abedmooc.com-  digitally tagged case library abed's legacy 6 by 6 alumni networks : 4 education,3  last mile health, 2 ending starvation, 1 ending poverty, 5 celebrating 100% collaborative/sdg productive communities; 17 everything other collaboration worthy of sdg generation innovating including humanising machine intel deeply and diversely in line with nature - not all versions latest= if something interests you most ask me chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk 

yidan6.pptx  4.6 legacy of luminaries of education can solve any sdg crisis

abedjobsbrowndubai.pptx  2021-22 connecting post-covid's biggest challenges with 20 years since mrs steve jobs asked abed& educators  to share sustainability globally

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Beyond%20power%20games.docx

nmacrae.pptx

over last 40 years 1 billion Asians ended extreme poverty

WHICH OF FAZLE ABED'S TOP 5 PARTNERS women empowering CURRICULA INTEREST YOU?

1 financial services to end poverty - goal 1

2 food last mile services to end famine

3 health last mile services to end unnecessary deaths of children a...

4 lifelong livelihood teaching and learning

5 inclusive and resilient communities - prepped for disaster and re...

-rsvp chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk to help first 50 university coalition curricula share

from 1970: join exp learning of Asian regional ceo shell oil multinational who faced 3 by one million-death disasters- cyclone, war , famine ?-overall fazle abed's 50 year learning curve innovated 2 systems changing humanity of aid and international relations
1 bottom up disaster relief 
2 microfranchises which turned village mothers into small business and family leaders

1 before fazle abed, international disaster relief agencies flew in, rebuiilt and flew out-  charitable funds were for relief not learning with people living there;
BRA-Collab innovated bottom up disaster relief: empower grassroots womens networks   building $15 homes led to
2a village mothers economically deliver food security to end starvation, and provide last mile basic health services -oral rehydration and with unicef 1980 vaccinating nation, advancing life expectancy by 25 years and scaling village solutions with alumni of fazle abed , from 1996 www.ebrac.com;  from death 2019 at brac/abed university coalition
download 50 year report of sir fazle abed on university &      
download linked organigram brac first 30 years

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developing nation  Speech: The Complementary Role of Civil Society Organisations in Government
 speech  by Fazle Hasan Abed at launch of South Asia Human Development Report,  in Dhaka on September 19, 1999.
Honourable Minister for Finance
Ms Khadija Haq
Mr David Lockwood

It is with a great sense of loss and sorrow that I recall Mahbub ul Haq's last letter inviting me to launch Dhaka: 1998 report on Human Development in South Asia. I  had prior commitments abroad. Today,1999 Report on Human Development in South Asia, which Mahbub ul Haq had planned and initiated but left unfinished, is completed under the leadership of his devoted wife and co-worker. We mourn his passing; take courage from his conviction : South Asia will emerge out of its dehumanising poverty.

 Since the first report in 1997, we see South Asian region has human development level amongst the lowest in the world. Though significant improvements have been made in certain sectors, problems of dehumanising poverty, illiteracy, disease, malnutrition, women and children abuse and environmental degradation loom large. Unfortunately, old and centralised systems of governance have proved their inability to handle the development crisis alone.

As Report points out, “A vast majority of people in South Asia remain alienated from the formal structures of political and economic governance. These institutions of governance have tolerated, if not perpetuated, multiple inequities in South Asia. High unemployment, poor living conditions, and increasing squalor have led to a growing sense of frustration amongst the people and have pushed many to the very brink of despair.”  Shocking are the daily headlines of violence against women such as acid burns, rape and dowry deaths. Startling revelation: Bangladesh has the highest reported rate of rapes against women in the region - 33 times the rate in Nepal. As we know, there is no dearth of laws to eliminate discrimination against women. However, find that despite this, gender discrimination and women's exploitation continue to be a malaise in our society.

Our judicial system is heavily burdened; prompt justice is not available, causing untold human distress. Bangladesh has the highest number of cases pending in the courts - 14 times the rate in Nepal, that is 5,285 cases pending in courts per 100,000 people. Bangladesh is the most iniquitous of the South Asian nations where income of the lowest deciles of our population is only 5.8 percent of the highest 10 percent.

This report rightly highlights problems confronting human development in our society. However, I should like to remind ourselves that Bangladesh has made significant progress in many fields. Food production has doubled, life expectancy has increased by 30 percent, infant mortality has declined by 40 percent and the fertility rate has recorded a dramatic decline, reflecting our people's awareness of the dangers of high population growth. Some advances have been made in the education sector, but it is not adequate to improve Bangladesh's standing in this region. The stark reality: even after a quarter of a century almost one half of our people are still living below the poverty line, malnutrition is pervasive, while health problems such as high maternal mortality, anaemia and tuberculosis cause widespread concern.

One of the greatest impediments to good governance in Bangladesh is the polarisation of party politics. Almost any policy or action initiated by the party in power will elicit the wrath of the political opposition, regardless of the merit of the case. Street action, accompanied by violence and intimidation, is the stock in trade of the political parties. All major parties consider it their democratic right to call hartals accompanied by violent picketing to make people cower in submission. That these hartals cause great hardship to the poor and incalculable damage to the economy is hardly of any consequence to our political parties.

Further: all the major parties unashamedly harbour anti-social elements, use them for extortion and intimidation and, when needed, for vote-rigging and street action.  Heedless of the consequences of this abhorrent practice on the economic and social life of the nation, the political parties, I regret to say, are transforming themselves into a legalised mafia.

This year's Report underlines that in many South Asian states democracy is fast turning into an empty ritual. Strong institutions operating within their respective mandates are necessary for good governance. However, one of the problems confronting the well being and autonomy of the civil society institutions in Bangladesh is their indiscriminate politicisation. Associations of professionals such as doctors, teachers, lawyers and organisations of interest groups such as Trade Unions and students have all been utilised by political parties for furtherance of their selfish party political ends.

When institutions are politicised in this manner, their purpose and role in serving their respective constituencies are distorted and emasculated, leaving a frightening vacuum. Dominant political personalities hold sway over their respective parties, within which democratic processes and norms are painfully absent. Loyalty to individuals is prized above loyalty to ideals. This year's Report points out that powerful ruling personalities and weak institutions have fortified misgovernance in our region.

The greatest progress in Bangladesh over the last 25 years have been the women's organisations in rural and urban Bangladesh and the NGOs who have facilitated their emergence through grassroots work in empowerment and poverty reduction. Some 6 million women are members of their community organisations, accessing micro finance for their economic enterprises, health care and education for themselves and for their children.

Whilst NGOs would be expected to applaud the pro-poor stance of every government policy or programme, it is their duty to protest when the government tends to ignore the needs of the poor. If the smashing of squatter settlements by bulldozers without provision of any alternative shelter did not elicit protest from the civil society organisations, particularly NGOs, the legitimacy of these institutions would come under question. These protests are part of the ingredients of good governance. Responsible governments must not resent these protests but effectively respond toward the mitigation of the grievances.

Recently, there has been irresponsible talk alluding to NGOs as alternative government. Nothing can be further from the truth. NGOs are civil society organisations voluntarily created by citizens for the express purpose of dealing with the multiplicity of social or economic problems. Legitimacy of an NGO has to be earned through service to the community, by being responsive to the needs of the people it serves, by being accountable to donors and government and by providing opportunities to its own staff to reach their creative potential in the performance of their service. This year's Report correctly states, “The NGOs can supplement and complement government efforts but can never replace them.”

Over the past 27 years, successive governments have pronounced piously on the need for decentralisation and devolution. Each government instituted their own form of a local government structure, only to be set aside by the next regime. So, there is no stable local government other than the lowest tier - the Union Council. Bangladesh has the most centralised government power, the protagonists of which are reluctant to share it within a decentralised framework. Consequently, services such as provision of primary education and basic health are administered by the central government far removed from the people. As a result, basic services in the field of human development are of such indifferent quality.

In 1980s, with the help and support of UNICEF and the NGOs, immunisation coverage in Bangladesh reached nearly 80 percent. Over the last eight years, however, as a result of poor quality service, indifferent management and lack of commitment to children, the coverage of immunisation - the most important health intervention known to humans - has now declined to less than 55 percent. Although the impact of this decline resultS in higher mortality among the children of the poor, no protest has been heard in the centre of power. As long as centralised authorities remain in charge, significant improvement in the quality of services cannot be expected. Decentralised governance, allowing people to participate in their own development and empowering them to respond to their own needs is a sine qua non for lasting progress in human development.

This Report of the Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre is a reminder to all of us of the nature and extent of the unfinished agenda of our time. Mahbub ul Haq's legacy will continue to guide us in the long and difficult journey that lies ahead of us to ensure for our people a dignified and meaningful existence.

 

Thank you.

 

Lecture: Development

 

This lecture on development was delivered by Fazle Hasan Abed at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands on October 11, 1999.

Introduction

 

A quarter of a century ago Bangladesh began life with a wrecked economy. The infrastructure normally associated with nationhood did not exist. Colonised for centuries, brutalised by war and natural calamity, its people were poorly equipped for the sudden task of making a country. Schools, health facilities, communications and industry, stunted from the outset, all lay in ruins. Against insurmountable odds, however, Bangladesh has done more than simply survive. Food production has almost doubled. Life expectancy has increased by almost 30 percent and child mortality has decreased by 40 percent. Infrastructure has developed, new industries have come up and the people have reaffirmed their commitment to democracy.

The image of Bangladesh is no longer the 'international basket case'. Depressing statistics of natural disasters, runaway population growth, high maternal and infant mortality, malnutrition and poverty are gradually being replaced by encouraging examples of success.

Over the last decade and a half Bangladesh has achieved world class results in many fields. The coverage of immunisation reached 80 percent from a low of 2 percent in 1985, although it has again started to decline more recently. The contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) has risen to nearly 50 percent from under 10 percent in the mid-seventies, with a consequent drop in total fertility from 7 to about 3. Net enrolment in schools has increased to 77 percent, with girls equalling boys. Poverty alleviation programmers have made impressive gains. Major credit programmes now serve more than seven million poor and destitute families, more than half of the country's poor population. Those who had the least access to credit now have the most; it comes literally to their doorstep. The percentage of poor households has declined from 54 percent to 38 percent.

The private sector has also grown substantially and here the ready-made garments industry deserves a special mention. With over 2,500 factories employing over a million workers, most of whom are women, it has already become one of the country's major export earners, with long-term implications for the empowerment of women.

However, in spite of these successes Bangladesh still remains one of the poorest countries on earth, ranking 12th from the bottom of 192 countries in the World Bank's new system of measuring the wealth of nations. Almost 40% citizens live below the poverty line and cannot meet their basic minimum needs. The poorest, who constitute the bottom 10 percent of the population, still sadly remain outside the reach of most development programmes. Poverty alleviation and the empowerment of the poor remain an unfinished task for this nation. 

Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and their Role

 

One of the most important groups of institutions that have emerged in Bangladesh to deal with rural and urban poverty is the Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO). The emergence of development-oriented NGOs in the Third World is of fairly recent origin. Once the Vietnam War ended, conflicts and starvation in Africa, Latin America and Asia returned to the centre screen of global news. The viewers in Europe and North America, touched by scenes of misery, gave money to charity organisations of their countries to do good in faraway countries. Established Northern NGOs became bigger and new ones entered the arena. In addition to receiving donations from the public, they began to receive substantial sums from their governments and the United Nations agencies. The new generation of Northern relief workers nurtured the growth of indigenous NGOs proving that they were worthy of the trust and confidence of the donors. With support from the donors, increasing experience, expertise and recognition at home, the local NGOs have expanded their horizon beyond relief to development. They now address the more delicate and difficult social and economic issues on a national scale. They still respond to emergencies when the need arises.

The emergence of indigenous NGOs and their involvement in development is also a reflection of the failure of the elite system to respond to the needs of the very poor. The end of colonial days led to the emergence of a powerful elite that increasingly concentrated economic and political power in its own hands. More experienced in collecting rent than managing productive assets, the privileged class has been proficient in appropriating existing wealth. In many instances they actually depleted the productive assets of the country, especially environmental assets. Social and economic power was divided among the politicians, the military, the bureaucrats and the businessmen. Students, trade unions and the conservative religious establishment were wooed and manipulated. Personal loyalties changed from time to time, but the overall alliance remained the same. Any benefits of development were divided up among themselves. Short-term gain and long-term power remained the motivation of the elite and the greatest obstacle to social reform and the economic betterment of the rest of society. Robert Chambers has called this elite section the 'over-class' and has described succinctly how they dominate the 'under-class'. The solution to today's development challenges lies, in the opinion of Chambers, on how the two classes converge, narrow the gap by enabling the 'over class' to accept less and the 'under class' to gain more.

A coalition of socially conscious individuals who led the NGOs sought a larger sense of fulfilment than simple charity. They wanted change - social and economic change. But they were also conscious of the human nature to resist change, unless people were convinced that there is a reasonable chance that there will be benefits and that they will get at least a share of it. For us, in Bangladesh, the experience in neighbouring West Bengal and elsewhere had shown that trying to force radical change by mobilising the poor to confront the elite often ended up making their situation even worse. We believe that the politics of confrontation is ultimately counter-productive. We chose to focus on the fundamental elements that empower the people to achieve strength.

The problems faced by Bangladesh are so numerous and of such magnitude that the government alone cannot effectively address all of these at once. One of the most important factors leading to the growth and scale of the NGO programmes in the South has been the use of NGOs as a preferred channel by the bilateral and multilateral institutions. The failure of the state to manage development in an effective manner at the grassroots have led many donor agencies in search of alternatives. This was readily provided by the vibrant NGO sector active in the South.

Adopting a National Development Agenda

Empowerment of the poor and poverty alleviation are the two facets of BRAC's primary goal. Social mobilisation is the sine qua non for the empowerment of the poor. It is the most cost-effective way of reaching large numbers of households. We look at poverty from a holistic viewpoint. In the words of Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate economist, “The point is not the irrelevance of economic variables such as personal incomes, but their severe inadequacy in capturing many of the causal influences on the quality of life and the survival chances of people.” Along with income and employment generation, BRAC helps in forming organisations of the poor, conscientization and awareness- building, gender equity and training for human resource development. The logic of these programmes is the creation of an 'enabling environment' in which the poor can participate in their own development. But increasing awareness alone cannot bring change. Economic empowerment is at the heart of other forms of empowerment.

The Rural Development Programme

Our income generating programmes and other activities in the economic field have brought BRAC into the world on the free market economy. Until quite recently, the conventional wisdom was that NGOs are inherently incapable of entering the rough and tumble world of business. Although we have had our fair share of failures, we have also proved our ability to create economic institutional value without sacrificing our values.

Providing credit to the poor is an important component of our Rural Development Programme (RDP). An equivalent of US$ 750 million has been given as loans to rural poor women without collateral. The repayment rate is 98 percent and the members have accumulated savings of over US$ 51 million. Consciousness, peer group dynamics and BRAC staff supervision are important factors for the success of the credit programme.

Realizing the fullest potential of micro-credit to improve the lives of the poor on a sustainable basis had been held back by the virtual absence of modern production technology in rural Bangladesh. Much of the micro-credit has been used for traditional activities, and not enough has been done to include new technology. The profit made from traditional activities is modest, not enough to generate an investable surplus. In the case of BRAC, 70 percent of its loan portfolio is in traditional activities. The need for infusion of more productive technology is being gradually recognised, and BRAC has made a significant commitment towards this. BRAC provides training, improved raw materials and marketing support in certain sectors. Examples are high yielding varieties of birds, vaccination, hatchery and chick rearing units in poultry, artificial insemination in livestock, fish hatchery development, seed multiplication, tissue culture and use of hybrid seeds in crop production, improved varieties of mulberry trees, quality production of cocoons and modern reeling facilities etc. About 30 percent of the existing loan portfolios are devoted to technology-oriented/intensive activities. Such activities increase the profit margin of the participants through increased productivity.

Wherever possible, BRAC seeks vertical and horizontal integration in its income generating projects. At brac poultry, activities cover the whole process - from eggs to chicken to breeding to animal feed and vet services. BRAC financed hatcheries sell day-old chicks to women who rear them as broilers or layers. The eggs and birds are then sold to the consumers as well as to BRAC hatcheries. BRAC is also involved in such ancillary activities as training, veterinary care and feed. BRAC pioneered poultry-raising in Bangladesh. Today, it is a thriving industry and eggs and chicken are no longer the food of the fortunate few. Similar backward and forward linkages have also been successfully established in other programmes. Before taking up a new experiment, we do consider whether it would be financially and operationally feasible on a national scale.

Reaching the Very Poorest

For many years, development meant macro-economic development - infrastructure, steel mills and so on. "Trickle down” inherently meant that the poor would be at the very end of the benefit stream. Reality was even worse, for those who benefited from development had other assets that worked in conjunction with the new inputs. Through this process the rich become richer, and the poor, poorer. If it is hard work for a rich person to become richer, it is infinitely more so for a poor person to break out of the prison of poverty.

Reaching the poorest of the poor - those who have nothing at all, households headed by women with small children and no ostensible means of income, or where the head of the household is chronically sick, is an extremely difficult challenge. These “ultra poor” who constitute the bottom 10 percent of the population (or about 12 million) are unable to take advantage of the traditional development programmes of the government or even the more grassroots programmes of the NGOs. Still, BRAC believes that they are not entirely beyond reach. Whatever we can do to help them would make a critical difference in their lives.

BRAC has responded to the needs of these people by initiating a programme called the Income Generation for Vulnerable Group Development (IGVGD). The government of Bangladesh, since the 1970s, has been providing a ration of 31 kg of wheat per month for 18 months to the utterly destitute women in rural areas. BRAC had been working with the government since 1988 in providing training on poultry-raising to these women for the period they receive the free wheat. With the help of the government, BRAC has provided easy loans to them to purchase and rear poultry. The idea is that when the ration is withdrawn after 18 months, the women can continue to earn an income from the poultry equivalent at least to the value of the food ration. BRAC has also linked these women with the government livestock development to receive vaccines for their poultry. Currently, there are over 300,000 women participating in this programme. 

Non-Formal Primary Education 

In 1986 BRAC started experimenting with non-formal primary education programmes for children from poorer families. We knew from our years of experience in rural areas that there was much demand for education among the poorer families. Accordingly, we developed the Non-formal Primary Education Programme (NFPE) that best suited the realities of rural Bangladesh. We are humbled by the overwhelming response of the parents and children, and proud of our ability to open and operate more than 34,000 one-room schools where more than a million children - 70 percent girls - are receiving an education they would have never received otherwise. Unlike the micro-credit programme, which now supports most of its own costs through interest earning, NFPE requires donor support. Although the unit cost is very low (US$ 18 per child per year), supporting 1.1 million children requires US$ 22 million a year. We would have liked the government of Bangladesh to fund this programme because this group of children is not covered by the public sector. Unfortunately, we remain totally dependent on overseas donors, and I am grateful to the government of the Netherlands and NOVIB, as well as to the other donors, for their generous support. The effectiveness, popularity and need for this programme bestows upon BRAC a responsibility to continue. We expect to bring the joy of learning to several million children over the next five years.

Women in Development

BRAC has been promoting a new culture in the development field with women at the forefront of all activities. Most of the recipients of credit are women, 70 percent of students and 80 percent of the teachers of BRAC schools are female, health and poultry workers are all women. Breaking the barriers of a predominantly conservative traditional Muslim society, BRAC has even succeeded in training female field workers to use bicycles and motorcycles in performing their duties. Women are running rural restaurants, vaccinating poultry, treating patients, doing carpentry and managing people. All these activities were traditionally in the male domain.

Our efforts have not won us universal approval. Many programmes and staff have been subjected to physical attack and harassment. Under the guise of safeguarding Islamic values, the vested interest groups whose realm of influence is receding, is fighting a rear guard battle to safeguard its own interests. Their reaction confirms our belief that we are on the right path. 

Measuring Programme Impact: The BRAC-ICDDR,B Study

 BRAC and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) jointly carried out a study which examined the impact of BRAC programmes on human well-being. In one area of Matlab Bazar, which the ICDDR,B has had under demographic surveillance since 1964 and which has a health intervention programme, BRAC introduced the following integrated development activities: micro-credit, basic education for children and adolescents and organisation of the poor. The impact of this integrated programme on nutrition, child survival, household expenditure patterns, education, women's empowerment etc. were compared with a similar area in Matlab under surveillance but with only a health programme. A few of the results are summarised below.

The BRAC-ICDDR.B project collected mid upper arm circumference (MUAC) information at two points of time - 1992 when the BRAC intervention was about to start and 1995 when the intervention was about three years old. Table 2 compares the severe protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) (represented as MUAC<125 mm) over time and between BRAC members and poor non-members. It shows that the prevalence of severe PEM has significantly declined among BRAC member households but there was no such change among poor non-members.

International Policy Formulations

Because of its success in implementing pro-poor programmes in Bangladesh, BRAC is called to serve in international commissions and committees, and on the boards of different foundations and academic institutions. Examples of such involvement include the World Bank NGO Committee, the Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation, and the International Commission on Health Research for Development. ThUS, we have been able to influence the agenda and recommendations of these in favour of the poor.

Critical Questions for NGOs:

How Can NGOs be Made Sustainable?

Broadly, BRAC looks at sustainability from two angles - sustainability of the impact of BRAC's interventions on its participants and sustainability of BRAC itself. The impact on participants can be seen from different dimensions such as material, social/institutional and environmental. A number of evaluations have documented the kind of lasting impact that BRAC is bringing in the lives of the poor -see previous section.

The sustainability of BRAC as an organisation is also important if the current crusade against under-development is to continue. When it became apparent that poverty alleviation and social development needed long-term commitment and that our own work was contributing towards the improvement of the conditions of the poor, we looked at ways to assure our own existence. In order to reduce dependence on donors, BRAC started setting up commercial ventures and developing income generating assets of its own. One of BRAC's early projects to help women market their handicrafts, has turned into the most popular handmade clothing and handicraft marketing operation in the country. 'Aarong' has seven retail outlets in the country and a sizeable export business. Thousands of women earn an income from this venture, as does BRAC itself. A number of other revenue-earning projects are at various stages of maturity or development. At the moment, over 60 percent of BRAC's budget comes from its own sources.

 To Whom are NGOs Accountable?

In Bangladesh, the NGOs have proved their ability to make a significant contribution to society, yet we constantly hear the criticism that the NGOs are not accountable. However, the people levelling these criticisms, from the political arena or media, have no clear idea of the meaning of accountability or any firm understanding of how NGOs should be accountable, or to whom. While the NGOs are financially accountable to the donors and fiscally to the government, most significantly they are morally accountable to the people because of their extensive involvement in people's lives.

BRAC has followed a reflexive bottom-up approach: this allows us to design policies and programmes according to the priorities and needs of the people on the ground. At the village level, the participants of BRAC programmes meet at regular intervals to discuss issues relevant to their lives and voice their problems. These priorities and concerns are taken as the basis of BRAC's programmes. The series of weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings of the field and headquarter staff ensure two-way flow and responsive actions. In an effort to ensure this connection with the priorities of BRAC's participants, all programme ideas emanating from management are fine-tuned through a series of focus group meetings with potential participants prior to their implementation.

In addition, BRAC has entire departments including Internal Audit, Monitoring and Research that are devoted to ensuring the organisation's effectiveness, accountability and transparency. Our activities are carried out within legal and contractual frameworks mandated by both the government and donors which include regular audits by national and international audit firms and the yearly publication of our income and expenditure statements in our Annual Reports. As these policies demonstrate, BRAC is conscious of the many partners with which it must maintain open and transparent relationships.

Are NGOs Growing too Big?

The NGO sector in Bangladesh has been called “The Invisible Government”, “The Third Sector” and so on. Such labels are not always appellations of admiration. There is sometimes a sense of apprehension and envy. The bigger they grow, some say, the greater is the potential that the NGOs will rival the political parties.

How large should an NGO be? Traditionally NGOs have been small and worked in small areas. “Small is beautiful” has been their motto. This is changing. Now scores of NGOs can be found that work nationally (such as BRAC or Grameen Bank in Bangladesh) or regionally (such as AMREF in four countries of East Africa). From the experience of BRAC, our size has given us access to many a fora that we might not otherwise have reached.

In the words of a researcher on NGOs - where poverty is pervasive, 

• 'Small scale' merely means insignificant
• 'Politically independent' can mean 'powerless' or 'disconnected'
• 'Low cost' can mean 'under financed' or 'poor quality'; and
• 'Innovative' can mean 'temporary' or 'unsustainable.'

 

The problems of Bangladesh and other third world countries are so big, multifarious and pervasive and the governments are so beset with big issues of macro management that they cannot reach the people. Their primary preoccupation turns out to be preservation of power and hence the reluctance to share it in a decentralised structure. Thus, the creative talents of local politicians and functionaries and the people themselves, cannot blossom. Consequently these programmes often lose touch with the reality on the ground and are executed indifferently rendering those ineffective. This creates frustration and indignation in a society which looks upon these as exercises in futility.

The NGOs, on the other hand, start at the bottom and start small. The successful ones among them grow riding on their success and thereby gaining in experience. Often their programmes are undertaken in response to the demands of or in consultation with programme participants at the grassroots level and are therefore easily accepted by these for whom these are intended.

Over the past few years, NGOs are increasingly being co-opted into government programmes as sub-contractors at the behest of bilateral and multilateral donors. Their involvement in the implementation of state administered programmes open up new avenues for their funding and growth. Through this process, however, NGOs risk losing their autonomy and legitimacy as civil society institutions. It is imperative that Southern NGOs reflect on these dynamic processes and remain vigilant in protecting their roles as advocates for the distressed and disenfranchised.

Special Problems Faced by Southern NGOs

The Southern NGOs need to work in diverse and often difficult situations. They face problems at home as well as with the NGOs and donors in the North that support them.

Problems at home

BRAC has been able to operate and grow for the last 27 years in spite of the great political uncertainties that the country has at times experienced. While successive governments, both civil and military, have subjected the country to major policy shifts, I should like to believe that recognising our contributions they have allowed us to go on with our work. The problem we face with all governments alike is that we are subjected to a host of regulations and cumbersome procedures in the approval and implementation of our programmes. We are also occasional victims of overzealous bureaucrats who believe that they are the final arbiters of what is good for the nation. Their policies, procedures and practices that test our resolve, can at times frustrate our efforts. The NGOs also at times face opposition from political parties of all spectrum - the religious fundamentalists usually being in the front line. The NGO goal of empowerment of the poor is often interpreted by fundamentalists as an attempt to diminish the power of the politicians and the bureaucrats. This is because they regard NGOs as power brokers in competition with them. The NGOs view things from a different perspective, believing that the empowerment of people with better awareness and education will create a society that will be able to achieve the nation-building agenda of the future.

Relations with Donors

A lot has been said about the problems that the Southern NGOs face with their Northern donors. Southern NGOs have argued for a more equitable partnership with their Northern partners based on mutual recognition of the contribution of each side. The over-dependence of Southern NGOs on their Northern partners affects the type, quality and quantity of their work. In a world where the location of the next disaster and the call for compassion is unpredictable, Southern NGOs are trying to reduce their dependence on external funds. Although most of BRAC's Northern partners have had confidence in BRAC from its earliest days, it too is working on reducing its vulnerability.

The Changing Role of Northern NGOs

If the Southern NGOs reduce their reliance on funding and technical support from the North, does it mean that the need for close collaboration will cease? I think not. I see far more important roles in store for Northern NGOs. I will discuss two - development education and advocacy.

Development Education

The concept and promotion of development education is very recent. It started around 1970 in Europe, which coincided with the end of the first UN development decade. Western volunteers and other development workers returning home wanted to share their experiences with their compatriots in government and society. The compassionate tradition of Europe and in Canada provided a conducive environment, but it took several years to receive enough support in the United States, which was preoccupied with the aftermath of the Vietnam War and domestic political problems. However, through a 'framework' published in 1984, the US private voluntary organisations put forward their own commitment to development education.

Development education is not based on pure economic theory or social research but empirical evidence and experience. It is the outcome of putting the most probable theories into the reality of underdevelopment, drawing lessons and sharing them with people concerned with third world development. It is a new field. It is also an important field because we need people who have a solid grounding in the underlying issues so that they can educate their societies as to the value of supporting development in other countries.

 

Advocacy

 

Another role of NGOs of the North is advocacy with their national governments and international bodies. The NGOs have been quite successful, particularly in Europe, in their advocacy role. Apart from increasing the quantum of aid, other ways of protecting the interests of the poor in the Third World should be explored. I should like to address a concern I have with respect to the type of advocacy that is needed. The idea of measuring growth based primarily on increases in GDP is very limited in its approach. In principle, no one can seriously dispute the need for growth, but to what extent is it the necessary and sufficient condition for poverty reduction? I think this needs to be examined very carefully.

We would do well to remember that GDP-based development in East Asian countries has been successful in reducing poverty only in societies where agrarian reform and universal education preceded the growth-oriented model of development. Reforms in the countries of East Asia destroyed the power of the landed elite and created the ground for sustained poverty reduction. In countries such as mine that have not gone through any meaningful agrarian reform, the access to growth by the most disadvantaged populations remains limited. It is this access that NGOs like BRAC are engaged in developing. The advocacy for structural adjustment and policy reform by the Bretton Woods institutions should be aimed at first facilitating this process, a process of creating an enabling environment in which the poor can participate in their own development. Liberalisation of imports and reduction of the crushing debt burden of countries facing severe economic hardship will remove the glass ceiling which is holding them back. In my view, giving people the power to earn an income through their own efforts is better than spending money to remedy the consequences of impoverishment.

Structural bilateral aid

I would like to take this opportunity to respond to the Netherlands government's policy on 'Structural Bilateral Aid' announced earlier this year. As we understand it, the Netherlands government plans to concentrate its aid in a smaller number of countries that meet three criteria - namely, the level of poverty and aid requirement, the quality of recipient government's policy and the quality of governance. In principle, we wholeheartedly endorse the objective of the policy, that is, to achieve greater effectiveness.

The level of poverty in Bangladesh and the aid requirement are well known. The honourable minister for Development Cooperation has said in her letter to the Lower House of the Dutch Parliamenton 26 February that: “[Aid] is most effective in poor countries where the quality of governance and policy is good.” 

I share this conviction which conforms to both common sense and empirical evidence, but I would like to examine this statement a little further. The sentence implies that in order to qualify for aid, the country has already established good policy and achieved good governance. Good governance is more than ensuring democratic elections, freedom of speech and press, and commitment to free trade. These fundamental conditions exist in Bangladesh, and we are pleased that Bangladesh has been selected as qualifying for structural bilateral aid. What I would like to propose is that achieving good governance should be a development objective in itself. As we look to the future the issue of democratisation and governance looms large. 

Democratization, Governance and Civil Society

This last decade of the 20th Century bears unmistakable indications of the democratisation of the word's political system. We have seen the fall of autocratic regimes in and around us. There has been an upsurge of democratic ideals that will only empower the civil society. According to a recent World Development Report, 177 countries - nearly two out of three - use popular elections to choose their leadership. In the 1970s, only one out of four countries had governments according to their people's choice. We do not have to look far to see the reason for the revival of the civil society. Many states had failed to uphold the inherent rights of the people. Fear, intimidation, and an absence of reward had stunted creativity, innovation and the free flow of ideas necessary to move with the times. States had lost their way in the labyrinth of their own organs and short-sighted interests. In short, states had failed to meet the expectations of the people.

But road to good governance is much more arduous and delicate than the introduction of the democratic process. There are many factors that influence or are an integral part of good government. To cite a few - respect for and enforcement of law and order, transparency and accountability, 'the public servant' awareness and respect for people's rights, the people's own awareness of rights and recourse to and the existence of an independent and honest judicial system. In developed countries, the positive factors are taken for granted and the negative factors are relatively insignificant. The situation is the reverse in poorer countries and directly correlated to income disparity. The wealthy and the powerful are often an obstacle to good governance as much as the poor and women are victims of bad governance.

   Conceptually, there is a merit to the contention that where there is good governance, aid is effective. I also believe that where there is good governance, Non-Governmental Organisations can be even more effective. In Bangladesh, some elections have been reasonably free and fair, but the progress has not been consistent. The last election, under a neutral caretaker government and with the active support of many international and local organisations, afforded the NGOs an opportunity to carry their empowerment agenda a step further by encouraging more women to vote and voice their opinions. Hundreds of BRAC's village organisation members have become their communities' representatives in local government.

    We are convinced that the main thrust for development of a country must come from within, but we must remain mindful of the fact that the world community is inseparably linked through interdependent economics and shared socio-political views. There are common problems such as environmental degradation, AIDS, drugs and organised crime that transcend national boundaries. They are not 'government problems' to be resolved in intergovernmental conferences. They are people's problems. The people need to be empowered to deal with them, and for this there will continue to be the need for NGOs, both in the South and in the North.

===

 

 Speech: BRAC University  (abrudged)

 

Delivered by Fazle Hasan Abed at the inauguration of BRAC University in Dhaka on June 16, 2001. 

The Chief Guest Hon'ble President of the People's Republic of Bangladesh Mr. Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed, Vice Chancellor of BRAC University Professor Jamilur Reza Choudhury, Excellencies, Faculty and the 1st batch of students of the BRAC University, 

It is a great privilege to be here today on this occasion of the inauguration of BRAC University. This is a momentous day in BRAC's history. In the three decades of BRAC's existence we have traversed a long and challenging course in support of a singular mission - that of poverty alleviation in Bangladesh. Pervasive poverty is the outgrowth of a specific pattern of development and reflects a lack of certain values and priorities. Tackling poverty and hunger cannot be done simply by providing food and jobs. The system that perpetuates that condition also needs to be undone and this is the most challenging task of all. Poverty is the result of a complex interlinking of political, economic and cultural systems that have a long history and are deeply entrenched. Ending poverty and deprivation entails what is tantamount to 'cultural revolution' where the causes and not the symptoms are addressed.

Addressing this culture of poverty necessitates change at both the societal and individual levels. BRAC had been addressing the needs of the poor at the grassroots with its economic and social development programmes and has also been building institutions that would spearhead changes at the societal level. The logic of BRAC programmes is the creation of an 'enabling environment' in which the poor can participate in their own development. Providing credit to the poor has been an important component of our programmes since 1975. Over six thousand crores of taka have been given to poor women with a repayment rate of nearly 98 percent. The women members who number more than 39 lakhs have accumulated over 400 crores of Taka in savings. Consciousness, peer group dynamics and BRAC staff supervision are important factors for the success for our micro-finance programme.

 

We knew from our years of experience in rural areas that there was a great demand for education among the poorer families. Accordingly, we developed the Non-Formal Primary Education (NFPE) programme that best suited the realities of rural Bangladesh. We are humbled by the overwhelming response of the parents and children and proud of our ability to open and operate 34,000 one-room schools. Today, I am happy to be able to tell you that more than ten lakh poor Bangladeshi children are attending classes in these schools and nearly twenty lakh have already graduated. We expect to bring the joy of learning to several millions in the years to come.

With the help of over 20,000 village-based female volunteers, BRAC reaches out with essential preventive, reproductive and curative health care to three and a half crore people. The seminal programme that brought oral rehydration for diarrhoea to the doorstep of the people all over the country in the eighties is all too well known to be mentioned. BRAC pioneered the 'Directly Observed Therapy Short Course' or DOTS for the treatment of tuberculosis even before the World Health Organisation formally started promoting it.

 

The success of development is not assessed by the number of programmes run or the amount of money spent, but by the measurable improvement in the lives of the people that are served. BRAC values the importance of research and evaluation to both policy design and programme implementation. Since 1975 our Research and Evaluation Division (RED) has played a critical role in designing and assessing the impact of BRAC's development initiatives. Recent works have shown how BRAC has impacted on the lives of its participant including income, literacy, nutritional status, child survival and women's status. A study has found that BRAC's contribution to Bangladesh's GDP stood at 1.15 percent in 1998 as against 0.7 percent in 1995. The impact of BRAC research is also seen beyond BRAC. Several national and international institutions have found their work useful in policy formulation and for academic purposes. The value of BRAC research is attested by the number of collaborative researches done with other institutions including Cornell University, London School of Economics, University of Manchester, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR, B), to name among many.

BRAC is also active in training at the national and international levels. The Global Partnership for NGO Leadership and Management provides post-graduate diploma and Masters level training in collaboration with an NGO in Zimbabwe and the School for International Training Vermont, USA.

 

BRAC's been on an epic journey over the last three decades and a most exhilarating one. BRAC is a learning organisation, and we have realised  that in spite of present economic hardships and the consequent deprivation of the mind, in this land of ancient civilization, where institutions of learning had flourished, even when the concept was scarcely known in large parts of the world, knowledge and learning are still valued and revered. I, here, refer to the civilization that was nourished centuries ago by knowledge acquired in the centres of learning like Mainamati, and Paharpur. This was followed by Islam's message of peace, brotherhood and enlightenment which enriched our minds. Stressing on the primacy of knowledge for human existence, one of the messages of Islam enjoined that should need be, 'we must go even to China to seek knowledge'. But somewhere along the line, during the centuries of domination we fell back. For a variety of socio-political reasons, the situation was even more unsatisfactory in the area that now constitutes Bangladesh. The armed liberation struggle for Bangladesh and the consequent necessity of the building up of its war-ravaged economy had additionally put Bangladesh at a comparative disadvantage in relation to other developing countries, where transition from colonial rule to independence has been smoother and more peaceful. It is, therefore, a national imperative for us to endeavour now to close that yawning gap. The learning process of BRAC has made us realise that despite extremes of poverty in our society, despite the obvious backwardness of our economy, Bangladesh must harness its human resource to enable us to compete in today's global economy, extricate our people out of poverty and flourish in tomorrow's knowledge society. The BRAC University is our modest contribution to that effort.

 

Education is the backbone of a nation. Our age is replete with examples of countries and of people who have prospered because they have intelligently invested in education. We in this country are grappling with the complex problem of poverty. We now know that its elimination does not merely entail a rise in income, it involves a widening of choices and we can widen the choices of people by providing them with greater learning. Education is undoubtedly the key element in empowerment. BRAC is therefore involved in education and wishes to be so, even in a more diverse fashion in the days and years to come.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 The University is not a collection of fine buildings but a gathering of fine minds. Some of the best institutions of learning in human history have been nurtured by humble surroundings. Remember that Plato's Academy was a garden and his dialogues were held under the shade of a tree. While we will make every effort to procure the best possible equipment and provide the most appropriate ambiance, we need the co-operation of the society as a whole for achieving quality in the gathering of the best available minds, teachers and students alike, under the roof of this University. We are confident that BRAC University will be strategically placed to spearhead such changes.

We hope this University becomes a centre of excellence for training the minds of our youth, not just one for the learning of knowledge per se, but where knowledge, so gathered, is made useful for the society we live in and for purposes for which this University has been set up. In contemporary times knowledge has become a key factor of production that can immeasurably advance any nation's productive capacity. As we see all around, new knowledge has given nations the scope to leapfrog across stages of development and has opened up countless opportunities. For reasons I have touched upon earlier we can indeed move in giant steps. Universities such as ours can become a tool for the acquisition of this new learning and therefore an agent for social change and progress.

 

In the march forward of the humankind, we have examples both in the East and the West, of educational institutions enduring through centuries. A day may indeed come when, for the Bangladesh society, development organisations like BRAC, as they are today, will be redundant, and will need to redefine their goals. But it is our dream that BRAC University, as a Centre of Excellence in Education, will thrive and prosper through the centuries ahead and provide vigour and vibrancy to the society, as is still being provided by Heidelberg, Sorbonne, Oxford or Harvard.

What distinctive features of education can BRAC University will offer its students? We are determined to provide students opportunities to acquire breadth of knowledge and interest by exposing them to a range of disciplines over and above their chosen field of specialisation. Students will be encouraged to acquire a sense of history, an appreciation of the arts and sciences, a love of language and an understanding of the streams of human activity that form one's culture. A general fund of knowledge and basic understanding of the major intellectual disciplines will form the foundation, and rigorous study of at least one discipline will be required. They will gain appreciation of the subtleties of arguments and complexities of conflicting evidence and interpretation which will take them beyond the superficial. A really good education should not only challenge students to learn what is known in a discipline, it should help them to grasp how knowledge is created. Students should be brought to the boundaries of what is known and should be helped to experience what it takes to move the boundaries back. It is not only the acquiring and imparting of knowledge that a University should cater for. The University must also be the centre of knowledge creation, as is the case with many Universities in the West. Research will form an integral part of regular activities of the BRAC University and one of its distinctive features. The students and faculty will have the unique access to the world of BRAC, as a laboratory which, I am sure, no other University in the world can offer!

I hope BRAC University will offer students undergraduate education of sufficient depth and breadth to be powerful, flexible and profound. Multifarious and complex problems that characterise today's Bangladesh cries out for creative leaders in various professions, occupations and disciplines. I hope BRAC University will produce a new breed of leaders who will play a vital and proactive role in our national development.

I should like to thank friends and colleagues from Bangladesh and abroad who have served on the BRAC University's advisory committee and those who have contributed to the University's preparatory phase. My grateful thanks to: 

Mr. Faruq A. Choudhury, Adviser BRAC

Mr. M. Syeduzzaman, former Finance Minister

Prof. Derek Bok, former President of Harvard University

Prof. Lincoln Chen of Rockefeller Foundation

Mr. Francis Sutton of Ford Foundation

Prof. Hafiz G. A. Siddiqi of North South University

Dr. Riaz Khan, formerly of BRAC and

Dr. David Fraser, former President of Swarthmore College

I wish to recall the guidance that was provided by the late Professor David Bell of Harvard University whose recent passing away has been a great loss to us.

We are grateful to the Hon'ble President of the People's Republic of Bangladesh Mr. Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed for his presence on this occasion as chief guest. This gives us immense joy and encouragement. I thank all of you for being present here today on this happy occasion.

Let me conclude by reciting what the great Chinese philosopher Confucius had said about knowledge and development two and a half thousand years ago.

 

            When knowledge is extended.

                        the will becomes sincere.

            When the will is sincere.

                        the mind is correct.

            When the mind is correct.

                        the self is cultivated.

            When the self is cultivated,

                        the clan is harmonized.

            When the clan is harmonized,

                        the country is well governed.

            When the country is will governed,

                        there will be peace throughout the land.

 

Thank you.

===============

The Emergence and Present Status of NGOs in Bangladesh: A BRAC Perspective

This article by Fazle Hasan Abed appeared in the Weekly Holiday on December 2, 2002.

 

For three decades I have devoted myself to work relating to the alleviation of poverty and the empowerment of the poor. My experiences have been largely tied to my work on the ground and I have thus learnt from experience. I am therefore not a theoretician. However, this is not to say that I am not aware of the rich history and tradition of the NGO movement and that my path has not been lit by the achievements of individuals and organisations who have been engaged in the development field, both in this country and abroad.

My experiences have defined for me what I conceive as the NGO movement. I view this as a movement carried out by individuals or organisations that are essentially out of the governance structure of the society, who do not formulate state policies, but can, in varying degrees, influence them. It is not possible to locate exactly the time in history when the NGO movement commenced, but it commenced from the time when an individual or a group of people living in a remote age and not belonging to the ruling class thought of the development of their weaker compatriots and took some actions in that regard. This may take us back to the world of prophets, social reformers or for that matter to anyone who wished to bring about a change that would uplift and empower the weak.

In Bangladesh and many other developing countries, non-government organisations (NGOs) are playing an increasingly important and critical role in national development. Historically, their role in development has tended to address the need of the disadvantaged sections of a society, such as the poor women, children, ethnic or religious minorities, refugees, slum dwellers, or more recently in Africa, the orphans left by epidemics such as AIDS. In many countries, NGOs wield healthy influence on local policies. Internationally also, they are becoming more active and relevant in the wake of globalisation and other new and emerging international orders. In my article I shall look at the recent history of non-governmental development in this part of the world and how NGOs and contemporary thinking have shaped the developmental evolution of society.  I share with you our experiences at BRAC.

 

NGOs Internationally

NGOs or similar organised activities are found as early as in the first part of the seventeenth century. At that time aid was sent to British and Irish Protestants who were fighting the Indians in North America. Such aid later culminated into more organised 'developmental' activities including setting up of schools and health services for the Indians, Afro-Americans and poor whites, as well as colleges and universities for the affluent population. In this context the Quakers deserve mention. In the United States today human slavery is regarded as not only wrong but utterly indefensible and an affront to humanity. It was the work of the Quakers in the 1750s and the anti-slavery movement in post 1830s that gradually caused slavery to become a thing of the past in America.

Although some contemporary European NGOs such as the Red Cross, the Salvation Army or the Catholic Relief Services were formed during or immediately after the First World War, the major thrust came after the Second World War in the rebuilding of Europe. CARE and Oxfam, for example, are the products of World War II. The difference between the NGOs set up before and after World War II is that the latter were more secular in their approach than the former. Following the 'rebuilding' of Europe, the NGOs turned their attention to the developing countries. Soon they found support in this work from their own governments in the North. Donor countries turned to NGOs, seeing them as more efficient conduits for development assistance than official agencies.

NGOs that emerged in the Third World in large numbers are of very recent origin. Poverty, natural disaster, war and other misfortunes provided grounds for NGOs to grow and proliferate in the developing world. "When someone perceives a need, an NGO is likely to follow,” remarked an NGO analyst. The most popular motto of most NGOs in the Third World is "empowerment of the powerless". They refer to the neglected and poorer sections of the community but they have also involved themselves in a host of other activities, including local infrastructure development, family planning, education, employment and income generation. Many others provide various services such as health care, agricultural extension and micro-finance.

 

History of development and NGOs in Bangladesh: Tagore a pioneer

The lives of the poor in Bangladesh have been characterized by hunger, misery and subjugation through the centuries. They have been subject to exploitation by colonialists and their local agents. There is little known in the written history about any organised efforts for their development. Rabindranath Tagore was among the first who saw the need for their development and coined the term 'rural development'. Tagore was sensitive to the contradiction between his responsibilities as the representative of his family including those of looking after its land interests and the uplift of the 'riots'. In his own words:

 

ÈpfKhj kuäLV´JPo KZPuo fJPT fjúfjú TPr \JjmJr ßYÓJ IJoJr oPj KZuÇ âPo FA kuäLr hM”U ‰hjq IJoJr TJPZ xM¸Ó yP~ Cbu, fJr \Pjq KTZM Trm FA IJTJ–ãJ~ IJoJr oj Zala TPr CPbKZuÇ fUj IJKo ßp \KohJrL mqmxJ TKr, KjP\r IJ~mq~ KjP~ mq˜, ßTmu mKeT-mOK• TPr Khj TJaJA FaJ KjfJ∂A uöJr Kmw~ oPj yP~KZuÇ fJrkr ßgPT ßYÓJ Trfáo TL TrPu FPhr oPjr ChPmJij y~, IJkjJPhr hJK~fô FrJ IJkKj KjPf kJPrÇ'

 

Some intellectuals and journalists of the then Bengal also felt the need for the development of the 'riots' even before the time of Tagore. For example, Paryichand Mitra writing in The Bengal Spectator on November 1, 1843, eighteen years before the birth of Tagore, believed that the development of the country depended on the development of the 'riots'. In his own words, "Promote their (riots') well being and the well being of the country is promoted." You will appreciate that such an utterance was quite bold for that time in history. In this context it is pertinent to recollect the contribution of reformers like Raja RamMohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Bidyasagar and Begum Rokeya. RamMohan Roy lived in Bengal in late eighteenth to early nineteenth century. His untiring efforts and the work of his Brahmasamaj led to the abolition of the practice of Suttee (xfLhJy k´gJ) in 1829. Soon afterwards, Bidyasagar came forward for societal reform. His assault paved the way for the acceptance of the remarriage of widows in Hindu families. The contribution of Begum Rokeya in education for Muslim women is well known to us.

But Tagore added new dimensions and scale to such reforms. His philosophy of development evolved and was guided by his interactions with the poor as their 'zamindar'. He experimented in building institutions and cooperatives for rural development. He realised that a major problem of the poor was indebtedness, and he started providing credit to them at low interest rates. He also saw the future in the introduction of modern technology. He introduced tractors but was frustrated when their use was found to be restricted because of fragmentation of the land.

The landmark work of Tagore in his experimentation on rural development was the setting up of 'Sriniketan' at Bishwabharati. Through this he initiated self-reliant development programmes for the poor by setting up cooperative societies. The cooperative societies that flourished in this part of the subcontinent afterwards have their origin in Sriniketan.

 

Other approaches since Tagore

Separate and independent civil society movements distinct from the work of Rabindranath Tagore or similar others that followed him can also be identified. These are initiatives taken to serve specific needs. The civil society created organisations to cater to such needs. The orphanages and x“TJr TKoKa (the last rites committee) are among this group. The Anjuman-e Mufidul Islam is an illustrious name in this respect in Bangladesh since the pre-partition days.

The Family Planning Association of Bangladesh is another example of civil society initiative to introduce and popularise a new concept. Set up in the fifties, the Association's seminal work has now made family planning a way of life. Although many other organisations and the government must share in the success, the Association did the initial ground breaking work.

 

The Comilla model

Following the cooperatives proposed by Tagore, the Comilla approach to rural development earned name and fame nationally and internationally. The approach or model grew out of a series of experimental programmes conducted by the Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development (BARD) in Comilla in the sixties and early seventies.

The essence of the model is the belief in the capacity of human beings to solve their own problems. The model prescribes a two-tier cooperative system and building of three kinds of infrastructure - administrative, physical and organisational - for rural development. The work of BARD has transformed agricultural growth in the Comilla area. Unfortunately, it faced problems in replication because of over-dependence on bureaucracy.

 

The post-liberation NGOs: a new breed

Today's NGOs stemmed from the 'volunteer activities' that came into being in 1972 following the independence of Bangladesh. The War of Liberation resulted in the birth of a new nation. It also brought in its trail a massive task of relief and rehabilitation. Imbibed with the spirit of the Liberation War, many Bangladeshis took part in the rehabilitation work and created voluntary organisations. A large number of Bangladeshi NGOs emerged through this process.

The number of NGOs has increased manifold since then. Currently there are around 15,000 registered entities, big and small. Around 1,500 of these organisations are registered under the Foreign Donations Regulation Ordinance of 1978, and are authorised to receive foreign assistance. Over 900 NGOs are involved in operating micro-credit programmes. Although there are many types of NGOs, we refer here only to those that have development orientation. While most of the large NGOs that are active in Bangladesh started off with relief work following the liberation of the country, a great many have now transformed themselves into development organisations. They now address the more delicate and difficult social and economic issues on a national scale. The end of colonial days had led to the emergence of a powerful elite that increasingly concentrated economic and political power in its own hands. More experienced in collecting rent than managing productive assets, the privileged class has been proficient in appropriating existing wealth, in many instances actually depleting the productive assets of the country, especially environmental assets. Short-term gain and long-term power remained the motivation of the elite and the greatest obstacle to social reform and the economic betterment of the rest of society. The government, as the main agent of change, could not live up to the expectation.

The emergence of indigenous NGOs and their involvement in development is a reflection of the failure of the elite to respond to the needs of the poor. A coalition of socially conscious individuals who led the NGOs sought a larger sense of fulfilment than simple charity. They wanted change - social and economic change. But they were also conscious of the tendency of human nature to resist change unless people are convinced that there is a reasonable chance that there will be benefits and that they will get at least a share of it. Experience in neighbouring West Bengal and elsewhere had shown that trying to force radical change by mobilising the poor to confront the power-holders often ended up making their situation even worse. Learning from history that the politics of confrontation is mostly counter-productive, the NGOs chose to focus on the fundamental elements that empower people.

The problems faced by Bangladesh are so numerous and of such magnitude that state initiatives alone cannot effectively address them at once. The need for others, such as the NGOs, to remain involved in development action over the long haul has become increasingly apparent. To remain small and beautiful is comforting but it is not enough. Poverty in Bangladesh is not in small and isolated pockets but exists throughout the country, and is much more deeply entrenched than is normally apparent. By any definition Bangladesh is a very poor country in spite of its rich and varied cultural tapestry, its literature, its music, a history rich in heroism and daring deeds. It is an incomparably beautiful and fertile land, capable of supporting a larger population per square mile than any other on earth. These things are often lost in crushing statistics.

Bangladesh began life with a wrecked economy. The infrastructure normally associated with nationhood did not exist. Colonized for centuries, brutalised by war and natural calamities, its people were poorly equipped for the sudden task of making a country. Schools, health facilities, communications, industry were stunted from the outset, and all lay in ruins. Against insurmountable odds, however, Bangladesh has done more than simply survive. Food production has more than doubled and life expectancy has increased by more than 30 percent. Both total fertility and infant mortality have been halved. Primary school enrolment has reached nearly 80 percent and the gender gap in enrolment has disappeared. Infrastructure has been set in place, new industries have flourished and people have reaffirmed their commitment to democracy. It is now well recognised that the contribution of NGOs in many of these achievements has been significant. Let me now briefly dwell on BRAC since its inception in 1972.

Younger than Bangladesh by a few months, BRAC and the BRAC experience parallel the development of the country and are a reflection of the capacity of its people for hard work, innovation and achievement. The last century has seen enormous improvements in the quality of life worldwide. In this situation, I believe that mankind's greatest failure and greatest challenge is its inability to eradicate poverty. It should be our greatest embarrassment that at this point in time, when we are able to produce more than enough food to feed the entire population of the world, there still remain 800 million people who suffer from hunger and malnutrition. A quarter of the population in the developing world lives on less than a dollar a day. In Bangladesh, 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. They struggle everyday in an effort to make sure that their families can eat something and are not denied opportunities for education and basic health care.

Those of us that have grappled with the dilemma of poverty know that it is not an accident and it is not our lack of ability that has left this problem largely unaddressed. Pervasive poverty is the outgrowth of a specific pattern of development and reflects certain values and priorities. The poor are oppressed by a profound lack of opportunity to access the basic necessities of life, thus creating a perpetual under-class that live in conditions that many would characterize as sub-human. Attacking poverty and hunger is not done simply by providing food and jobs. The system that perpetuates this condition must also be undone and this is the most challenging task of all. Poverty is the result of a complex interlinking of political, economic and cultural systems that have a long history and are deeply entrenched. Ending poverty entails what is tantamount to a 'cultural revolution' where the causes and not just the symptoms are addressed.

Addressing this 'culture of poverty' necessitates change at both the societal and individual levels. This requires organisations that are prepared to work as agents of change in their own societies. It is this role that BRAC has been seeking to fill for the past thirty years. But however much we strive to be agents of change, we must also admit that we are all, to some extent, products of a society dominated by the very attitudes we are seeking to alter. In this context, a change agent must work within the organisation while at the same time working to make a bigger impact on society at large.

Allow me to describe our experience at BRAC so that you can understand the events and history that has shaped my current thinking. BRAC is a development organisation now with more than 26,000 full-time staff and 34,000 part-time functionaries working in more than 60,000 villages of Bangladesh. When BRAC was started in February, 1972, it was essentially a relief and reconstruction effort to help the victims of the liberation struggle in one of the remotest parts of the country. We soon realised, however, that the needs were much greater than we had imagined. Poverty was so pervasive that we could not just walk away from the people. Even so, we thought we would take a limited number of initiatives and in a couple of years develop replicable models of the kind of work that needed to be done to eliminate rural poverty. The rest would be up to the national government and the people. As time passed, however, we realised that we had been too optimistic.

Just after the war there were no organisations, governmental or otherwise, that were capable of implementing our models on a national scale. We realised that we had to do this work ourselves. So we set about replicating our pilot projects to demonstrate that they could be effectively scaled up. We also worked at building an organisation that was capable of tackling poverty on a national scale.

One of our earliest programmes, which succeeded in going nationwide, was the Oral Therapy Extension Programme. Our pilot project had shown that mothers who received proper training could make and administer a homemade rehydration fluid for children suffering from diarrhoea, which was a major killer of children in Bangladesh. We decided to expand the programme nationwide. Over a ten year period, 2,000 BRAC workers, 90 percent of them women, visited households all over rural Bangladesh, training 13 million women to prepare and use the oral rehydration therapy. Ongoing monitoring and an incentive payment system for field workers improved the programme's quality and contributed to consistent increases in efficiency and effectiveness. ORT is now a part of the Bangladeshi culture and the recent drop in infant and child mortality in the country is attributed largely to this effort. This early experience proved to others as well as to us that BRAC could tackle poverty-related programmes on a national scale.

Presently, nearly four and a half million poor women, representing as many families, are directly involved in BRAC's development endeavours. We have extensive programmes in many aspects of food and cash crop production, as well as other income-generating activities. We run 34,000 non-formal primary schools for children who have been deprived of education due to poverty and gender bias. 70 percent of the students of BRAC's schools are girls which, we hope, will contribute towards the empowerment of the next generation of women. BRAC provides services to a population of 35 million, with the help of more than 20,000 village health workers in preventive, curative and reproductive health. We have also been one of the pioneers of the "Directly Observed Therapy Short-Course" (DOTS) for treating tuberculosis, which has been described as a breakthrough by the WHO. Empowerment of the poor and poverty alleviation are the two facets of BRAC's primary goal. Social mobilisation is the sine qua non for the empowerment of the poor and the most cost effective way of reaching a large number of households. We look at poverty from a holistic viewpoint. In the words of Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate economist, "The point is not the irrelevance of economic variables such as personal incomes, but their severe inadequacy in capturing many of causal influences on the quality of life and the survival chances of people." Along with income and employment generation, BRAC helps in forming organisations of the poor, conscientization and awareness building, training for gender equity and human resource development. These programmes contribute to the creation of an 'enabling environment' in which the poor can participate in their own development. But increasing awareness alone cannot bring change; concrete steps must be taken to promote the economic empowerment of the poor.

Providing credit to the poor is an important component of our programme. Over Taka 8,100 crore have been loaned without collateral to poor women. Our programme confounded many of the sceptics with its repayment rate of 98.6 percent and the members' savings of Taka 465 crore. Consciousness, peer group dynamics and BRAC staff supervision are important factors for the success of this programme. The full potential of micro-credit in improving the lives of the poor has been held back by the virtual absence of modern production technology in rural Bangladesh. Micro-credit has been used for traditional activities that do not generate sufficient profit to create an investable surplus. Though 50 percent of our current loan portfolio is invested in traditional activities, BRAC has made a significant commitment towards promoting new technology. Our investments in technology have included: tissue culture and use of hybrid seeds in crop production; high yielding varieties of birds, vaccination, hatchery, and chick rearing units in poultry; and improved varieties of mulberry trees, quality production of cocoons and modern reeling facilities for our sericulture programme. Effectively using these technologies requires training that can substantially increase productivity and profits.

BRAC seeks to capitalise on its network of producers by creating vertical and horizontal integration for its income-generating projects. For example, in the case of our pioneering poultry programme, activities cover the whole process from eggs to chickens. BRAC financed hatcheries sell day old chicks to women who rear them as broilers or layers. The eggs and birds are then sold to the consumers as well as to BRAC hatcheries. BRAC is also involved in such ancillary activities as training, veterinary care, and feed production. Today poultry rearing is a thriving industry, and eggs and chicken are no longer the food of the fortunate few.

Reaching the poorest of the poor - those who have nothing at all - is an extremely difficult challenge. These extreme poor, who constitute the bottom 15 percent of the population (approximately 20 million people in Bangladesh), are unable to take advantage of the traditional development programmes of the government or even the grassroot-based programmes of the NGOs. BRAC has responded by initiating the Income Generation for Vulnerable Group Development Programme (IGVGD). Since the early 1970s the government of Bangladesh has been providing a monthly ration of 31 kg of wheat for 24 months to utterly destitute women in rural areas. BRAC has been working with the government since 1988 to provide training and credit so that these women can start small poultry rearing enterprises. The programme's goal is that after the food rations are withdrawn the women will be able to earn an income equivalent to, if not greater than, the value of the food ration. Currently, there are over 300,000 women participating in this programme and over a million of these very poor women have been mainstreamed into BRAC's Development Programme.

In 1986, BRAC started experimenting with non-formal primary education programme for children from poorer families. We learnt from our interaction with the people in rural areas that there was a great demand for education among the poor and the existing public system lacked the imagination to respond to such a demand. Accordingly, we developed our Non-formal Primary Education (NFPE) programme which best suited the realities of rural Bangladesh. We are humbled by the overwhelming response of the parents and children and proud of our ability to open and operate more than 34,000 one-room schools where currently 1.2 million children, of which two-thirds are girls, are receiving an education they would have never received otherwise. Two million children have already graduated from our schools, a large number of whom have transitioned on to secondary schools. We expect to bring the joy of learning to several million more children in the years to come.

  BRAC has long realised the importance of research and evaluation to both policy design and programme implementation. Since 1975, BRAC's Research and Evaluation Division (RED) has played a crucial role in designing and assessing the impact of BRAC's initiatives. I should mention one such study which was carried out jointly with the Bangladesh-based International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) that looked at the impact of BRAC's programmes on a variety of indicators of human well-being. It found that the BRAC member households spent significantly more on food than poor non-member households. This expenditure was reflected in higher calorie intake, decline in malnutrition and increase in the rates of child survival among BRAC households as compared to those that were not involved in BRAC programmes. BRAC's education programmes also showed significant impact. The performance of students in both BRAC-member and non-member households improved in the longitudinal study between 1992 and 1995, but the study showed that improvement was significantly higher in BRAC-member households and in girls over boys. A recent study has found that BRAC's contribution to Bangladesh's GDP stood at 1.15 percent in 1998.

BRAC has been promoting a new culture in the development field with women at the forefront of all activities. Most of the recipients of credit are women, 70 percent of students and 90 percent of the teachers of BRAC schools are female and health and poultry workers are all women. Breaking the barriers of a predominantly conservative society, BRAC has even succeeded in training female field workers to use bicycles and motorcycles in performing their duties. Women are running rural restaurants, vaccinating poultry, treating patients, doing carpentry and managing people - all these activities were traditionally in the male domain. Our efforts have not evidently won us universal approval. Over the past few years many programmes and staff have been subjected to physical attacks and harassment. Under the guise of safeguarding Islamic values, the vested interest groups whose realm of influence is receding, are fighting a rear guard battle to safeguard their own interests. Their reaction confirms our belief that we are on the right path.

Despite our focus on the economic and social empowerment of women within our programmes, we have discovered that an organisation cannot stand apart from the society in which it belongs. Societal norms and values that exclude or devalue women affect the attitudes of staff and managers, the way agenda are set, what they focus on and who participates in decision making. In the late 1980s we began a concerted effort to bring more women into the organisation as programme organisers, our front-line staff. We found ourselves experiencing difficulty attracting and retaining female staff to work in the field, not because of the rigours of the work, but because of the subtle harassment and lack of respect they faced inside the organisation from male colleagues and outside from men in the communities in which they worked. We then took up a long and arduous task of transforming our organisation.

We are enthusiastic about the results of these efforts at organisational change but we realise that changing a gender-biased culture within an organisation of 26,000 people is a process that will take many years. Gender biases are deeply held and they manifest themselves in a wide range of behaviour, attitudes and work practices. But we are optimistic that our dual track approach of changing gender-biased values and norms and the organisational systems and practices in which they are embedded, and continuing to focus on women's empowerment in all aspects of our programming will mutually reinforce each other. We expect that it will move us in the direction of creating a productive and enabling environment that is well equipped to promote gender equality in the communities within which we work.

A country's greatest asset in the global economy is its people. Bangladesh, to compete in the globalised economy of the 21st century, will need to commit itself to the development of its human resources. Although good progress has been made in increasing enrolment in primary schools, the secondary schools are providing very low quality education to our children. There is huge wastage. Untrained and demoralized teachers, inappropriate curricula and the widespread practice of cheating in examinations produce high school graduates with low educational attainment. These students are unprepared to positively contribute in professional or higher learning environments.

BRAC has taken up a pilot programme to improve teachers' education, curriculum development and effective teaching practices in the high schools of Bangladesh. Computer technologies, the use of websites and media, and access to quality materials by teachers and students should revitalize the country's neglected secondary schools. For many years the best and the brightest Bangladeshi students have left the country in large numbers to study at colleges and universities abroad. They have left because the quality of university education in our country has deteriorated and has not kept up with the latest ideas. BRAC thus established the BRAC University last year to provide quality, post-secondary education to our children. However, the state of education as a whole in Bangladesh is worrisome and I think secondary education is the weakest link in our educational chain. Without a good secondary educational base, proper human resource is difficult to develop. In BRAC we have been giving urgent thought to this problem and I urge the Government and the civil society to do likewise so that we tackle this problem through a combined national effort.

I should like to take this opportunity of sharing with you my views on some questions regarding the NGOs, which are raised in our country from time to time. One is that of their accountability. There seems to be a point of view that NGOs are not accountable enough about their activities. This is not borne out by facts. For instance, my organisation, BRAC, has departments of internal audit and monitoring that are devoted to ensure the organisation's effectiveness, accountability and transparency. Moreover, all of our activities are carried out within legal and contractual frameworks mandated by both the Government and donors, which include regular audits by national and international audit firms and the yearly publication of income and expenditure statements in our Annual Report. We are conscious of our many partners with whom we must maintain open and transparent relationships. While the NGOs are financially accountable to the donors and fiscally to the Government, they are morally accountable to their primary development partners - the poor.

Then there is the question of NGOs' involvement in commercial activities. It should be remembered that NGOs have initiated commercial ventures to support their programmes so that they are able to lessen their dependence on donor contribution. Many of these commercial enterprises have backward linkages. For instance, poultry farms have been established to supply the rural women with millions of day old chicks. Same is the case with poultry feed and seed processing plants. The milk plant of BRAC has been set up to connect the rural milk producers to the city market and to ensure fair prices for them. The Aarong handicraft outlets have been set up to market the handicrafts produced by the rural artisans to the urban areas. Establishment of commercial enterprises by NGOs is not a new phenomenon. A non-profit organisation like Harvard University has a number of hotels and other enterprises and have assets worth US$ 17 billion, and Oxfam has hundreds of shops in England. The profits of such ventures are diverted to the budget for financing the main programme of the NGOs. In the USA 8 percent of the GDP is contributed by the non-profit organisations. Such ventures in Bangladesh are neither funded by the donors nor are the NGO exempted from duties and taxes including income tax.

Then there is the question of NGOs' involvement in the politics of the country. As I have stated at the outset, I believe that only the people and organisations who are essentially out of the government power structure should conduct NGO activities. My three decades in development have further strengthened that belief. It is of course necessary for the NGOs to heighten the political awareness of their development partners, i.e. the grassroots people. But the NGOs themselves, I firmly believe, should not get involved directly in party politics. While NGOs should be alert and concerned with the broader political issues, direct involvement in party politics will not only limit the operational autonomy of the NGOs, but also, in the face of political antagonism, limit their operational autonomy and sustainability.