Early on the morning of March 18, after a 30 hour trip from Mazatlan to Houston to Frankfurt to Chennai, I awoke to honking horns and high humidity. The rain clouds flew by my 18th floor windows and below I could see men still sleeping on the rooftops of the buildings across the street. Men who were wrapped in thin blankets, soaking from the rain, trying to huddle together to keep body heat. As I watched one of the men got up, stretched, and walked over to a fire ring where he started a small wood fire to boil water. I took a photo of this one of the 11 million souls who live in Chennai. This city was called Madras for hundreds of years, but the Indians have renamed it any many other cities, like Bombay which is now Mumbai, to try to erase the colonialism of their English past. This city is immense and crowded, it is the worst traffic I have ever seen, far worse than Mexico City or Cairo. But our Apple Commission employees tell me it is nothing compared to Mumbai and Delhi, which we will visit in the next few days.
When we had breakfast at the delightful restaurant on the 18th floor, I walked across the patio and saw street cleaners, taximen, gardners, shoeshiners, beggars, businessmen, police, security guards, children, women carrying heavy baskets and burdens and the rising sun filtering through the rain clouds and the oppressive, humid day began in beauty and privilege in this hotel surrounded by squalor.
What an adventure.
Our man in India is Sumit Saran. He lives in Delhi and has been to Wenatchee at least 10 times. He represents apples, pears, California grapes and prunes and turkish hazelnuts throughout the country of India. He is smart, fluent in English and communications. The morning began with trips to five different grocery stores that promote apples and pears. We interview the managers, the staff, watched them stock the shelves. One of them, Kovai Nilayam, owns several small fruit markets and he sells over 250 boxes of Washington apples a week. At an average price of 95 RP (Rupees) per kilogram, he is not making much profit. The exchange rate is 40 RP equals one dollar. So he is selling our apples for about $1.00 per pound. He pays $20 per box plus a 50% tariff and shipping. Thin margins. The grocers back home make a much higher markup. Still, he loves our quality fruit and wants more of it, more varities and he smilingly asks if we can get him a little bit better price.
It was fun taking photos of the markets and the people surrounding them. The drivers dodged in and out of crazy traffic and none of us was hit by oncoming cars, although I had a close call. These drivers use the English road rules, and they trice on the wrong side of the road. Many pretty young women walking in colorul saris. Some muslims completely covered by black burkas. The people speak Hindi, or some Tamil, and they cannot understand the other. Sumit laughed and said: "The only two things that holds India together are Cricket and Bollywood." You probably do not know anthing about either, but since most Indians have gigantic differences in caste, class, language, wealth, religion and education, it is the love of the violent, sappy romance movies that are pumped out of the film studies in Mumbai that unifiy the nation.
Later in the afternoon, Sumit and his staff assembled all the local media for a Washington Apple press conference and it was impressive. A power point on the huge growth in sales from 2001 to 2007. Over $17,5 million in revenue last year. Over half of all imported apples are from Washington. And Chinese apples are about half the price, but the market wants quality and we can provide that. We saw Stemilt, and CMI and Chelan Fresh apples and they were beautiful. The audience asked some good questions and some silly ones. One man said: Why don't you bring your trees here and grow us some good Washington apples here so you don't have to ship them? I guess you cannot blame him since every bank, credit card company and high tech company in America is doing just that by outsourcing thousands of good jobs here. This country has 1 billion people. Their middle class is over 100 million. Still there are hundreds of millions of poor people, but the economy is growing, the markets are thriving, and we should be able to do well here for many years to come. The journalists repeated the mantra that India will be the largest economy in the world by 2050. They do not intend just to catch us, they expect to surpass even the 1 billion Chinese next door.
In the evening we flew to Coimbatore and we will do it all over again tomorrow.
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