematical equations (eg. E=mc2) can have profound real world implications. (the atom bomb)

So how will these mathematical equations of quantum mechanics be harnessed? This idea has captivated the imagination of scientists for decades, and they are now attempting to build a machine – a ‘quantum computer’ - that captures the strangeness of the atomic and sub-atomic world to perform tasks practically impossible with conventional technology.

A Quantum Computer in the making (image credit: nanotech.physics.ox.ac.uk)

What might the wider implications of such a machine be? One dystopian scenario could be an information arms race where governments rush to create code breaking machines that will lay bear the secrets of competing nations. A cold war, where the threat of pushing ‘the button’ is replaced with the taping of keys. Or maybe a brighter future awaits where quantum computation allows such complex molecular modeling, that we can instantly deal with any threat of pandemics. And perhaps, by doing so, create a world where the fear of infectious diseases is a thing of the past.

However, beyond all this lies an even more pertinent question: What does quantum computing tell us about the underling nature of the universe? Are we inhabiting just one of an infinite number of parallel worlds as proposed by David Deutsch? And if so, what does that say about our place in existence?

We hope to find out, so watch this space.

Few weeks post TEDIndia, I am still a bit overwhelmed, trying to decompress the experience. Sunitha Krishnan’s images of the many thousands of young girls she continues to rescue from Indian brothels through her organization Prajwala shook the soul. Her words “Very often you find that the victims have an incredible sense of ‘giving’, they will always be happy to give without expectations of anything in return”, will remain a poignant memory.

Another person who made a deep impression was the 16-year old Babar Ali, the youngest school master in the world, teaching hundreds of children in his backyard, while spending his days going to school himself. Babar Ali is my Hero.

Gandhian Anupam Mishra’s apparent nonchalance of the celebratory achievements of Indian business in the world economy was evident in his eloquent speech. He has devoted his entire life to sustainability and creating bottomup tools, way before ‘water harvesting’ was a buzz word.

Photographer Ryan Lobo’s powerful images from Afghanisthan, Liberia and Delhi  made an impact as he described his life’s philosophy: “I followed compassion which lead to fulfillment and everything else (fame, name and money) just followed.” Dr. Anil Gupta’s talk ‘Minds on the Margins are not Marginal’ is also definitely worth a look when its out, so is Shaffi Mather’s who is out to bust corrupt officials through his new entrepreneurial venture. Some of the other talks I enjoyed include Biologist Charles Anderson and his dragonfly-tracking mission, artist A. Balasubramanium and his poetic endevours to ‘make dust from nothing’ and the legendary performances by Usha Utthup, Sidi Goma and Sivamani.

Meeting the other TEDIndia Fellows was the biggest personal highlight of the conference for me. This enthusiastic and exceptionally talented group included people who had committed their lives to rescuing wildlife, teaching slum children, building race-cars, studying primate behaviour, writing novels and much more.  At 18, Ashish Patra was the youngest Fellow, making microbial fuel cells at home (how I wish I had met him when we were doing the ‘Energy Autonomy‘project). And Ashish’s biggest worry in the party later was “How am I going to finish my homework?!” I made friends for life, people whom I will continue to learn from, and share with.

I left inspired. With questions for myself that I want to spend time in the coming year answering, and new missions I am ready to embark upon (nodding to the gift card!) Most importantly, with a reassured commitment and focus towards Superflux and what we would like it to be.

But with also a few questions about what the role of a critical perspective is, in this sort of a gathering. Will India’s future mean following a path of progress and development that has clearly proven wrong for the environment? Or will we look for alternatives, explore other possible futures, and have the courage to risk new approaches that are sustainably profitable to its one billion+ people?

Next week I will be attending TEDIndia as a TED Fellow, and I am definitely looking forward to it. The theme of the conference is ‘Future Beckons’ and conference line-up is absolutely fantastic. Some of the speakers I am very keen to listen include Hans Rosling, R.A. Mashelkar, Banny Banerjee, Kiran Sethi, Anil Gupta and Shashi Tharoor.

Questions to be raised during the conference:

• Which local innovations are destined for global impact?
• Who are the young thinkers and doers capable of shaping the future?
• Can there be economic advancement without environmental destruction?
• Can a pluralistic democracy survive in the face of rising fundamentalism?
• Can we make money and be good? Really?
• What should we learn – or fear? — from China’s investment in Africa?
• Do we have enough water for everyone?
• How do we keep our youth challenged and our aged healthy?
• How can anti-poverty solutions be brought to scale?
• Is there wisdom to be found in traditional medicine?
• Which other ancient traditions can illuminate modern life?

Meanwhile at Superflux, we are exploring opportunities for projects and collaborations in India, so if you are interested drop us a line.

The Power of 8 show ran successfully for three weeks at the Watermans Gallery and we are now trying to get our lives back, and new client work (with the Courtauld Institute of Art and Southern Water amongst others) has kept us busy. We will be posting a complete run down of the show, our concepts and ideas on the Power of 8 blog. Meanwhile we have uploaded images of the show, go have a look! And here is a sneak preview…

Its exciting times here at Superflux. We have a brand new, clean, shiny website! We are still uploading content, but its up in its ‘beta’ state. Thanks to Jon Ardern for the development and drupal expertise.

On 22nd September we are opening the Power of 8 project to the wider public as part of the London Design Festival. We present Acres Green: A Proposal for an alternate, augmented ecosystem. The exhibition runs upto 12th October, and we would love you to stop by.

Lastly, I  am very excited to become a TEDIndia Fellow, also check out the other 102 talented, amazing fellows! I will attending the TEDIndia 2009 conference later this year in Mysore.

I spoke at Interesting 2009 yesterday, a fabulous one-day conference organised by Russell Davies. The most important rule of the conference is: “Talk about something interesting as long as its not your work”.

My talk was titled “Superpowers I grew up with”: I talked about the Superpowers not in the marvel sense of the world, but instead referring to the dichotomy between progressive science and age old mythologies which form an important part of our everyday urban lives in India.

What I like about this dichotomy is the amazing paradoxes it produces, and how a population as large and diverse can in large parts believe in these paradoxes.  Out of an extraordinary sense of faith, often in the most difficult circumstances. The magical, mythical effect that these paradoxes produces leads me to believe that they are indeed ‘Superpowers’.

I will upload the slides on slideshare after the busyness of the ‘Power of 8‘ opening is behind us, but meanwhile here are some key slides.