The dogs beat the muezzin to wake me early. It’s freezing. Not the mild 24 degrees advertised Bangla winter. The cab’s late. I wonder if it’s going to happen. The cab driver has no idea where the Crown Prince is. It’s disconcerting to have your driver ask for directions in his home city. But we get there and soon head out of the Dhaka chaos for the provinces. We’re on our way through fields of rice paddy and brick quarries, mustard seed, potato, tomato and eggplant. Carts of cauliflower announce the winter harvest in every town.
We reach Joypara, and meet the branch manager and the area manager. There is a board listing all the branch managers, with the numbers in Bengali – not the usual numbers, and 8 is now 4. This is elsewhere.
We got to a centre meeting, centre number 5 of 60 belonging to the branch. We head into the district and stop by a road and head down a path through a village and find a small corrugated iron hut, about 15 metres by 7 metres, in which the women of Grameen wait for us. There are 60 of them, 10 groups, all saried and expectant, holding their loan repayments, wads of taka, and looking at us, me, Andy and Jill, for the weird voyeuristic interlopers that we are. This is it. This is where Grameen lives and works, with groups like this, with nearly 8 million members now. The centre chief stands and proudly explains how she joined Grameen 20 years ago. Her husband asked her to get a loan so the family could by a milk (miltch) cow. Another woman explains that she only recently joined and was skeptical about the bank but now finances her family’s fertilizer business with Grameen loans. An image emerges, the loans are used not just by the women but their families. This qualifies one of the myths of Grameen – that it liberates women and their personal entrepreneurial power – but reinforces the community connection of the bank, and explains why there seems to be little opposition among the men. We are shown the houses of borrowers and their families. One husband shows us how they have moved from a single room shack – with their 5 children – to a 6 room iron roofed house. His pride is real, even if the event feels a little like a show tour. A borrower shows us her daughters chicken farm – thousands of chicks in a kind of floodlit marquee, kept to be sold as meat. Another image emerges, Grameen as a micro-Goldman Sachs. They are the venture capitalists of rural Bangladesh.
3 Comments
Sounds very interesting, Mark. With the risk of sounding a bit naive or uninformed, are these loans paid back with interest? I imagine that Grameen would have had to, at least early on borrow money themselves – and where did that money come from?? Does the “state” own a piece of this pie? And why is it the only bank in the country to take deposits? Lots of questions, sorry – not being cynical.
Hi Dean. Yep, they charge interest – you pay 1100 for every 1000 taka borrowed. Grameen had plenty of help to get going from donors, and later borrowed money. They are now generally self-funding (ie they lend customer deposits), but benefit massively from past support. The state owns 5% of the bank, the members the rest (ie 8m poor people). It’s the only microfinance bank to take deposits from the public – there are loads of ‘commercial banks’ here that take deposits. Cheers, M
Mark
The grameen model appears to be a real winner which is a tremendous model in a developing nation/community. It builds dignity and self esteem which is a important element. A “Grameen” engaged community seems so much more enriched then our community which is full of opportunity and human endeavour but also dispair and a lack of community involvemnt unless it follows a disaster of some shape. Our capitalistic ways have led to a over complicated lifestyle of enough is not enough. Yes I am sure the “Grameen” engaged communities would like to have an improved community and they would say to a level like ours, but to what end. I see their sense of community not only inspiring and on the edge of life, but I see it as a way of achieving a journey on a path to improved inner wellbeing. Mark, thank you for the blogs and the commitment to learn and make a difference to the world.
Cheers, Peter