What advantage does a lot of money bring to our lives? Better standard of living, enhanced quality of food, and a lot of material assets. While trying to find an appropriate answer, I figured that the most valuable thing money gives, is freedom. Freedom to do anything, anytime. It gives you a sense of control. When in Mumbai, I used to travel in the opposite direction from Mulund to Thane just to get a seat. The best part of the reverse journey was to be on Thane station platform number one. Before the train stops, people jump into it as if their life depends on getting that seat for the journey.
Life is fast in cities. People are always rushing. If they are on the road, they need to reach somewhere as early as possible. On the other hand, village life seems slow. From my limited experience, I feel that people in rural areas have a lot more control over their time. Surely, life is not as easy specially if you have to do physical labour throughout the day. Both the sides have their own pros and cons.
I recently came across a concept called ‘FIRE’. It is an acronym for Financial Independence, Retire Early. If one spends frugally, lives modestly, and saves and invests for a decade or two, one can achieve early retirement. Balaji Srinivasan in a podcast with Tim Ferris says that one should move to ‘some very inexpensive locale’ to save 5X costs. Once a person has a significant amount of money (equal to 25x his yearly expenses), they can let the money work and retire.
One of the main benefits of financial independence is that we can have control over what we want, when we want it, with whom, and how long we want to work towards it. Kashipur in Odisha, where I’m working as a fellow, has definitely taught me a few of these lessons.
As a part of my work, I met some of the people doing well as farmers in their villages. An average well-to-do farmer has an acre or more of land. They grow vegetables, rice, cashews, and a lot of different crops on their farms. They live a simple lifestyle. The expenses are not too high but they have a lot of control over time. Have they been following Balaji’s advice!
Health, education, and ration are available free or at a subsidized rate. But they do have their own share of problems. Other than farming, there are no opportunities. It’s not as bad as it seems. However, this applies only to the farmers doing well. In my last blog, I wrote about a village, its challenges and how it is difficult to find a sustainable solution. However, blaming anyone is not the way out.
In the first two months at Agragamee, I learnt that only 3 out of 10 farmers continue to use the methods on which they are trained and supported for five years. I was furious and the immediate thought was – “what a waste of time, energy, and money”. On the other hand, I did not do anything extraordinary after my 10th grade till the final year of graduation. Still, my parents kept investing on my education year after year. Does it mean that all the resources spent by them, my teachers, and many other people who contributed to my growth, were in vain?
Just being surrounded by a lot of smart people also helped me make smart decisions. Being born in one of the most developed places in the country gave me 100x more opportunities. Here, in Kashipur, an average teenager spends time getting water for the house, cooking, taking care of the farm, going to the weekly market and selling the produce. Having a phone and an internet connection is becoming the new normal but its use for anything other than entertainment is still uncommon. Learning to use ‘Google Translate’ has proved to be a boon.
A lot of decisions taken by people here appeared dumb to me. I tried to dig deep into why things are the way they are, and realized that the problems are just intertwined with multiple variables including lack of information that makes it difficult to find a way out. For example, mangoes are sold here at INR 20-40 per dozen which is dirt cheap. This is because most of the people have mango trees in their farms. Transportation and accessibility are also an issue, hence they have to sell it locally. Traders offer low prices and people are ready to sell at that.
A few times, the decisions may actually be foolish but people are not. Everyone seems to be doing their best with all that they have. Many times, people do not have an answer to certain questions. Just like, I do not have a rational response to my mother’s concern about why I would leave my corporate job in Mumbai to live in an underdeveloped area and work in a sector about which I’ve neither studied nor experienced.
Found this very interesting “I did not do anything extraordinary after my 10th grade till the final year of graduation. Still, my parents kept investing on my education year after year. Does it mean that all the resources spent by them, my teachers, and many other people who contributed to my growth, were in vain?”.
I am thinking maybe its time to stop judging the merits of farmer trainings solely by production outputs.
Found this very interesting “I did not do anything extraordinary after my 10th grade till the final year of graduation. Still, my parents kept investing on my education year after year. Does it mean that all the resources spent by them, my teachers, and many other people who contributed to my growth, were in vain?”.
I am thinking maybe its time to stop judging the merits of farmer trainings solely by production outputs.