[Bangladesh] Nothing but age changes for the extreme poor

from The Daily Star

Inam Ahmed

On this vast char land in the north, nothing changes but age.

In the fading twilight, Sakhina wraps the pink wrapper around her tight and walks fast, cutting across a wheat field. She has to reach Baraigram village before darkness descends. Her hopes are pinned there. She needs to urgently raise Tk 15,000 to see her 14-year-old daughter married off to a farmhand and the Baraigram villagers promised to see to it. In her 21 years of married life, Sakhina could not save a single dime and today, when the time has come for her daughter's wedding, she feels helpless.

"I am a labourer," she says. "When I came to my husband's home 21 years ago, he had nothing, not even a cow. And I still have nothing."

Not entirely true; she has got the marks of age and hardships on her face, deep lines run across her sun-burnt skin. And she has now two children, a paralysed husband who needs medicines every day, two ducks and two chickens. They all depend on Sakhina, who can earn Tk 60 on those days when jobs are at hand.

Yet, Sakhina could never get a loan from any NGO. The massive microcredit operations of a few thousand NGOs have bypassed her, because she is an extreme poor and a doubtful borrower.

"I wanted to take loans from Brac, but I figured I would not be able to repay the loans," says Sakhina. "How can I, when all I can earn a day is Tk 60 and that too not every day?"

Sakhina and thousands like her today make a volley of questions: Is microcredit the most effective tool to fight dire poverty? What else should be in place? Are the ultra-poor getting the benefits? And a more burning question is: How well are the microcredit borrowers elevated to small business-men and -women to generate employment?

Figures are there that support that microcredit has missed the ultra-poor by and large. At least 30 percent of the total population falls under the extreme-poor category and microcredit could touch only 12 to 15 percent of them, even after much debates, embarrassments and concerns among the NGOs that the wretched have been left out of the credit bandwagon.

There are now about 1.6 million microcredit borrowers, but if overlapping of their memberships of more than one NGOs is considered, the net number will come down to about 1.2 million. A rough estimate says only 10 to 12 percent of them can eventually become small entrepreneurs.

"We have two tough tasks at hand," says Shafiqul Islam, chief of ASA, one of the top four microcredit organisations. "One is to reach the extreme poor -- those who have no ability to repay loans in weekly or monthly instalments. The other is creating the missing middle -- the small business group graduated from microcredit borrowing."

"It is difficult for us to target the extreme poor," says Dr Imran Matin, director of research and evaluation division of Brac. "They are basically the floating population, people who are victims of river erosion and so on. They don't have any permanent address and so chances of getting back loans from them is slim."

But that makes them doubly vulnerable, like Yusuf Ali of Nazirer Char in Kurigram. In his mid 20s, Yusuf looks fragile. His eyes are set deep in the sockets, his collarbones sharply visible. Today he did not have any food in the morning -- the only meal most working-class villagers have until the sundown -- and he does not know how he will manage some food for the night.

"I have not found any job for the last three days," he says. The edge of desperation is clear in the voice. "I am weak and the landowners don't want to put me to work. Even if they do, I get paid less."

Like Yusuf, these extreme poor are getting lower wages, and since they don't have access to capital, either from banks or from the NGOs, they are unable to become 'poor' even.

However, experiments are now going on. Brac has started a programme to transfer assets to them. Under the scheme, an ultra-poor is given, say, a cow and the support including feeds and veterinary care to rear it. He is provided with healthcare to plug illness-related drain on his income. Once he completes a full cycle of the scheme and turns better off, he is then brought under the mainstream microcredit fold. Experiences show 60 percent participants in this ultra-poor programme have crossed the threshold into microcredit.

Similarly, ASA has opened up special branches in the chars to provide lambs and goats to the ultra-poor who do not need to go by weekly repayment instalments. Rather they return the money once they sell the cattle, may be a year later.

Grameen too has similar programmes through which it even provides funds to beggars.

But underlying all this, one feeling is clearly prevailing -- that despite such efforts, pockets of extreme poverty may be left out and that some of the money may never come back, because these ultra-poor keep drifting.

Ali Hossain of Bhagabatipur in Kurigram is one such person. Forty years of age and 19 times of losing everything to river erosion have left him shattered today. He is getting ready to be displaced once more as the Brahmaputra's cruel current has already gnawed away a big chunk of the char.

"Each time the river takes my home, I become poorer," Ali says. "I have been living like a gypsy -- never in one place for long. Who would care to give me loans?"

The NGOs have started creating the 'missing middle' too. For example, Brac now provides loans of Tk 30,000 to Tk 200,000 to set up small businesses and ASA gives Tk 100,000 to Tk 150,000 for such ventures.

But these efforts are taking a long time to make any real impression on extreme poverty or broad-based equality. And as time passes by, life on these northern chars remain unchanged.