My girlfriend, Leslie Martin, is a PhD student in environmental economics at UC Berkeley, and will shortly be visiting Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu with a team of five research assistant students who are in an econ masters program. They will be there to study how small firms, particularly firms in the textile industry, deal with infrastructure problems such as electricity shortages. They'll be conducting a survey regarding power shortages, electricity demand, the adoption of generators, and the extent to which firms are able to reschedule labor to times when electricity is available.
Leslie will be there for about six weeks and would probably appreciate meeting some local people in a nonwork context. If any of y'all are nearby, I heartily recommend you drop her a line (she's cc'd above) to say hello. Of course she has many fine qualities and I heartily recommend her society to you! Jeremy
