India is a land of incredible contrasts. It is terribly old and yet the population is very young. The average person earns very little and dies young, but some people are wealthy as the maharajah's of the past (4 of the worlds 10 richest men are Indians) and others live to be ancient. Today we visited the main market in Mumbai, an incredible mix of old and young India. Let me introduce you to some people and ideas, scenes full of sorrows, and smiles and even joy.
In the past there were beggars and amputees everywhere. We saw some today. The most poignant were two children, about the ages of 3 and 5, scampering through the market each with a pillow case, picking up fruits and vegetables being thrown away. They looked very serious as they went about their work and ran away when I took their picture. Later in the day I found an old woman, bent over a pile of garbage, looking for something to salvage. The two young children were of India's past and do not have much of a future.
Today, the present is much better for millions of Indians. We visited 15 different merchants today, including some high end shopping malls operated by Reliance and Hyper. Some of these men are very successful and wealthy, selling thousands of boxes of fruit each day. We had a great talk with Sunil Sachdev who sells fruit from Chelan Fresh, Dovex and Stemilt. He will sell 200,000 boxes of Washington apples this year and plans to increase his purchases next year as the consumers prefer our fruit. Then we met with Javed Memon of Kismat Fruit. He sells Goldigger and Chelan Fresh and pears from Domex and Blue Bird. He is very optimistic as his sales are up 50% this year.
We walked through a state of the art cold storage named Foodland used by McDonalds and Papa Johns and Dominoes for all their operations in the entire country. The management, Rajesh Sinha, is first class and the operation clean and secure. For people with education and money, the present is pretty good. The hard part is ignoring the plight of the millions of rag pickers who surround them. The slums are vast and depressing. Yet for some there is a dream of a bright future.
Tarun Chand Arora is such a hopeful young man. He spent two months last summer in Wenatchee, working for Oneonta Trading. His father sent him up to learn from Dalton Thomas and to bring back his lessons in storage and cold chain supply management. Tarun speaks perfect English, is hard working and has vision. He not only imported 120,000 boxes of apples and pears from Oneonta, CMI and Chelan Fresh, he sells over 1 million boxes of local Indian apples grown in the Himalayan mountains and recently he established a relationship with farmers in China and is importing Chinese Fuji's. The fuji's were frightening as they are beautiful and he can bring them in for only $12 per box compared to Washington apples at $21-25. He walked us through his new cold storage, introduced us to his father and showed us plans for two additional storage facilities in other parts of India. He intends to be the most modern and vertically integrated fruit wholesaler in the country.
In spite of the heat and the crowds, the dust and the decay, there is hope for some of these people. Sadly it will not be a bright future for all, the system is not likely to help those who cannot help themselves.
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