On the eve of International Literacy Day, Dhaka-based NGOs that work on disability rights addressed a joint press conference at Dhaka Reporters Unity (DRU), under the aegis of Bangladesh Visually Impaired Peoples Society (BVIPS). They called for greater partnership between GOs and NGOs, a friendlier and more flexible curriculum for visually impaired students and most importantly, for children with disabilities to be covered under the education ministry instead of the ministry of social welfare. Md. Saidul Huq, Executive Director of BERDO and Vice-President of BVIPS was present at the meeting.

Popular English daily ‘The Daily Star’ reported:

Call to introduce Braille system in all educational institutions

Speakers at a press conference yesterday urged the government to introduce Braille system in all institutions to ensure education for visually impaired people. As most educational institutions, especially those in rural areas, have no such system the visually impaired children are deprived of education, they added. The press conference was organised by Bangladesh Visually Impaired Peoples Society (VIPS) in cooperation with Sightsavers International Bangladesh at Dhaka Reporters Unity ahead of the International Literacy Day today to draw the attention of the government to Braille system of education for visually impaired students.

The speakers said only four percent of visually impaired children get chance for education when the government is committed to ensure education for all by 2015 as per Dakar summit of 2000. Lamenting on the government’s attitude towards the people with disabilities, VIPS President Golam Mostafa suggested that like all other children, the children with disabilities should be brought under the education ministry instead of the social welfare ministry. In fact, the government itself believes like other people in the society that the people with disability especially the visually impaired are not capable of being established in the society, he said, adding that the government believes that mercy and kindness are enough for them. Executive Director of the Centre for Disability in Development (CDD) AHM Noman Khan said educational materials for the visually impaired children are produced in the country but there is no proper distribution system on behalf of the government. If the education ministry takes a comprehensive plan to provide education to children with disability including the visually impaired children then the problem will be solved to a large extent, he added.

Country Director of Sightsavers International Bangladesh Dr Wahidul Islam said the non-government organisations can make a model for providing education to visually impaired children but it should be the responsibility of the government to implement the model across the country. “Education for visually impaired children is a must if the government wants to ensure education for all,” he said stressing coordination between the ministries of education and social welfare. In a keynote paper, VIPS General Secretary Mosharraff Hossain Majumder put forward some proposals including training for the teachers at primary, secondary and higher secondary level to handle the students with disabilities.

(Source: The Daily Star, Tuesday, 08/09/2009)

A Braille Arithmetic Device

Another daily ‘The News Today’ reported:

Ensuring access of vision impaired to education stressed

Leaders of Bangladesh Visually Impaired Peoples Society (BVIPS) today underscored the need for ensuring greater access of vision impaired people to education for attaining the goal of education for all by 2015, reports BSS. At a press conference at Dhaka Reporters Unity (DRU), Advocate Mosharraf Hossain Majumder, General Secretary of BVIPS, said the country has now a total 1.40 crore disabled people. Out of them, 33 percent are vision impaired having only four percent access to education, he added.

The BVIPS organized the press conference supported by Sightsavers International, a royal commonwealth society for the blind. The press conference was organized marking the International Literacy Day to be observed in Bangladesh today (Tuesday) as elsewhere in the world. Country Director of Sightsavers International Dr Wahidul Islam, Vice-President of BVIPS Saidul Huq, General Secretary of National Forum of Organizations Working with the Disabled (NFOWD) Jowaharul Islam Momen, Executive Director of Centre for Disability and Development (CDD) AHM Noman Khan and Vice- President of BVIPS Nasreen Jahan were also present.

Advocate Mosharraf said there is a double standard in education system as general students have 97 percent access to education while only four percent for vision impaired students.Other speakers said the living standard of vision impaired children, youths and adults is poor as they are deprived of the rights of literacy and basic education. The only way of mainstreaming the disabled people is to ensure their greater access to education by providing them with trained teachers, education materials and Braille books, they said. They expressed their apprehension that the government’s target of ensuring education for all might not be fulfilled by keeping a large segment of the disabled out of quality education. The rate of literacy will be raised to a satisfactory level if the disabled are provided with necessary education support, the speakers hoped.

(Source: The News Today, Tuesday, 08/09/2009)

Wajed Ali Mallick lived a contented life in quaint little Gowachitta in Southern Bangladesh. During the day he used to ferry electrical goods from shop-to-shop and in the evening he used to go back home to his wife and four children. All of that changed on one fateful evening in January 2007 when an errant iron-rod from a rickshaw pierced his right eye in a freak accident, while he was chatting with friends outside a tea-stall. Doctors in Barisal and Dhaka failed to treat his eye. His other eye could not bear the stresses of the heavy dosage of the medicines recommended. He now has 2/6 vision in his left eye. An iron filing still remains lodged in his right eye, and gives him painful, sleepless nights every now and then.

Wajed Ali Mallick at his tea-stall

For two and a half years, Wajed Ali lived on the goodness of his friends and relatives. His disability and exorbitant seed and fertilizer prices meant that his 4 cottahs (1 cottah = 2880 sq. ft.) of land could not be cultivated. Those months of veritable mendicancy still rankle in his mind. He had to marry off his daughter, all of sixteen years, to make sure that the others in the family had enough to eat. The eldest son, who was fourteen years old then and studying in Class VIII in a local school, had to abandon studies to join a tailoring shop as an apprentice. Wajed Ali fathered another child after the mishap. “It was an accident”, said Wajed Ali, half-dejected and half-embarrassed, in response to my question about why he and his wife decided to have a fifth child in the midst of absolute penury.

Four months ago, Wajed Ali took a loan of Tk 5000 from BERDO and opened a tea stall of his own in the market square at Gowachitta. Every day, he opens shop at 6 am and stays put there till 11 pm. Mondays (the day of the weekly market, when traders come from nearby villages) are particularly good for business. Wajed Ali now earns about a tenth of what he used to earn from his business of electrical goods. “It is just about enough to keep my head above water”, he said when asked if the money was enough to sustain a family of six.

His son at the tailoring shop

Wajed Ali does not get a disability stipend, something that all persons with disabilities are entitled to get in Bangladesh by government decree. He has not been able to save enough for the bribe that the clerk at the district office asks for in exchange of including his name in the list of disabled people. Surprisingly, he does not have a health insurance either. “Most insurance accounts in Bangladesh are fiddled with by middlemen”, said Wajed Ali. I had little clue about how insurance companies in Bangladesh operate but nodded in agreement. I realised that when a man’s life is a continuous struggle to gather enough means to live, the very thought of investing in one’s future appears faintly ridiculous, even revolting.

A common feature of all my meetings with females who had taken loans from BERDO was their inability to see themselves as atomised individuals but as families. In most cases, loans taken by females had been invested by their husbands/sons into productive pursuits and sometimes in unproductive ones. While females were responsible for paying the weekly instalments, males took all the business decisions – a situation that degenerated into domestic violence at times. Skewed power-relations within the household are as much a result of social hierarchies, as the sexual division of labour that prevail in Bangladeshi society. And every loan used by a male member of the family further harnesses conditions for the reproduction of such gender inequalities.

Roshanara Begum

Roshanara Begum, a widow from Barisal, is an exception to this rule. She is fifty-five years old and has three sons. The first of her sons works as a tailor, the second at a shop and the third pulls a rickshaw (the one with whom she stays). But Roshanara refuses to sit idle and has taken a loan of Tk 5000 from BERDO and used it to rear chickens. She buys chicks at Tk 45 a pair and sells them for Tk 100/kg to a vendor who sells them at the market – a transaction that earns her between Tk 2000 and Tk 3000 every month.

Roshanara now has 100 chickens in her poultry farm. She buys their medicines and vaccines, sawdust to keep them warm and ensures that the local vet pays them a visit every week. She also wishes to take another loan of Tk 10000 (upon repayment of her first) to expand her poultry farm. In short, she attends to all aspects of work at her poultry farm and takes all decisions. Her business, she says, has increased her worth, both in her own view and within the family and means that she is no longer a passive beneficiary.

A rooster at her poultry farm

Roshanara’s example adds further strength to the argument that micro-credit can be seen neither as an agent that institutionalises the subordination of women in the family nor as an instrument to undo dominant gender ideologies overnight. Rather, it straddles the divide between the two and when accompanied by regulations and proper integration into markets, offers hope for inter-generational changes. In its most simplified form, micro-credit that targets females represents an expansion in their potential choices. Roshanara Begum, for one, would certainly vouch for this idea.

The success of micro-credit programmes all over the world has given rise to a new train of thought – one that on the basis of experiences I have had here in Bangladesh; seem overly optimistic about the nature and extent of positive changes they can bring about. My last blog highlighted the features of BERDO’s micro-credit programme. This entry points out a few general caveats of micro-credit and is meant to be a quick reality-check. 

First, the high interest rates charged by micro-credit programmes drive down demand for loans. Poor households are extremely sensitive to these rates of interest and are automatically excluded from such programmes.

Second, extension of insurance and mobilisation of savings are crucial for upward mobility and act as social safety nets at times of crisis. The holy trinity of savings, credit and insurance performs considerably better together than credit alone can ever hope to.

Third, access to credit does not automatically translate into successful micro-enterprises. Business and technological inputs, training and education and establishing links with the market are critical for the success of any business initiative.

Fourth, micro-credit programmes assume that self-employment alone can pull people out of poverty. Such an assumption sometimes threatens to create a new breed of reluctant entrepreneurs.

Fifth, micro-credit fits with the idea of ‘targeting’ – a means to identify specific kinds of households and persons as opposed to a Universalist approach. 

BERDO community workers at a weekly meeting

These drawbacks, however, are no reason for despair. They provoke us to view micro-credit objectively and with guarded optimism. They also tell us that micro-credit, though empowering to an extent, cannot be a substitute for state investment in health, education and infrastructure (which is where advocacy comes in), and should complement state engagement in issues of unfree labour and class exploitation.

The use of micro-credit to draw on local knowledge and resources and to create and improve access of disenfranchised sections of the population to vibrant, new markets is a novel idea. Without a strong legal and institutional framework and more liberal screening criteria, it threatens to remain just that.

BERDO’s micro-credit programme loans out sums starting from Tk 5000 upto Tk 20000 to disabled individuals and females, at an annual interest rate of 12.5%. BERDO itself takes this money on loan at an interest rate of 4.5% per annum. The remaining amount goes towards transaction costs. Repayment starts from the week after and the loan has to be repaid in 45 instalments. Allowances have been made taking into account personal emergencies and BERDO expects its debtors to return the sum in 52 instalments (a years’ time). A first time debtor is eligible for a loan of Tk 5000.

A debtor at his vegetable shop

People put these amounts to a variety of uses: they start small scale retails shops, tea-joints; sell vegetables from door-to-door; rear chickens and ducks; and buy rickshaws and nachiman gaadis (hand-started, motor-driven carts). For some, these loans present an opportunity to earn more, save and to accumulate assets – a step towards upward mobility. For others, the whole micro-credit cycle is a defensive strategy to cope with penury, a mechanism to ensure that they meet their day-to-day expenses.

A debtor with his nachiman gaadi

Sidr, the cyclone that devastated Southern Bangladesh has pushed repayment rates down from a perfect 100% to 99.7% for disabled individuals and 98.4% for females. A debtor mentioned that a few NGOs had had to shelf their micro-finance initiatives – such was the impact Sidr had on repayment rates. BERDO and its loanees have managed to keep their heads above water. She also revealed that she had paid no instalment for a period of four months, a proposition that BERDO was alright with. Most importantly perhaps, she mentioned that the loan in itself (and the weekly instalments) did not feel like an additional burden in the aftermath of Sidr. And that at no point of time did she rue the fact that she had taken a loan.

Mir Salim was eighteen months when he fell ill with typhoid and lost his eyesight. He passed his class 12^th examination in 1992 and undertook training in nutrition at the Helen Keller International at Dhanmondi, Dhaka. For three years, he taught English grammar to high school students in private classes in Banaripara. He has always been good at it, he admits with a touch of pride. He also communicates regularly with Braille magazines in USA. Salim now works as a community organiser with BERDO in Banaripara.

His work is challenging and problems are plenty. The devastation caused by Cyclone Sidr means that people mistake micro-credit for flood relief. Induction of new members is a slow process that requires a great deal of confidence-building and motivation. He says that motivation, in fact, is a double-edged sword. The indolent are difficult to motivate and the industrious fail to see the merits of enrolling in BERDO’s Community-Based Rehabilitation programme. Once enrolled, people look for quick benefits - a grant, a sewing machine, scholarships for students etc. Awareness levels about disabilities are low and superstitions are rampant in Banaripara, like in most other parts of Bangladesh. Disability among children is often seen as a result of gunaah (sins) committed by other members of the family.  His greatest challenge, he says, is to explain to prospective and current members of BERDO that disability is not a curse.

The nature of these problems means that Salim has to wear multiple hats - that of a community worker, an education adviser, a negotiator and a disability rights advocate, at different times of the day. He plays scout and travels to neighbouring villages to identify disabled children who do not attend school and negotiates with teachers who are often reluctant to allow disabled children to enrol into local schools. He shares his knowledge in matters of nutrition and hygiene and also accompanies disabled individuals to the District office to help them register their complaints.

Watch the video below to know why the teacher at the local school thought Nantu (a physically challenged child) could not, and what it took Salim to convince him that Nantu could:

P.S.: Salim has an interest in people, places and the animal kingdom. When not sorting out problems of the villagefolk, Salim reads old Braille editions of National Geographic.

Once every week at 9 am in the morning in Banaripara in Barisal division of Southern Bangladesh, twenty women and a few children make a beeline for Khairunissa’s house. BERDO’s community worker Fatema waits there with textbooks and public awareness leaflets. For one hour, they talk on different issues – health, education, prenatal care, pregnancy-related complications, hygiene, latest legislations for disabled individuals and their budding business initiatives, started with micro-credit received from BERDO. In between, they also pay their weekly instalments. Fatema takes the lead in most of the discussions, relays information contained in the leaflets and shows them slides. At other times she acts as a facilitator. The women chip in – raise their problems and ask questions. They are all part of a Self Help Group, one that they have christened ‘Shiuli’. At 10 am, the women troop out of Khairunissa’s house and head back home to attend to their daily chores, while Fatema heads to Jahanara’s house for the next meeting – this time with a group that calls itself ‘Beli’.

Members of 'Shiuli' at their weekly meeting

There are thirty such SHGs in Banaripara consisting of BERDO members. A group usually consists of eighteen to twenty-five members – both able-d and differently able-d. Disabled minors, who cannot be full-time members, are often accompanied by their mothers. Each group has a President, a Secretary and a Treasurer, each of whom is chosen by consensus from among the members of the group for a period of one year. The one-hour meeting comes as a welcome relief to women who find little time away from the grind of household duties. It serves as a platform where they learn life skills. It not only allows them access to a little credit to start an income-generating initiative of their own but also gauges their progress and helps them out with business knowhow from time to time.

Paraplegic child at the weekly meeting of 'Shiuli'

The response of the womenfolk at the meeting I attended was very encouraging indeed. ‘Shiuli’ is only nine months old but all members send their children to school. Newly-weds have begun to understand the merits of contraception and pregnant women that of skilled midwifery. Four women from ‘Shiuli’ have taken loans from BERDO and repayment rates of the group are a 100%. One of them, the widowed mother of a paraplegic child, has started a betel-nut shop. She does not earn enough just yet to support her family but is hopeful that her shop will eventually help her tide over financial difficulties. The SHG model has been used the world over and while BERDO’s Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR) programme is not a panacea to all the troubles that plague women and the disabled in rural Bangladesh, it has allowed them to get a foot in the door, afforded them a straw and if its success is anything to go by, it is definitely not the last one.

In an earlier post, I had touched upon how development in Bangladesh has been suspended between the government and NGOs. Read this newspaper story that scratches the surface, uncovers the nexus and reports on how NGOs have become embroiled (and understandably so) in the power struggle between the two leading political coalitions of Bangladesh:

http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=96385

In that same post, I had also referred to an incident of a lost girl. In the past week, I have heard of four more incidents of a similar nature. Human trafficking is a serious issue in Bangladesh and claims 10000 to 20000 victims (women, children and even adult males) every year. The connection between disability and the disgusting business of human trafficking is all too obvious. More on that soon.

Laxity at the workplace is both a bane and a boon in Bangladesh. While it may mean that a day at the office is intermittently punctuated by prolonged cigarette breaks and that employees frequently get together in a huddle for fresh gossip, the flexibility that is axiomatic also means that working hours can be long and that things that workers in more legally conscious societies would take you to court for making them do are consummated as routine jobs.

Firoza Khatun is a worker bee who lies closer to the second extremity than anyone else at BERDO. She comes to office at 9am in the morning, acts as the Executive Director’s human interface to the computer, reads out mails, takes notes, drafts letters, churns out photocopies, scans the internet for funding opportunities, and occasionally fills in as the makeshift cook. And this she says she does because of her love for her work and not because other people take her for granted all the time.

Firoza is from Shahidnagar, a village in Dhaka division. One day, at the age of three when she was playing with her siblings, she fainted. The nearest doctor was three villages away and her parents wished her illness away as common cold. Three days later, it turned out that the fever was not that common after all. She had contracted polio and has been walking with the aid a stick ever since.  Attending primary school was not much of an ordeal, she says. High School was more difficult, especially in the monsoons. She had to walk 6 km everyday over rickety bamboo bridges and wade through knee-deep waters to accomplish the simple task of attending classes. In the school, where girls were supposed to follow the teacher and mill around him/her, her atrophied leg slowed her down, meaning that she was often left behind. University was when her difficulties began to take insurmountable proportions. Balancing her studies in the face of a memory problem and having to walk 8 km everyday proved to be too much for her to handle and she failed to complete her graduation. 

Firoza found work instead, at a pre-primary school run by BRAC in Shahidnagar. She worked at the school for eighteen months. In September, 2005 she joined BERDO. The eldest of six children and the only girl in the family, Firoza says that she has never been discriminated against by her parents. She does not blame her parents for her illness, but rues the fact that she could not complete her graduation. She believes that things would have been different without polio. Firoza has not married. She has not thought about life after BERDO. She says that living her life alone in Dhaka is a fulfilling experience and that she feels complete. That having to prove that she can do things on her own everyday, unaided fills her with joy unrestrained.

Twenty-five minutes into the conversation I could sense that the coyness had been penetrated, that words were now beginning to flow from her mouth. Just then, an employee called out to her. The students at The School of Happy World below had woken up from their afternoon slumber. There were mangoes to be had but no one to cut and serve them. Firoza excused herself. There was an unfinished task at hand, yet another opportunity to prove her worth to the world.

Watch the video below where she tells us about her unfulfilled dreams and her unresolved anguish:

I am back from a trip to Panchagarh, a sleepy town 42 km from the India border in Northwest Bangladesh. The 470 km bus-ride from Dhaka to Panchagarh was backbreaking and my ears are still jarring from the effect of the loud music and the incessant honking of the horn. But I am not complaining. First, I have seen worse in India. Second, the scenes of village life unfolding on either side of the highway were more than adequate compensation. Third, how often do you get to see a total solar eclipse in your life?

The Sun at 'first contact'

Cloudy skies marred a clear view of the celestial spectacle, but the sun eventually shone (or should I say peeped) through the haze in all its regalia. The moon covered more and more of the sun, reducing it to a sliver. With only minutes to go for totality, darkness and with it a strange hush descended on the place. The whole experience culminated in the magnificent Baily’s beads and the thousands of sky-gazers who had gathered at the stadium at Panchagarh on the morning of 22^nd July to witness the once-in-a-lifetime event erupted in a mad, synchronised cheer.

Solar corona