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India's Indira canteen: The best meal you can buy for 13 cents

bbc.co.uk

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Re: India's Indira canteen: The best meal you can buy for 13 cents

#41

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

shostack wrote: post #32
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would really depend on what the target demographic was of those neighboring eateries, wouldn't it? I'll use an American analogy to illustrate, and so I'm sorry in advance if it doesn't translate well. In the Washington D.C. area (where I have several friends working), the restaurants are overwhelmingly high-end. A meal at a standard Panera bread is one of the more affordable options, and costs you somewhere betw…

Without judging people's situations, I have to wonder at why people earning minimum wage would be eating out at Panera vs bringing lunch from home for much less money.

So, rent in the DC area starts at about $1400/mth. Period. If you're okay living with three roommates, you might be able to eke out something livable at $700 a month. But then you're sharing a house with people you don't know, and young women might be especially uncomfortable with that.

Your other option is to live in someone's guest room or basement for $600. The people who rent out these rooms usually expect to be renting to college students, and so there is often very little by way of accommodations: the room may be 10x10" and include little more than a bed and a desk. The family will also make it very clear that the tenant is not allowed to use the kitchen, making cooking impossible. So the tenant is pushed to live meal-to-meal, as it were, with little expectation of being able to store or prepare food long-term.

Re: India's Indira canteen: The best meal you can buy for 13 cents

#42

Post by rohit2412 »

geodel wrote: post #13
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

> Economists say the canteens are a burden on the exchequer but they are a hit with politicians in a country where hundreds of millions of people live on less than a dollar a day The difference between these projects and soup kitchens is these are chiefly political projects. The state borrows to pay for patronage and largesse. No doubt, the vendors were not selected through an open auction.

The deprivation is rather severe in India. You would notice most of the people are doing full day of work and eat there. In US typical person who eat at a soup kitchen would quite likely be non-working/homeless. I have had my well-off friends in India where 4 person family dinner will cost more than monthly salary of their car driver. And it is simultaneously true that driver's salary is quite less and a decent resta…

Monthly salary of a driver is atleast 10k INR ~ 154$,

Your friends are eating at a place that costs 2500 INR per head? That's not a decent restaurant meal, that's a lavish restaurant.

I would say 200 INR gets you a decent restaurant meal.

Re: India's Indira canteen: The best meal you can buy for 13 cents

#43

Post by moftz »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #29
nocoder wrote: post #12

I have seen these in bangalore, in fact there is one very close to my office. One of the things that concerns me with such projects is that how they effect other eateries in the area. The one near my office that opened recently is on a street with about 5 other eateries. Having a eatery which is subsidized by government distorts this local market and adversely affects the other businesses in the area since they also…

That would really depend on what the target demographic was of those neighboring eateries, wouldn't it? I'll use an American analogy to illustrate, and so I'm sorry in advance if it doesn't translate well. In the Washington D.C. area (where I have several friends working), the restaurants are overwhelmingly high-end. A meal at a standard Panera bread is one of the more affordable options, and costs you somewhere betw…

Maybe there is a Veblen goods kind of situation going on here. If I made enough money to eat out every day for lunch, would I want to go spend my lunch at what is essentially a soup kitchen or would I want a venue that is nicer? India still has a caste system so I would imagine the higher caste people would not want to be going to a restaurant where a large portion of the customers would be poorer, lower caste.

Re: India's Indira canteen: The best meal you can buy for 13 cents

#44

Post by jogjayr »

vowelless wrote: post #15
signal11 wrote: post #3

I believe these are subsidized (the article does mention economists complaining that these are a drain on the exchequer). A more subtle point is that these subsidized "canteens" are in urban India, which is already much better off than rural India, where people even now regularly die of hunger[1]. I'm not saying urban poverty isn't a real issue, but the scale of poverty in rural India is much greater. It's worth noti…

> It's worth noting that you can get free food in many places in India (and in some cities in Europe and the US), via the Sikh langar[2] which is funded by charity and volunteers. Incidentedly, Indira Gandhi (After whom the Indira canteen is named) was assassinated by Sikhs. Does the naming of the canteen have anything to do with the assassination ?

Karnataka is governed by the Congress Party of which Indira Gandhi was the leader (and Prime Minister of India). I think that's the only connection.

Re: India's Indira canteen: The best meal you can buy for 13 cents

#47

Post by geodel »

rohit2412 wrote: post #42
geodel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deprivation is rather severe in India. You would notice most of the people are doing full day of work and eat there. In US typical person who eat at a soup kitchen would quite likely be non-working/homeless. I have had my well-off friends in India where 4 person family dinner will cost more than monthly salary of their car driver. And it is simultaneously true that driver's salary is quite less and a decent resta…

Monthly salary of a driver is atleast 10k INR ~ 154$, Your friends are eating at a place that costs 2500 INR per head? That's not a decent restaurant meal, that's a lavish restaurant. I would say 200 INR gets you a decent restaurant meal.

I was trying to show extremities of India. 2500 per head is not really much if some drinks are added. I am glad that you did not go all the way to politician Raj Babbar who claimed for 10 INR you can get a full meal any where in India.

Re: India's Indira canteen: The best meal you can buy for 13 cents

#48

Post by tootie »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #46

I was curious about two points that the article didn't touch on: 1. What are the per meal costs, aka how much of the meal does the 13c cover? 2. Is there some benefit/downside to just "free" food instead of the minimal cost?

It's an oft-cited paradox of consumer choice that people don't value things they didn't pay for. By making them pay a token amount, it gives them skin in the game. Similar to "suggested donation" at museums that are already full funded.

Re: India's Indira canteen: The best meal you can buy for 13 cents

#49

Post by Nano2rad »

vowelless wrote: post #15
signal11 wrote: post #3

I believe these are subsidized (the article does mention economists complaining that these are a drain on the exchequer). A more subtle point is that these subsidized "canteens" are in urban India, which is already much better off than rural India, where people even now regularly die of hunger[1]. I'm not saying urban poverty isn't a real issue, but the scale of poverty in rural India is much greater. It's worth noti…

> It's worth noting that you can get free food in many places in India (and in some cities in Europe and the US), via the Sikh langar[2] which is funded by charity and volunteers. Incidentedly, Indira Gandhi (After whom the Indira canteen is named) was assassinated by Sikhs. Does the naming of the canteen have anything to do with the assassination ?

Congress party cannot do such things. Congress is ruling Punjab. Number of people having food in langar run by Sikhs is not common in Karnataka anyway. So canteen as anti-sikh symbol is not possible.

Re: India's Indira canteen: The best meal you can buy for 13 cents

#50

Post by Brockenstein »

shostack wrote: post #32
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would really depend on what the target demographic was of those neighboring eateries, wouldn't it? I'll use an American analogy to illustrate, and so I'm sorry in advance if it doesn't translate well. In the Washington D.C. area (where I have several friends working), the restaurants are overwhelmingly high-end. A meal at a standard Panera bread is one of the more affordable options, and costs you somewhere betw…

Without judging people's situations, I have to wonder at why people earning minimum wage would be eating out at Panera vs bringing lunch from home for much less money.

There's a pretty large demographic of people making minimum wage or low wages.

Some people just aren't responsible with money, they don't budget, they don't live within their means, they don't really think or care to look at the expenses or how they add up.

If you did a Venn diagram of low wage earners and people who aren't really responsible with their money, those are the people eating at Panera Bread, or buying things from Rent-A-Center or taking out high interest loans and engaging in every sort of behavior that compounds the problems with making low wages.

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