How Grameen has changed the world

Grameen is not without its critics. Given the sprawling nature of the organisation and the vast number of operatives who run the network, there are bound to be scattered cases of maladministration. However I know from my personal experience, having visited my village home year after year during the last three decades, how truly the Grameen program has made a real difference to the lives of people at the very bottom of the socio-economic pool.

A case in point is Mortuza, who was employed as a cook in our home, succeeding her mother who used to be the cook during my childhood. It was a generational thing with which anyone with a rural background would be familiar with. Mortuza began her early childhood running around our home, sometimes playing with my younger sisters (but always aware of the social boundary which existed). Their lot never improved -- with pittance of an income -- they merely survived. Families like ours, of course, did nothing to change the status quo, happy to enjoy the fruits of their labour by virtue of our own fortuitous birth.

Well, things have changed. Not in any dramatic earth shattering manner but in small incremental steps and Grameen has led the way to this transformation. Old attitudes persist. The deference and subservience shown by the "working class" to the "old order" is still very much there, but not any more in the context of an abject submission.

Anyone with a rural background would be familiar with the nuances associated with the hierarchy of the village aristocracy. There have been no wholesale changes but one can see the incremental changes in such nuances of unequal relationships -- the body language and the eye contacts tell an unfolding story. Grameen has often been the catalyst behind these changes.

"Empowerment" is a much used buzzword and cliché, but that is precisely what happened to the womenfolk in my village, to Mortuza and her cohorts. First, they have been able to unshackle themselves from the tyranny of their husbands; secondly they have discovered relative economic freedom.

For centuries, our village women have suffered under the weight of a double whammy -- their ongoing exploitation by a semi-feudal social order and their situation further exacerbated by the generally oppressive environment in their own home. With new found economic freedom, in many cases being the primary income earner in the family, women in my village are starting to put their foot down. Without any doubt they have been "empowered."

Mortuza does not cook for us anymore because my mother, too old and feeble to manage on her own, now stays in the city with my brother. When I made a day trip to my village last year Mortuza came round to resume her "duties" with unfailing loyalty, undeserving on my part yet so generously offered by her. I inquired about her family and she opened up a little bit, a glint in her eye that I had never seen before.

She is illiterate but her children attend school and she talked about the future with a sense of hope and optimism. What was quite extra-ordinary about my last trip was her "audacity" to invite me to visit her home for a cup of tea. I use the word "audacity" merely to illustrate the absurdity of the request within the context of village protocol that existed and which in many respects still persist.

In all my early years of growing up in my village and many subsequent visits I (or for that any other member of my family) have never condescended to visit the homes of these people who served us through generations. They lived in one corner of a very large tract of paddy field which their men folk had cultivated as share-croppers. From a distance one could see a few tiny huts with thatched roofs dotting the landscape. The weather-beaten fencing around the perimeter shielded our eyes from the misery of their world, a world so different from mine. That world has changed for the better, thanks to Grameen.

I accepted Mortuza's invitation for tea and after a brisk walk turned up, somewhat to the amazement of the whole neighbourhood. Admittedly my hosts were a little flustered as they really didn't expect me and fumbled around to make me feel comfortable. After more than half-a-century I finally came to see how and where they lived.

But gone were the thatched roofs and the shabby exterior. Corrugated iron sheets for roofing, a tube-well in one corner and a clean well-swept court yard where little kids played hop-scotch. From my vantage point I could peer inside their dwellings around us. Wooden cots were in view, not straw mats as I expected.

For now, the game which the kids were playing had to be stopped. They were shooed away to make room for a lone chair which was brought for me to sit while everybody else stood around to watch the spectacle. Mortuza lined up her 3 kids for inspection, mildly rebuking them for mucking around and not studying hard enough. Most telling was the way she handled her husband who was a bit of rogue in a previous life and who also suffered a tongue lashing for being too lazy.

He stood nearby, wringing his hand, accepting his wife's admonishment without much protest. How she was going to repay her "instalment" to Grameen if her husband didn't do his share in looking after the cows, she lamented. Mortuza, an illiterate woman, was after all running a little business -- selling fresh milk in the local market. She understood the critical importance of cash flow and she was not going to let anything, including a recalcitrant husband, get in the way of her dream! The quiet, confident demeanour in her body language had the hallmarks of a no-nonsense attitude and that she had taken control of her life.

Tea was served with salted biscuits. I was the only one being feted. The old social barriers had not yet disappeared. Mortuza and her family were not expected to join in, not even in her own house! Neither did I press the issue as this would only embarrass her.

As I walked back home accompanied by a whole procession of people, I felt chastised. But I felt happy and a tinge of joy too.

Thank you Muhammad Yunus.

Mushfiqur Rahman is a freelance contributor to The Daily Star.