BD’s poor think of Yunus as ‘a member of our own family’
By Salim Mia
DHAKA: A tiny Grameen bank loan to buy a cow was a lifeline for 32-year-old Margina who now runs a successful rice business but was once so poor she could not afford to eat.
Like millions of others, Margina saw her life transformed through a 3,000 taka (42 dollar) loan from the Grameen Bank founded by Muhammad Yunus, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for lifting millions out of poverty through his pioneering concept of micro-credit.
“When I first started borrowing from Grameen bank 12 years ago, I was very poor,” said Margina, from Kathali village in the northern Mymensingh district. “I used to only eat one meal a day and some days I could not eat at all. My husband did not have any work and we lived in miserable conditions,” said Margina, who uses one name.
The bank, which targets women because it believes they are better than men at running family finances, has given small loans to more than 6.6 million people in Bangladesh to help them become self employed.
“I borrowed 3,000 taka for a cow and I started earning money by selling milk. Then I took another loan to buy a cart for the cow to pull and then another one to buy a mobile phone (to sell calls),” said Margina.
Branching out to become one of Bangladesh’s now ubiquitous “village phone Ladies,” who generate income by hiring out mobile phones by the minute, Margina began to gain confidence.
“I saw my life was changing and it made me very happy. Now I run a rice business and four months ago I borrowed 96,000 taka (1,371 dollars) to buy a shop in the market where I run the business with my husband,” she said.
“Grameen Bank has changed a dirt-poor woman like me into a small business woman with a home and good livelihood,” she added. “The difference between my life now and then is like the difference between day and night. Before Grameen nobody, not even my own father, would lend to me.
“I don’t have words to say how happy I’m that Muhammad Yunus has won this prize. I don’t really know what it is but I’m very happy because I think of him as a member of my own family for all he has done for us,” she said.
Like Margina, mother-of-three Hazira Khatun, 40, from Goari village, also in Mymensingh district, took her first loan to buy a cow in 1996.
Loans are given for purchases that will help the borrower become self-supporting such as a rickshaw, a piece of equipment, chickens or a mobile phone.
Hazira’s family lived in a one-room hut made from mud and leaves, and her labourer husband earned barely enough to provide one meal a day.
During the rainy season, water would pour through the roof and the whole hut had to be constantly rebuilt after storms.
“First I bought a cow and then I took another loan to buy another cow,” she said.
“I used to sell milk in the market and gradually our condition started to improve. Grameen Bank gave me hope that I could have a better life.
“I continued taking loans and I bought a piece of land to build a tin and wood home with four rooms. Now we also have a latrine, a water pump and we have also bought some small pieces of land to grow vegetables.
“These days we are a good farming family. Day by day we crossed the poverty line with the help of Grameen Bank and all our three children go to school.”
In Hazira’s village other families too have benefited from Yunus’s microcredit concept with borrowers more than doubling over ten years from 40 in 1996 to 115 today.
“Before all the borrowers were landless and they lived in huts on land belonging to other people,” she said.
“There was no business and the only work was to be a labourer or a rickshaw puller by leasing the rickshaw from someone else.
“Nobody’s children could go to school due to poverty and we used to force them into child labour. Everyone was landless and we could never have thought of getting a loan from a bank.
