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Bina, her old rickshaw, and microloan

INAM AHMED
As microfinance champions rally behind their cause at today's conference, troublesome questions will eat away at their enthusiasm. Is this the most effective tool to fight poverty? What else should be in place? Are the ultrapoor getting the benefit?
In the villages far from 1,400 delegates meeting in Dhaka, they are more than mere academic questions. They wonder why the poor are not loaned enough to start a business that could raise them out of poverty, while those who are already well off get generous loans.
Bina Rani, 28, wanted a Tk 7,000 loan from Brac, an NGO with about four million households getting its cradle-to-grave services, for a new rickshaw for her husband. But the Gorma villager in Netrokona, Barhatta
union, could only get Tk 3,000 -- enough for a used rickshaw.
"It is an old thing and needs repairs now and then," says Bina. "Before this, my husband used to rent a rickshaw for Tk 20 a day. Now, we have to repay Tk 85 in weekly installment and about Tk 10 on repair every day. This has hardly improved our life.
"New rickshaws need no repair for at least seven to eight months. We could have seen some real income then."
Microcredit is a useful tool to fight poverty, says Shafiqul Islam, head of Asa, one of the Top Four NGOs, with an outreach of 2.3 million borrowers. "But it alone is not enough. It has to be supported by a number of critical things such as health service and improved law and order."
Dr Qazi Faruque Ahmed of Proshika, an
NGO with 2.5 million borrowers, went a step further. "Nothing will happen unless you support microcredit operation with environment, health and human rights programmes. Any of the issues can eat up the improvement the poor can make with microcredit."
Both agree that more funds need to be committed to fight poverty -- a theme that the microcredit summit will try to promote -- and that specialised packages need to be introduced to reach the ultra-poor. They comprise about 40 percent of the poor and are ill-served by microcredit organisations.
Whatever the discourse may be today, fear stalks Bina's every waking moment. She watches her husband slowly wither away from gastric ulcers and more often than not, he cannot take out the rickshaw. .
Shefali of the same village bought a cow with loans from a local microcredit NGO.
"The cow is still too young to give milk, but I have to pay the monthly installment, which means I have to find money from other activities to pay off the loan," she says. "I know when the cow will start giving milk, I will be better off. But for now, I find life difficult."
There are some success stories. About three kilometres from Gorma village, Anjali has borrowed six times in six years and given all the money to her husband, who runs a butcher's shop in Barhatta market.
"My husband had to borrow from money-lenders at high interest rates to buy goats," said Anjali, who now considers her husband a rich man in the village. "Today, he gets cheaper loans from Brac. This has saved us a lot of money. Next year, I hope to receive more loans to increase his business and build a concrete house to replace the tin shed."
When the microcredit leaders gather at the summit, they may not know of the women of Gorma village, whose experiences epitomise the complexities of microcredit. But they should.