Workin' Girl

I can't believe I have already been in India for a week. I think I am starting to blend in- I've got the scarf flip down, I wobble my head all the time, and I've started to sing along to Hindi songs. For the next seven weeks, I will be working at Mobile Naukri. GDL has a couple of on-going projects, but I specifically chose to work with Mobile Naukri because it is a three-week old project, still in its pilot phase. Mobile Naukri is a solution for the growing problem of connecting job seekers to companies. There are a lot of jobs to be found in India, and there are a lot of qualified people to fill these posts. However, most people in rural India don't have internet, don't have the contacts to these companies, and are thus unable to obtain a job. Mobile Naukri acts as a liason between the two, using mobile phones (absolutely everyone in rural India has a cell phone, including iPhones, and spend upwards of 30 rupees for personalized ringtones).

Basically Mobile Naukri gets in contact with companies who are in need of workers to fill certain positions. They have an ever-growing database of job-seekers who register with Mobile Naukri. These job-seekers call in and fill out a form via phone, than meet with a Relationship Counsler for an initial interview, to get them acclamated to the private sector. When new companies and new jobs are introduced, Mobile Naukri scours this database and sends an SMS to possible candidates. The database has over 230 registered job-seekers from just three weeks of marketing, and nearly a dozen people have been successfully placed in companies.

I will be working as a marketing intern for the rest of my time here. Rural marketing in India is absolutely fascinating, as it requires going out into the field on a daily basis (part of why I picked this project). The full-time marketing staff consists of Pankaj and Deepak, two local twenty-somethings with a panache for tight pants and music. Our boss is Sahil, an American-Indian who is here for one year through IndiCorps. In the middle of last week, Meg and I went to Sultana, a neighboring town about thirty minutes away, with the rest of the Mobile Naukri gang. Basically the marketing team goes into the marketplace, walks around hanging up posters, handing out cards, and talking to people. It sounds pretty basic, but add two white girls to the mix, and it becomes quite the party.

Firstly, there is a lot of gender division in rural India- women don't fraternize with men, and are not really walking out in the streets, they mostly stay at home. Secondly, this part of Rajasthan is not particularly tourist-y, making Meg and I quite the attraction. Walking around and putting up these posters was fantastic- grandmothers came up and patted us on the head, little kids started chasing us and singing songs about the "white girls with bullets for eyes." (A compliment, we were assured by Sahil). We had a great time laughing with all the locals and chatting in our broken Hindglish to people. We also saw a monkey attack a small child. We were walking down a main street, and all of a sudden a monkey came out of nowhere! I quickly moved out of the way, because unlike the cute Curious George, these monkeys look mean. Teeth bared, nails out, the ran down the street, knocking over a small child and stealing his bag full of fruit. Once we realized that the little boy was okay, I came to the conclusion that this was possibly the funniest thing I have ever seen.

The next day, Sahil took me to Jhunjhunu, the biggest city in this district. Since I am the full-time intern at Mobile Naukri (Meg and Siler work at Source for Change in the mornings) I am privy to some special conditioning that will get me prepared for working as a woman in a male-dominated field. We hopped on the bus and bounced along to Jhunjhunu, where a series of obstacles were placed in my way. I was to ask a random shopkeeper for directions (nonsensical directions, I later learned), hail a rickshaw and tell the driver where to take us, pay the driver, and navigate us through most of Jhunjhunu. The main purpose of our journey was to meet some very important friends of Mobile Naukri. In India, all business is done based on relationships, Godfather-style. You have to make friends with a person first, gain their trust and respect, and then they will help you.

We first met Vinoji, who runs an English learning center in Jhunjhunu. He has helped Mobile Naukri find lots of job-seekers who have skills that companies are looking for (language, computer, etc.) He considers Sahil and all of GDL his good friends, and got extremely angry when we tried to leave. The time, he repeated, was not auspicious. Somehow we made it out and moved on to Sandeep, who runs Jhunjhunu's only computer store with his twin brother. Mobile Naukri has formed a good relationship with these brothers, who in turn allowed us to hang a huge banner advertising Mobile Naukri in front of their centrally located store. I am really quite enjoying this business as a relationship model. I got several cups of chai out of it, and had some lovely chats with people. I definitely thought that my gender would be much more of a problem than it is. Really, people are people everywhere- if you are polite, and nice and show them respect, they will like you and want to help you. I hope that by enganging with men on a daily basis, I can get them to at least see that women can be smart and capable of this kind of work. A lofty goal perhaps, and one that is held back by cultural and religious norms, but it's worth a shot.

Namaste,
Sarah