If Bangladesh is known for anything other than the natural calamities that regularly strike this impoverished deltaic country, it is for its microcredit programmes. Initiated some 25 years ago, micro-credit has often been described as a panacea for poverty and its profile has risen in recent years with the interest shown in it by the likes of Bill Clinton and many other national and state leaders.
International development agencies such as the UN affiliates as well as the World Bank are now pushing this as a strategy to reduce poverty. At a time when the Bangladeshi experience is being increasingly sought to be replicated in other destitute areas of the world, Afsan Chowdhury studies the situation of micro-credit in his country and comes up with a number of conclusions, some noted before, some previously unknown and a few altogether unexpected.
We are travelling by car towards Tangail, a district little over two hours from Dhaka. It's an ancient habitat and to get there one passes through some of the sparse forest cover still left in Bangladesh. It is also a place which has the long fingers of international development dug deep inside its belly, evident from the signs bearing names of various organisations suggesting 'development' and 'empowerment' and so on. The signboards stand on both sides of the road, advertising myriad missions of faith, hope and charity. Tangail's a place where NGOs come to breathe.
I am going there to research a radio series on working children for the BBC. The network of child rights NGOs has told us that Tangail has a number of groups with whose help working children have been able to escape child labour and make it to school. I am looking for happy children. Tangail is not too far from Dhaka, is rural enough and, of course, poor. One can visit a development centre, relish local food and be back in the capital before bedtime. Good for development visits if you hate spending nights in non air-conditioned bedrooms.