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.

Imran Bapari is from Rajarhat, a village in Rajshahi division in the north-western corner of Bangladesh. His father, a tailor, works in Rajarhat and his mother works in a garment manufacturing unit in Mirpur, Dhaka. Imran studies in Class III of The School of Happy World, a school run by BERDO for visually impaired children.

Imran had never been to school when a scout from BERDO noticed him in a Mirpur market with his mother. A little persuasion and the promise that Imran’s basic necessities would be taken care of did the trick. Imran was sent to BERDO – a place where he has now spent three years. His subjects at school are Bengali, English, Mathematics, Social Studies, Science and Religion. He likes Bengali and English the most. Braille books in Bangladesh are in short supply, meaning that Imran struggles to find books outside his curriculum. He has to read his school textbooks over and over again. He has however read a few books from the Braille library at BERDO – a book about Rabindranath Tagore’s childhood years and sonnets by Michael Madhusudan Dutt, among others. A Braille newspaper in Bangladesh still remains a distant dream and Imran and his schoolmates have to rely on others to get their daily fill of news. In two more years’ time, Imran will have to move out of The School of Happy World, as BERDO only has facilities to teach students till Class V. He will then attend a school for normal children in some other location in Dhaka. I asked him if he was prepared for life outside BERDO. “I shall be when the time comes. I have not yet thought about it”, said Imran. I asked him what he intends to study when he grows up. Showing maturity beyond his years, he said, “I don’t know if I’ll get the opportunity to study in a University. But I’ll try – as long as circumstances allow me”.

Imran Bapari

Students at the school lead a Spartan existence. Imran is no exception. He attends school from 9am to 1pm every day (except on Friday, which is a holiday), has lunch, takes a quick afternoon nap, studies for a bit in the evening, has dinner and then goes to bed again. And yes, in between, he plays a little bit of cricket in the late afternoon, with Sajib, a student of class I. Imran and Sajib are the two students at the School who can see partially. The eight other students are completely blind. In fact, Imran is fanatical about cricket. “Dhoni”, said Imran without batting an eyelid, when I asked him who his favourite cricketer was. His teacher Younusur Rehman did not agree. “I have seen better players”, he said. “Have you seen the way he bats? What power! He just about clobbers everything to the boundary”, said Imran, jumping to the defence of his hero. He has also been to the Sher-e-Bangla Cricket Stadium at Mirpur to watch a Test match between Bangladesh and New Zealand. He emanated joy as he described how the Bangladeshi team, riding on a match-saving knock by Mashrafe Mortaza, his other cricketing hero, managed to draw the match. As I sat there listening to his cricket stories, I wondered how he embodied the kind of religious fervour that a game of cricket generates in the Indian sub-continent.

Imran goes home thrice a year – for the summer, Id-ul-Fitr and Bakri-id. In his last holidays, he had been to Rajarhat, where he spent some time with his father. In the next, he will live with his mother in Dhaka. His mother drops in twice a month to see him. His father does not. Imran appears to be at peace with himself though. He appears to have reconciled to the limited number of choices and the overwhelming number of constraints that life has in store for him.

I asked Imran to pose with his cricket bat for a picture. “My bat is no good. It is broken and taped all over”, he said. He said he would only do it if I played a game of cricket with him. “Sure”, I said. He bowled me six deliveries that I tapped back in his direction. I bowled him six deliveries next. He missed the first two, edged the third, bunted the fourth in my direction and missed the fifth. The sixth delivery he clobbered to the on-side, with a pronounced bottom hand and a helicopter-like follow through. Shades of Dhoni, you reckon? Definitely!

Imran with his Cricket Bat

P.S.: Imran is also a fan of football and likes to have a kickabout sometimes. He doesn’t know names of many footballers but knows that Manchester United play at Old Trafford. Ronaldinho and Lionel Messi are his favourites.

BERDO was started on the 17th of July, 1991. I had the opportunity to follow its growth over the years in an interview with Saidul Huq, the Executive Director of the organisation. Huq lost his eyesight at the age of six. Numerous visits to doctors all over Bangladesh proved to be useless, as did all other attempts to restore his eyesight. A doctor from Switzerland, who was visiting Bangladesh on an assignment, told him that he would never be able to see again and that he should concentrate on his studies and use this as an opportunity to serve his community. Huq has been steadfast in his pursuit of equal rights for the disabled in Bangladesh. He started advocacy during his student days and his organisation prides itself on creating local networks of disability rights advocates.

In the interview, Huq talked about the activities that BERDO is involved in, the trials and tribulations that it has had to tide over, problems of scale and sustainability that it encounters and the like. I have always been fascinated by the sheer number of NGOs in Bangladesh. I have always wondered why a country like Bangladesh has so many NGOs and how the people perceive the role of the government in providing services that should ideally be theirs as citizens of the country.

Watch the video below for Saidul Huq’s allusion to Bangladeshi geography, and specifically to its many rivers and deltaic belt, in answering the question about the role of NGOs in the decentralisation of essential services in Bangladesh.

My first few days at BERDO have been full of stops and starts. Work progresses but slowly. Power outage and slow (and no) internet connectivity are the usual suspects. The employees at BERDO are undaunted however. Improvisation and innovation keep them afloat. They shake off the inertia that sets in as a result of these uncalled-for breaks and get back to work with the same enthusiasm.

There is a lot that goes on at the BERDO office at Mirpur, Dhaka - a school for the visually impaired, a job placement cell that works to map disabled individuals to potential employers, an IT training facility that helps visually impaired people develop basic computer skills, recording of audio tapes for a talking library and printing of material for the Braille library.  And then there is the small matter of co-ordinating activities in the two field offices at Tongi and Barisal. While the field office at Tongi provides medical and pathological services for the prevention of disability, drives a campaign to advocate disability rights and provides micro-credit to the disabled, the office at Barisal concentrates on providing micro-credit and community-based rehabilitation.

This video is an introduction to the activities carried out at BERDO in a day. In the weeks to follow, I shall try to tease out the intricacies of each of the tasks carried out at BERDO, the ways in which they have been able to enhance people’s capabilities and do away with the social stigma of being disabled, the challenges that they face and the way forward.

“My friend came to me, with sadness in his eyes

He told me that he wanted help

Before his country dies…

Where so many people are dying fast

And it sure looks like a mess

I’ve never seen such distress” (Bangladesh by George Harrison, 1971)

George Harrison’s plea for help for the ailing masses of Bangladesh was arguably the first celebrity-led initiative of its kind for a humanitarian cause. The extent to which the concert was able to help an infant nation stutter to its feet is debatable. What is not debatable however is that, as the years have rolled by, Bangladesh has responded with intent, albeit a bit slowly, to all problems – existential and otherwise, that afflict countries in their journeys from being imagined conceptions to fully forged nation-states.

Bangladesh is the youngest country of South Asia, the seventh most populous country of the world and 49.6% of its population lives below the dollar-and-a-quarter-a-day poverty threshold (UNDP, 2008). Bangladesh has also registered a 6% growth in its GDP for the last three years. Statistics however paint only half the picture. Cyclones, people living in intractable poverty, cheap labour fuelled-sweatshops stuck at the bottom rung of global garment chains are as important as bustling market places, leafy neighbourhoods, beautiful national parks and the micro-credit revolution in completing the motif that is Bangladesh.

Busy Street in Mirpur, Dhaka

The micro-credit movement has played an important part in the creation of micro-entrepreneurs and has managed to pull a large number of people out of poverty by granting them access to means of production. BERDO, the organisation that I am going to intern with, occupies its own special position in this melange of micro-finance institutions in Bangladesh. It provides loans of $50 to $200 to disabled people, arguably the most disadvantaged section of the population in an already burdened economy. BERDO also runs its own school for visually challenged children and uses ICT to empower disabled people and to help them find employment. I am really looking forward to the fellowship at BERDO and hope that it would be my window into problems encountered in the management of micro-credit projects and also into tertiary programmes initiated to aid visually impaired people.

Wage labourers waiting for work in Mirpur, Dhaka

A stuttering 65-seater Fokker F-28 flew me into Dhaka yesterday. The traffic jams I encountered on my way from the airport to the BERDO office, the crowds – huge enough to make real Malthus’ worst fears and the nebulous clouds of smoke emitted from bone-clatteringly rundown buses were all experiences that were quintessentially Dhaka and introduced me to life in this teeming metropolis. As I walked into the BERDO office in Mirpur, Dhaka I realised that my greatest challenge would be not to exoticise poverty and to steer clear of the conception of Bangladesh as a land devastated by climatic excesses and dependent on foreign aid for its very existence, and to see the country for what it really is.