Grandpa smelling soaps and worm excrement

After yet another delightful breakfast at the Ginger and a BLACK coffee from my two favorite Café Coffee Day gents we piled into the vehicles for tours of the sandalwood oil and silk factories of Mysore.

Sandalwood is heavily regulated by the government of India, thus the company is owned by the government. Seeing a government owned entity opposed to the privately owned companies which we have visited has illustrated the contrasts of the two.

Being at the government-run sandalwood factory made me think of Friedman’s first flattener: the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of socialism when the flood gates of the world market opened. I can only imagine if that had that not happened all of India’s industry may look like the sandalwood factory. In fact, since India’s first prime minister, Nehru, mimicked the Soviet Union, India’s infrastructure from 1947 until 1991 was mainly government owned. Once they opened their trade barriers their status quo 3% growth more than doubled to 7% growth.

In the past India’s businesses had been mainly owned by the government and only recently has international investors really become a significant part of Indian’s industry with their strict guidelines and higher standards of operations. The sandalwood factory was dirty, to put it mildly. It was housed in an old building which has probably never been updated and the gentleman who was guiding us was very proud of his corroding 80+ year old equipment. And he did a hell of a job explaining everything 3 or more times. Thank god Al got it all on video tape.

By the end of this tour I was starting to feel a bit light-headed from dehydration, perhaps due in part to the light drinking and smoking the night before, but mostly due to the fact that I’m not drinking as much water as I do back in the states because it’s not so readily available. But, you’re only in India once so you just got to suck it up with no complaints.

The silk factory was much cleaner and probably one of the most interesting visits we’ve been on. We were able to see the entire process in house from spinning the fine silk to the weaving machines to the dying process. It was quite interesting to see the workers under conditions in the States which would be considered hazardous and extremely loud wearing t-shirts, loose pants, flip flops and no eye or ear protection. These are things that would never go down in the States, but I often think that our rules and regulations; while they preventative; are babying us.
When I felt completely nauseous and dizzy we were able to go back to the school and blog for hours. Staring at a computer screen catching up on days that have blurred together was little more than difficult.