What if bartering still existed?
#29: To avoid money-related disputes, a village goes back to bartering
Hello friends, Hemant here.
Easy But Hard is a short story collection of people and incidents that are easily forgotten.
With today’s story, I want to explore if we can ever be in a world that functioned without money. The village in the story tried. Let’s read their story about what happened afterward.
⌚ Reading time = 4 minutes
The barter village
Raghu climbed up the few stairs that led to the doorway of another residence in the village. The door was wide open. He had to scream “Bhabhi ji!” twice before a lady came towards the door, panting. In her hand was a giant strainer, with the viscosity of mustard oil apparent.
“4 sacks of rice, please!” Raghu uttered to her. He flipped open a tiny notepad and started scribbling.
“4 sacks? That’s too much, isn’t it? We haven’t even seen that much TV last month, to be honest.”
“Look, I’m just asking for what we agreed upon. Please deliver the sacks to my place,” Raghu walked away.
He moved on to the next house, this time asking for a dozen mangoes instead. At another house, he asked for a jute chair; and at yet another house, he asked for a couple of sarees. By that evening, all the things he had asked for were delivered at his “office,” a makeshift cabin put up near the entrance of the village where every new person entering the village was noted down.
About four years ago, the village had enacted a “no-money” policy. The village heads had noticed enough feuds happening because of money. For some people, the problem was about their land, while for others, it was betting and gambling. According to the village heads, money had done more harm to the village than good.
Like you would expect, they were met with a lot of resistance. How could you tell people not to use money? Not to earn their riches, make their rags to riches stories, dream of expensive gadgets, and, well, general prosperity?
The village heads knew this would disrupt the operations of the village, so they made this change in a phased manner.
First, it was finding ways to create a sustainable economy within the village – which meant the village could grow and eat its own food, weave its own clothes, harvest its own electricity, and so on…
The second step was to start cutting ties with the external world, apart from the essentials. The village heads knew that cutting off the network access was not good for the village, so they had allowed access to TV, phone and internet networks, but the access was monitored by strict protocols.
Because of his diploma in telecommunication, the responsibility of maintaining relationships with the network providers fell on Raghu. Howver, his technical education was not put to use at all. All he had to do was pay the network providers, work with their agents, ensure everyone had proper supply, and let villagers know of any communication from the network providers.
To ensure that they could pay the external people “real money,” the villagers had set up a system. Raghu had found an agent from the nearby town who acted as a liaison between the village and the telecom provider.
The supply chain worked like this – Raghu collected the payment from the villagers, not in cash, but in whatever they had a surplus of. He would collect all this at his office. On the 10th of every month, Haridas, the agent, would come to the office with a pickup truck and take it along with him. He sold these goods in the nearby city and paid the telecom bills through the earnings. For all the hassles, the villagers gave him an extra quantity of goods. He made a 20% profit in the whole arrangement.
Raghu had proposed setting up this supply chain when he realized how big a problem of network connectivity was. He was responsible for appraising all the products that the villagers bartered in exchange for the network connections, and continue to revise prices from time to time. For his services, he too earned a 20% commission.
Yet, Raghu was strictly against the no-money policy. Right before the policy was set up, he had a promising career in the city waiting for him. His degree would’ve allowed him to work at a mobile phone manufacturing company in the nearby city. He was burning the midnight oil preparing for the interviews when the policy was enacted. He had a choice – to stay in the village and leave aside the job, or to leave the village and take the job.
Family ties forced him to stay back.
He felt insulted. What was the point of his entire education? He had dreamt about being a rich man one day – own his SUV that he could drive to work every day. He later wanted to set up his own business in the village, leading to prosperous lives not only for himself, but for the entire village.
All his dreams were shattered with a single decision.
But he had not given up just yet. He first tried to negotiate with the villagers, which obviously didn’t work. Then he looked at all possible occupations that had cropped up because the village was cutting ties with the world. Most of them did not appeal to him. He wanted something that would allow him to maintain ties with the external world. Network management was the perfect opportunity. So when the time came, he hard-sold himself to the village heads, who doubted whether he would be able to do the job.
But when he disappeared to the city for two days and came back with an agent who was willing to work with them, they were convinced. Raghu was happy.
However, Raghu knew an anomaly with this supply chain. The agent was overcharging them by a fair amount. Where his profits should have been 20%, he was actually making at least 100% profits, Raghu was sure. He had enough contacts in the outside world to inform him of the market rates. Yet, he continued to let it be. If the villagers didn’t care about overpaying, why should he? He, in fact, decided to use this anomaly to his advantage.
The next morning, which was the tenth of the month, the agent arrived as always. But he saw an empty office, and Raghu nowhere to be seen. He had disappeared. At night itself, he had called a friend in the city, loaded all the stuff in this friend’s truck, and snuck away. By the time the agent was in the village, Raghu had started selling the goods in the market.
The agent spotted a note stating Raghu wanted to meet him at the city market that evening, with a clear instruction not to talk to the village heads.
Selling the products wasn’t hard. Raghu had cleared the entire stock by evening. As expected, the agent met him in the evening.
“Are you out of your mind? I will go and report this to the village heads tomorrow morning!” The agent said on realizing what had happened.
“Well, let’s have a chat first. I am here to offer you a deal. Instead of asking you to sell the goods, I will pay you 10% of my total profits.”
“Hunh! And how is that fair? I’m reporting you to the village heads right away.”
“Naah, I know you are not going to report me to the village heads. You could have done it today if you wanted to. If you report me, your secret would be out in the open. The committee had agreed on a 20% commission for you, not a 100% commission.”
“Wait, what? Are you blaming me? You have no way to prove…”
“I can always say what I did today was a sting operation to find out the real cost of the products. If I tell them the actual amounts, they will fire you and reward me.”
The agent was silent.
“You have two choices now. Either agree to the 10% commission to keep your mouth shut, or face the loss of the entire money stream. What did you think? You could continue to extort the village for your entire life?”
“And what do you think? You will be able to extort them?” The agent replied.
“No, I am sure I won’t be able to. I will find other sources of income soon.” Raghu said.
The agent thought about the proposal for a few minutes. He had no choice. He took the deal.
“One question – why did you wait so long to slip away? You could have done this earlier too, right?” the agent asked.
“No, if I did this too soon, I would have raised suspicion. But now, villagers are likely to trust me more. They know I provide them with good services. I have worked very hard to see this day come alive.”
Raghu turned his eyes away from the agent.
He went to the telecom office and paid the monthly bill, and then dumped the rest of the money in a bank account. He also signed a form to open a Demat account that he could use to trade stocks online.
His hope was, once he was wealthy, he would inspire others in the village to work towards the same path.
But this was easier said than done…
THE END.
Please please reply to this e-mail and let me know if this story added value, or if there are any areas of improvement.
Happy to hear your thoughts. I feel grateful for all the support you’ve lent in helping me write this series, which has grown to 29 stories at this point. When I started, I had a goal of writing ~25 stories, but with that goal exceeded, my new goal is to get to 100 short stories. I might not publish every week, but I will get there over the next few years.
If you know anyone who might be interested in joining me on this journey, 👇
Thanks for reading :)
Hemant