That is still keeping an asset for at minimum 4 turns because it should help the profitability of something then when we have a good deal of opertunity (and debt) now that that money could help us exploit. I would reather use that capital to scale now than hold onto if for making another enterprise more profitable in 20 years.
Plus if we need to supply our own capital I would think building up more of it to be able to build a steel mill would be more important than a source of iron we can buy at market when we have the mill.
We should easily have enough money to pay off the debts next turn with plenty left over. Income is projected at around 3-12 Profit overall.
And that iron mine is one of our income sources with a guaranteed 1-2 Profit each turn (and is one of the relatively few sources with a guaranteed minimum 1 Profit), so it's hardly costing us to keep it.
Some minimum level of debt can be healthy. It can keep important parties actually interested in future growth, if only to recoup their loan and continue to profit from said loan. That said, you are correct that it would be better to pay it off at our current scale. We are nowhere near large enough for the effect I described to be relevant.
Doing some more research it looks like this coming turn is going to correlate with a global economic depression. This is made worse due to it having a disastrous effect of the value of the Indian currency. This will see a large scale fall in trade for decades and large scale bankruptcies. We do not want to be in debt when this hits.
With that in mind here is a plan that pays of our debt.
[X] Plan Debtless
Trade Actions
- [X]Expand Bombay's Facilities
- [X]Expand Calcutta's Facilities
- [X]Cementing things in Singapore
-[X]Sell your stake in:
--[X]The Iron Mine
-[X]Networking
--[X]Calcutta
---[X]The Local Merchants
Family Actions
-[X]Adit's Letters
-[X]Getting Into Cambridge
Special Actions
-[X]Entertaining
-[X]Make in India
Free Actions
-[X]Pay Down Debt: 1 profit
Having debt isn't an issue as long as the money we're borrowing is paying itself off in some manner, either directly through expansion into profitable industries, or indirectly through information and contacts. That doesn't mean we shouldn't pay it off if the opportunity arises, but like Chimera said, we're making enough money to pay it off without any trouble outside of catastrophic failure.
I'm also highly against selling our staples unless they losing money somehow. The mine in particular is the most valuable thing we own. Tied with the dye trade route in average income of 1.5, and more consistent.
Local networks will affect your Staple routes and potentially offer opportunities inland. Other shippers are the larger merchants who affect exports, industry, and can get information on laws and regulation.
Speaking of the Dye route, I'm uncertain if the Local Merchants option is what we need to increase contacts, if we need to write-in Calcutta, or even if we need to be talking to the British, in which case we need to be pushing hard to get their attention.
If we can take a networking action this turn to start pushing up the Contact number for the Calcutta trade, then I think we should. Even just bringing the 0-3 income spread up to 1-3 will bring the average from 1.5 to 2.0, covering the debt payments we'd be making if we took the networking action twice.
Even if we can't get our contacts up in Calcutta, I think taking debt to network would be worth it. Our current character is cautious, so we might as well use him to build an information network, so that we can make informed decisions in the future when we get the option to push our stuff more aggressively. More immediately, it might get us more options each turn, so we can spend our money more efficiently.
Local networks seem particularly valuable regardless, a large portion of our income already comes from Staples, so if we can find a way to expand them or even find more profitable staples, then I think it'll strengthen our base nicely.
Edit: Well, it would appear the Indian economy is about to nosedive, so maybe being in debt isn't a great idea after all.
Speaking of the Dye route, I'm uncertain if the Local Merchants option is what we need to increase contacts, if we need to write-in Calcutta, or even if we need to be talking to the British, in which case we need to be pushing hard to get their attention.
The chosen focus gives new turn options towards one angle: Local merchants gives more staple route options and potentially more agrarian output (e.g. dye), British establishment gives an in with English industry and plantation owners and so on. You need to write in where, lest I assume you're networking in Bombay which is your central station.
This is made worse due to it having a disastrous effect of the value of the Indian currency. This will see a large scale fall in trade for decades and large scale bankruptcies. We do not want to be in debt when this hits.
...
...
...
Devaluing the rupee is great for exports, no? A weak rupee means that our textiles are more price-competitive on the global market and means we should focus on manufacturing, right?
...also, if our debts are denominated in rupees, and not pounds, devaluation makes our debt easier to pay off so long as we have a source of hard currency -- say, from the Singapore rubber trade, yeah?
Devaluing the rupee is great for exports, no? A weak rupee means that our textiles are more price-competitive on the global market and means we should focus on manufacturing, right?
...also, if our debts are denominated in rupees, and not pounds, devaluation makes our debt easier to pay off so long as we have a source of hard currency -- say, from the Singapore rubber trade, yeah?
On the first point: Exports are a British pseudo-monopoly due to the shipping trade being a British monopoly. Your exports are smaller than your inland sales. As far as debt repayment...yes. Singapore rubber is boosted by the devaluation, while domestic goods are hurt.
Having debt isn't an issue as long as the money we're borrowing is paying itself off in some manner, either directly through expansion into profitable industries, or indirectly through information and contacts. That doesn't mean we shouldn't pay it off if the opportunity arises, but like Chimera said, we're making enough money to pay it off without any trouble outside of catastrophic failure.
I'm also highly against selling our staples unless they losing money somehow. The mine in particular is the most valuable thing we own. Tied with the dye trade route in average income of 1.5, and more consistent.
I am still very against having debt when we are about to experience a global financial depression and an even greater crash in India with the collapse of the currency. That is going to hit our income hard and Mouli has already said there are catastrophes that can happen between turns that could devastate us. The Long Depression and the fall of the rupee both seem like good contenders for that. However I also understand not wanting to sell of staple routs, especially with said crash coming so...
[X] Plan Lifeboat
Trade Actions
- [X]Expand Calcutta's Facilities
- [X]Cementing things in Singapore
Family Actions
-[X]Adit's Letters
-[X]Getting Into Cambridge
Special Actions -[X]Benevolent Society
-[X]Make in India
This plan at least does not see our debt go up when we are facing a global crash. It also focuses on setting up Singapore up more so we have more assets outside of India for when the rupee's value plummets we should have assets insulated from that crash.
Devaluing the rupee is great for exports, no? A weak rupee means that our textiles are more price-competitive on the global market and means we should focus on manufacturing, right?
...also, if our debts are denominated in rupees, and not pounds, devaluation makes our debt easier to pay off so long as we have a source of hard currency -- say, from the Singapore rubber trade, yeah?
To add to what Mouli said the crash will see mass bankruptcies in India disrupting our supply chains and also a large scale slump in Indian exports for years, and the greater global depression will see shipping growth slow to a crawl to the point that the size of the global merchant marine will stay near stagnate until the 1890's. This is not going to be a good time for us when it hits.
[]Entertaining: Vijay has been more withdrawn from public life than before following the death of two of his brothers with their families in '57 and the aftermath. Perhaps now that it's been a year, now that the funerals are long since done and most of the city is slowly going back to its routine, perhaps reentering the public sphere is a good idea. Will rebuild one old contact (rolled in background), and allow actions to entertain or engage in charitable giving, thereby raising the profile of your family and gaining access to more opportunities.
This might be worth considering. Charity will likely be more impactful if the economy is going to be on a downward trend.
[]Entertaining: Vijay has been more withdrawn from public life than before following the death of two of his brothers with their families in '57 and the aftermath. Perhaps now that it's been a year, now that the funerals are long since done and most of the city is slowly going back to its routine, perhaps reentering the public sphere is a good idea. Will rebuild one old contact (rolled in background), and allow actions to entertain or engage in charitable giving, thereby raising the profile of your family and gaining access to more opportunities.
This might be worth considering. Charity will likely be more impactful if the economy is going to be on a downward trend.
I considered it as it is a way to raise profile and get the attention of the British for connections. But with the downturn I want to shore up Singapore as much as possible and with us going into manufacturing we are making a political statement if we like it or not. So I feel its best to make sure we make the most of it. But if people feel strongly about it I could swap it in.
I feel like the Istanbul option is worth exploring; Ibrahim is one of our best trading partners and we'd be trading with someone who isn't the British.
[X] Plan Lifeboat
- [X]Expand Calcutta's Facilities
- [X]Cementing things in Singapore
-[X] Adit's Letters
-[X] Getting Into Cambridge
-[X] Benevolent Society
-[X] Make in India
[X] Plan: Gray Market
-[X] Expand Bombay's Facilities
-[X] Expand Calcutta's Facilities
-[X] Cementing Things in Singapore
-[X] Adit's Letters
-[X] Getting Into Cambridge
-[X] Make in India:
→ Rolls: 88
-[X] Benevolent Society
→Rolls: 85
-[X] Borrow Money (0.5 Profit)
Base Income before expansions: 3+3+1+1+2+1=10-1(Dynasty Upkeep)-1(Interest)=9 Profit.
1870
Bombay in 1870 is something touted as a shining example of the sheer wealth and reach of the British Empire. Seen from afar as one rides a ship into port, it comes into view as a long, dense string of islands and inland cityscapes linked by causeways and reclaimed land, a great teeming human scar carved into the jungles and hills of the Western Ghats. A ship coming into Bombay Harbor will see traffic from all across the rest of the empire, all of them British-built British-owned vessels in a wide range of styles from a series of destinations that seem taken from a world-tour guide. There are light, swift packet steamers from China, carrying high-value freight, cargo, and mail under the White Ensign and with their stern crews of former sailors. There are the vast, black-painted, steel-hulled monsters of the cargo lines, the giant steamships that will make a grand circuit past old, old Egypt through the Suez in the Sinai to England herself, and then back from there to India. There are all these and more, intermixed with the smaller, darting forms of coastal shipping, the captains of these ships not speaking in English and far less inclined to obey the laws of the port than most. It's these captains that Vijay Chandekar meets on the quays of Bombay Harbor, hailing those who've hauled his grain and iron before.
The old merchant nurses an achy knee in the monsoon season as he comes to the docks to inspect what should be a straightforward expansion of the warehouses he owns. As he walks, Vijay's eyes are drawn to a half-built warehouse on a plot marked off as his, a simple wooden shell that's taken far too long to build. The builder is Nathuram Thakur, someone who he's worked with before, not someone to shirk like this. Which is why Vijay Chandekar is polite enough to show up at the construction site with its temporary bamboo fencing around the warehouse, its collection of laborers being shouted at by the site foreman, and simply corral Thakur off to the side for a talk.
The construction manager is a slim, young man with a thin moustache. Right now he's as barechested as the rest of his men, his presence as someone who doesn't need to go up the scaffold obvious with one look at the white dhoti wound around his waist. Vijay looks him in one very nervous eye and points at the warehousing, "I know that you were supposed to finish this two weeks ago, Nathuram. What happened now?"
Nathuram Thakur looks out to the building again, short-cropped hair parted by a long, ropy scar on the side of his head. "The storms, sir. Monsoon has been bad for work this year."
"Don't lie to me." Vijay's cane thumps on the ground as if in emphasis, one or two eyes turning in their direction from the gangs of longshoremen unloading the ships at dock. "I knew your father, and he worked through worse monsoons. There was more than enough to finish the building this season and begin work on the next one after that. Your father for all the ten years I knew him would not have overseen things this shoddily. What happened, boy?"
"My father was here before the Government's new rules." Thakur's tone is sharp and brittle, the word Sirkar, or Government, coming out like some ugly thing. He points at the workers and the scaffolding, "You see those men? All new. The Government is paying more than I can for labor on their new railways and cantonments, all the way in Pune. I cannot get good men, and given how food prices are going I will not be able to pay most of my men enough to eat well. I cut the work crews to the number that I can feed."
"It's just the food?" Vijay's knee twinges again as he turns to the building with fresh eyes, and he can see something of what Nathuram is pointing out. The workmen are less than he thought, one side of the scaffolding empty of builders and the adjacent side's workers being shouted at for clumsiness. One of them drops a plank, sending it crashing twenty feet beneath even as Vijay watches. Vijay amends his question after seeing that, "Food and the men, then?"
"Materials." Thakur's hand scratches at his moustache, smoothing it over afterwards in a mannerism that Vijay can remember the boy's father doing. "Wood is more expensive. And the new directions from the Government for taxing land mean that the landlords aren't selling wood to us easily anymore. We can finish this one in wood, but the other one will be brick."
"I see." Vijay can indeed see where this is going, "The money should cover this anyways, but you were saying that there are new laws on wood and land tax?"
"Some of the men have been saying that." Nathuram shifts uncomfortably, conscious of his youth beside the man that knew his father and at the same time unsure of the truth of what he's saying. "They said that some of the District Collectors have handbooks printed for Delhi and they're using them everywhere. Wood tax is different from grain and has to be paid on cutting. Or so some of the Englishmen in the districts are saying."
"They're not sure of what they're enforcing."
"The collectors are new, sir." Nathuram shrugs as if to dismiss the problem, tired of the topic. "They will learn in time as the laws are learned. The laws are new and the English are new."
"Maybe." Vijay's cane taps on the ground again, and the two of them head back to the building site. The foreman glances their way before turning back to the builder teams, and begins to ostentatiously shout orders. And in the far, far distance, the bells of Government House begin to toll for noon.
Indrajit Chandekar is aging, and doesn't like it. He steps out of his Ballygunge townhouse with carefully dyed hair and a bright purple kurta, every inch the prosperous trader and ignoring any way his wrinkles and lines are clashing with the peacock-like garb he's wearing. Ballygunge stretches out in front of him, a dense jungle of buildings leaning over the street, each one barely wide enough to fit a shop-front and six people before it, each building tall enough to tower three floors overhead. Billboards in curling Bengali are on each shopfront – the sweet-shop, a tailor, a loud advertisement for the best grain and food, on credit – and the shops themselves are crowded with people. Indrajit walks the street to the civil service office near Government House with careful steps, avoiding the odd bit of horse dung and making sure that the heavily built bearer and assistant who's been with him the last decade and a half remains in sight behind him.
The civil service office is a spare, brick building with a Sikh policeman at the door, and the bearer Bipin Bhattacharya hands Indrajit a thick folder from the bag he's carrying before squatting down on the roadside in front of the building and lighting a hand-rolled cigarette. The Sikh makes a move towards Bipin as if to shoo him away, and ceases when Indrajit tosses him a few copper annas and a murmured Leave him be on the way through the doors.
The office itself is divided into little rooms with a secretary at the lobby asking people who come inside for their appointments. Indrajit doesn't bother with the usual formality of haggling, whining about the appointment schedule, and bribing him, and instead hands him a letter with the stamp of the British collector for Calcutta on it. The letter itself is genuine, although it cost a good deal to obtain, and makes the secretary's expression change from haughty glare to smiling compliance as they rise from their desk to lead him to the office of one Arijit Lal, who is the clerk in charge of company registration.
The clerk looks up from his paperwork and gestures boredly at a seat, his office desk a cheap wooden one piled high with folders and papers while a certificate from the Civil Service Board is framed on one all. A clock ticks away on one wall while the rest of the room is bare, the one other personal touch a spittoon in one corner for betel-nut. After a few minutes of waiting for the babu at his desk Indrajit drops his file on the desk and clears his throat, deciding that the best thing to do in this situation is show a bold hand. "I have an appointment, Mr. Lal?" In rough, stilted English, the Chandekar merchant calls the clerk Mister like he would an Englishman, and Arijit Lal blinks in surprise as he straightens up from his paperwork.
"Yes, yes. Let me see that." The clerk takes the file with its applications and its seals of approval on forms in triplicate, and leafs through it with practiced ease. "You have come here to apply for official recognition as a trading company based in Calcutta, a branch of one based in Bombay, and you want to have the authorities give permission for industrial activity?"
"Yes." Indrajit leans back a little in the hard rattan chair, back aching a little from the wood and from a decade of bad posture. He resists the temptation to pull out a pipe and smoke, instead answering the clerk in Marathi-accented Bengali. "I work with family in Bombay, and the permission is for milling. Not for steel or guns or other English business."
"I can see that." Lal turns pages again, riffling through the stack in the file as if to illustrate his statement, before pulling a large rubber stamp out of a drawer in his desk. "And what is this business going to be selling to? I understand that the sahibs in Government House have changed the law on tariffs recently."
"None of your business." It isn't what his brother would have said, but Indrajit doesn't feel like saying anything to a babu who looks through everything with an avaricious eye while speaking all too fondly of the Englishmen in Government House.
Arijit Lal, however, doesn't take that well. "I am a representative of the Sirkar, Mr. Chandekar." He says Mister in the middle of the Bengali sentence with a certain relish, "I need to know these things to make sure that things are legal. I know the law that the sahibs make in Government House, and you do not."
"Ah, but I do." Indrajit resists the temptation to tell the babu to go to Government House and fuck off, and instead smiles in Arijit Lal's plump jowly face and hands him a letter from the district collector. The Englishman's signature and the official stationary change things quite a bit, and Lal sullenly stamps the application for registration with no little resentment.
"Surprising that you're registering, that's all." Lal hands back the file and begins putting together the handwritten letter of authorization that Indrajit needs, talking quickly as he does. Whether that's from a desire to make friends with someone who hobnobs with Brits or out of a sense of shame, Indrajit can't tell. "I've had three smugglers in here, all of them trying to register companies and none of them able to tell me what they sell. I've had more failing companies than you would know, as well."
"Such as?"
"Oh, dozens." The plump little babu hands him the letter and gestures to the door, asking him to leave. "The price rises have made things hard, and a rupee won't go as far as it used to. Not to mention that the Sirkar is cracking down on those who aren't operating with licenses."
"I'll keep that in mind." Indrajit walks out of the babu's office without turning back, but his mind's already turning over what he heard and seeing about taking advantage of it.
You can begin an acquisition spree in Calcutta, of businesses that are unlicensed and unauthorized. This will add one random route and increase notoriety in Calcutta, as well as boosting contacts in the area by 1. It will cost 2 Profit.
[][CALCUTTA]Yes
[][CALCUTTA]No 19th June 1870
Dear Uncle Vijay,
I write to you from the far eastern shore of Singapore, where things are very different from back home. The city is built on an island, they call the whole thing the Straits Settlements in English but most of us just call it Singapura. The place has been growing fast as more and more people come in to trade and to build what the British want to make, that is the seaport, but that also means more and more of the whites and their police are around. Most of those are Sikhs from the Punjab or the north, where they have nothing better to do than enlist under the Sirkar and come across the seas, but some of them are Marathis like us. The port itself is massive, the basin larger than the one in Bombay and the ships here from every land under the sun. I have seen junks from China, the small coasters that the Indonesians use to move between the islands, the British steamships that come into Bombay, and the smaller Dutch steamers that go to the East Indies where the Dutch are pressing people onto rubber plantations…
[…]
Enough of me, though. I heard that father wants to send my brother Neeraj to England for an education. Is this true? It was difficult enough for me abroad and that was with your friend Gurudas there to guide me, for Neeraj to go to England and face them there is not an easy thing. He is a more gentle sort than I am, and you know how bad the English can be. You have met some of them, as have I…
[…]
As far as trade is concerned, I think that Gurudas has attached the ledgers to this letter, but I think I should give you a summary. The rubber trade goes on well to middling, that is to say we are able to buy from the smaller producers on the mainland kingdoms and then collect all that and sell it onwards to British traders, but there is more and more noise about Englishmen and Dutch building their own plantations to compete. We cannot compete with them, for they have more ties to buyers in Europe than we do. We may want to diversify later on, or even now. There are a few opportunities coming up, although few of them are very strong. However, some of our newest contacts in the Chinese workers' associations, called the tongs, have an idea. We can probably take part in the same duty-free trade that they do. While this is technically illegal, it is almost impossible to police thoroughly without inspecting every ship in Singapore harbor, and that is impossible. The size of the place…
[…]
I hope that you and Aunt Renu are well, and I will try to come home to see you later on if I can. Things are very busy now.
Yours,
Adit
You may investigate smuggling opportunities. A route that is marked as smuggling will roll for detection each turn, and if detected will generate no profit and be broken up. You will need to rebuild the route afterwards or change goods. A route marked as smuggling if discovered may lead to legal expenses and fines for the trade station heads. Smuggling routes generate far more profit than regular ones, and are useful avenues to move contraband around the empires.
[][SMUGGLING]Yes: You will have an option to take a smuggling route from Singapore in the 1873 section of the turn, at no extra cost.
[][SMUGGLING]No
AN: Votes are open, and feedback welcome. We have 1871-73 tomorrow and 1874-75 after that. Smuggling puts you more in touch with subversive elements as well as criminal ones, keep that in mind.
