Make A Cell Call, Pay A Cauliflower

How much is a kilo of phool-gobhi worth? For city slickers, maybe Rs 8 and a hearty dinner. But for the villagers of Western UP, a kilo of cauliflowers represents a 1-minute telephone call to Delhi. And a quintal of cauliflowers can buy you a long and contented conversation with Dubai.

Barter is back in vogue. Milk, fruit and vegetable can be exchanged for cash cards in several villages in rural India. In Todi Tera Birsa, a village in the sugar belt of western Uttar Pradesh, users of mobile phone PCOs set up by Escotel as part of its Cellular Grameen Phone Sewa scheme pay for their calls in kind, milk or sugarcane. It is left for the PCO operator to sell the commodities in the wholesale market, realise cash and then pay back the cellular operators at the end of every month.

Dilshad Ali, an operator in Todi Tera Birsa says,