A New Capitalism (Um Novo Capitalismo)

We decided to make this film in 2008.

The first country we visited was India, in October, 2008,

when the American Congress

announced the largest private bank rescue plan in history.

That same month, there is an ancient festival in India called Diwali.

It's a sacred festival celebrating the victory of good over evil

inside every human being.

After that crisis, social inequality only got worse.

According to a study from Oxfam, the world's 63 richest people together...

SOCIAL INVESTOR - VOX CAPITAL

...are just as wealthy as the world's 3.5 billion poorest people.

The stories we want to tell in this film try to demonstrate that restlessness

towards the extreme inequality we see around the world.

After all, what is the legacy each one of us wants to leave to the world?

What kind of society do we want to build to be more sustainable and more inclusive?

A NEW CAPITALISM

Poverty is darkness.

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR - GRAMEEN BANK

You don't see anything at the end, what's happening. It's...

You are trapped in a-- in a kind of a box,

uh, where you don't see any opening.

I remember vividly when I was hardly four or five years old.

Next door, two houses away,

I heard shouting and yelling in the early morning.

And I was told that the pregnant woman, during delivery, died.

FOUNDER - ARAVIND EYE CARE SYSTEM

That lady must have been hardly about 20 at that time,

and that upsets me.

A young woman hardly 20 years old suddenly dying

and you don't see her anymore.

And I thought, can we do something to prevent it?

Earlier, I was cutting edges. Later on, I couldn't do that.

Due to blindness, I could cut wrongly.

So I started to work as a sweeper.

Slowly, I started to have blurred eyesight.

I went and told my uncle about my eye problem.

After sunset, I couldn't see.

One day, my mother fell sick.

So my son and I went to buy medicine.

On the way, I had an accident with a bike.

In the darkness, I couldn't see the light.

I cried out to my son.

Then he came near me.

With his help,

I crossed the road and came home.

I came and cried to my mother.

I told her that I had an accident.

She consoled me. We asked someone for help.

I feel at times, if I become blind, my son will become an orphan.

How will we lead our life? At times, I felt like that.

ABOUT 39 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE WORLD ARE BLIND.

AND 8 MILLION OF THEM ARE IN INDIA.

So cataract is basically a clouding of the lens.

So the lens normally is a clear and crystalline structure

and this opacifies over time.

But we can prevent blindness because of cataract.

And that is done through the help of a simple surgery

where we remove this opacified lens

and instead implant a plastic IOL lens or similar power to the eye,

so the patient will be able to see very well after the surgery.

ARAVIND EYE HOSPITAL

We have a hospital here, in Aravind, in Madurai,

or any of our locations.

CHAIRMAN - ARAVIND EYE CARE SYSTEM

We have a paying hospital and a free hospital.

If you see the paying hospital, if we get about 1000 patients here,

we'll get maybe, like, 300 patients in the free hospitals.

I don't insist that the man must pay me before I do anything for him.

I say, "I'll give you the sight, man."

Let him give whatever he can give. If he cannot afford, it doesn't matter.

He can give later.

AT AVARIND, AN APPOINTMENT COSTS LESS THAN A DOLLAR.

THE NUMBER OF PATIENTS

THAT CHOOSE TO PAY FOR THE APPOINTMENT

IS THREE TIMES HIGHER THAN THE ONES

THAT SEEK FREE OR SUBSIDIZED TREATMENTS.

PEOPLE PREFER PAYING A SMALL AMOUNT THAN NOT PAYING AT ALL.

THAT SYSTEM ENSURES THE SERVICE'S SURVIVAL

AND PRESERVES THE PATIENT'S DIGNITY.

Before coming here, at home, I couldn't see properly.

The vision was partial.

In this eye, there was a burning sensation.

When I had burning, I used to remain at home.

By God's grace, I'm making the effort and trying to do business successfully.

There is also the problem of having blind people...

OPHTHALMOLOGIST ARAVIND EYE CARE SYSTEM

...in the age group who are productive.

And, at that age, if someone is not able to see,

they cannot support their family,

in which case they become a burden to the family.

And it's not just them they'll have-- find difficulty supporting,

but the family also.

Someone has to stay back at home and take care of them.

So that kind of ruins their life the next ten, 20, 30 years after that.

I thought of even admitting my son in an orphanage.

When I had eyesight problem, I told my uncle.

Uncle took me to the hospital. He inquired here.

I was taken to the doctor. After consulting them, I got operated on.

Initially, Dr. Venkataswamy, like, he always--

he was very much

for the fact that we had to make eye care accessible to all,

irrespective of the amount they were able to pay.

So there was a concept of trying to give eye care

at a very subsidized rate or even for free.

Uh, even at that stage, it was found

that there is still a lot of blindness in the villages.

And then it was found that the patients did not come for eye care

for various other reasons.

For example, they had a big inhibition about trying to go to this big city,

a new hospital, a new place.

The council asked how they would get to-- The transportation was an issue.

The cost of it was an issue.

So having all these factors figured out,

then evolved the concept of having community outreach.

That's when we had the eye camps initiated,

and then teams started to go out to the different rural areas,

and the message was spread.

So then the patients found it much easier to come on that specific date,

and they would get their eyes checked up.

And if surgery was required,

they are brought in by the same van to the hospital to have surgery,

and dropped off back at the point

where they were picked up in their own villages.

His concept, he had been to America several times,

and he had seen McDonald's shops all over America.

And he found that the infrastructure being the same,

the quality of service is the same, and the product quality is the same.

So he felt that if we are able to do the same thing,

they can create similar infrastructures,

train people to do cataract surgeries the same way,

take care of the preoperative care, post-operative care,

all that in a particular way,

we may be able to take care of the problem of the blindness.

Because the cataract

constitutes maybe 80 percent of the blindness at that point of time.

FREE LODGING

THE SECOND MOST POPULATED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, INDIA,

HAS AROUND 1.26 BILLION INHABITANTS.

AROUND 46.5 MILLION HAVE BEEN TO THE ARAVIND.

The most expensive thing

is to create the infrastructure,

having the equipment instruments, setting up the operating room, all that.

Second is the human resources, especially the doctors.

If you have a way to maximize the productivity of your doctor,

maximize the productivity and usage time of your equipment instruments,

then definitely you can make surplus from your operations.

One thing we do is, uh...

to make sure that doctors do what they daily have to do.

Which means we have a lot of delegation of responsibilities

to the paramedical manpower, who are not so expensive.

So ophthalmologists do a lot of measurements.

So instead of the doctors doing it,

we have the paramedical ophthalmic personnel do that work, like our nurses.

The surgeon's whole energy was into trying to do the surgery

much better and in light kind of times,

so they'll also be much faster because they've been doing it for so long.

And when they do volume, they tend to see more problem cases, more complex cases,

And with that, their skill level will also improve.

Like all of the major hospitals,

both are paying outpatient department and a free outpatient one.

Both are separate.

So anybody who goes into paying or free, it is up to them,

we don't force anybody.

Even if somebody goes to the free hospital,

we don't ask for any document

to show that they are socially or economically backward.

So we leave that choice to the patient.

In terms of surgery or in terms of the amount

you expect on each surgery,

it does not matter if it's a patient who can pay

or if it's someone who does not pay for his own surgery.

But what does matter is we might do a different technique

for a patient who pays.

For example, if a patient is paying for a multifocal eye lens

so he can have the latest technology.

So that obviously we have a small difference there,

but in terms of looking at the amount of respect you'd give to that surgery

or in terms of complication-free, or the quality, or the amount of time,

it would be the same, irrespective if they are paying or the free surgery.

In the free hospital, we have those patients

who have not as severely advanced cataracts or a very severe pathology.

If you look at these patients from some of these camps,

but for this camp, probably they would be at home blind.

So you know that they're making a life-changing experience for them

with this simple five-minute procedure.

So that gives certainly a lot of satisfaction.

That is something which the surgeons definitely do, uh, value a lot.

- -

After getting operated on, I could see and walk well.

Now the eyesight is very clear, I could see clearly and walk around.

When I go out with my son, I can see clearly.

He is also satisfied now.

First, I worked as a cleaner.

I take and give cloth pieces to them. They'll stitch those pieces.

Now I help her in the household work.

I can cook on the stove, too. With that, I do the household work also.

I could see clearly after keeping that lens.

I felt very happy.

Today, the blindness of the world

may be the failure to see