Apologies

I've taken the liberty of copying the full text of Australian premier, Kevin Rudd's speech to Parliament apologising to Australian aborigines:

"Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing culture in human history.

We reflect on their past mistreatment.

We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were stolen generations - this blemished chapter in our nation's history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and fathers, the brothers and sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, indigenous and non-indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia."

Wow. 

As an American, I wish we could have some of that. Nobody even talks of apologies in the ongoing presidential race or in media generally. And we owe a few.

Apologies will not solve the many problems minorities face but they will open the door to seeing that there have been injustices and that something must be done. Moral leadership must be about more than talk but don't we have to start talking to move to action?

I'm not going to say anything more than this: Start talking

Emergency

I must say, the fashion for state of emergencies is in these days. Pakistan and then Georgia...who'll be next? I worry about dictators and their desperate need to stay in power. All I can think is, why are you needlessly putting yourself in danger of assasination? I'm figuring that they don't care about the people, don't they want to save their own skin? Or maybe Mushie realises how apathetic a nation Pakistan can be (quite frankly, if I was dirt poor like most of the country, I wouldn't have the time of day to care about what he did as long as i was able to complete each day successfully...so maybe apathy's a bit harsh). And Benazir Bhutto's going to get the country back on the right track...right, the woman who successfully robbed the country blind with the use of her husband, that thug Zardari. Do I feel disenchanted? A tad. Do I seem cynical? Maybe a smidgen. Do I have a solution? Don't I wish. Can someone find a real honest-to-God intelligent and humane and honest cavalcade of people (I can't expect a person to succeed here and group sounds so mild and I can't use politicians because that would be a contradiction of terms) to marginally fix this country up? A bit of emergency triage that's all. Let us all pray (or just hope really really hard if we're not into that prayer thing!).

Uniforms and resignations

Is he going to resign? Yes
...wait, no
...well maybe
...sort of?

If you thought we live in a fast moving world, you are absolutely right...the constant shift in Pakistani politics has hit the speed of light because I swear every time I hear the news something has changed...its starting to make me dizzy. In fact don't ask me about Pakistani politics because I'm sure that while I speak there have been five new developments. But, I guess, you could also say life is never boring in Pakistan can you?

Apart from the general excitement of all this change, there is an underlying apprehension...make that very noticeable apprehension, because we're seeing the return of two politicians whose tag-team years of power did very little for this country. Except, of course, from stealing from the nation's coffers...really not something you want to repeat.

Unfortunately, as a nation we are wont to repeat our mistakes. Lets just wait and see...eh? [Oh the Canadians, already influencing me!]

Of course in other parts of the world we are still moving at a dogged pace; finally the snail that is Alberto Gonzale's resignation has reached the finish line. I'm just saying...it was called for ages ago and should have happened then.

Gentlemen's Clubs and Shanty Towns

Day 6 has been skipped from this travelogue because primarily I was in a van watching more paddy fields…turns out, its not very exciting once you’ve seen 4-5 km of continuous fields! And we saw a lot more than that…try closer to 400 km…

Since Friday is part of the weekend in Bangladesh, we set out sightseeing in Dhaka. After travelling through the diplomatic area, we were moving towards the uber-famous Louis Kahn Bangladesh Parliament Building. I can’t even begin to describe how excited I was. I mean how often do you get to see the famous works of architecture you’ve read so much about and studied at college?

And I can’t even begin to describe how beautiful it was…in a concrete, industrialist kind of way. Majestic tends to be a word used for parliament buildings a lot but it tends to refer to ancient greek style buildings with Corinthian pillars and all the imposing accoutrements. The very modern concrete structure I saw was majestic in its own way. It sat isolated on an expansive green area but rather than looking lonely, the building looked imposing and haughty [if buildings were actual people rather than inanimate structures]. Nearby are residential quarters for government servants which were designed as part of this structure, and they are quite interesting to look at but we didn’t manage to stop and observe them more closely.

We then headed off to the house of the founder of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujeeb-ur-Rehman. The entire family was assassinated in this house with the exception of two daughters, one of whom was Sheikh Hasina (later a prime minister of Bangladesh), who were abroad at the time of the attack. The house itself is nothing special, but rather quite gruesome in the manner which it preserves the attack (blood stains have not been removed, bits of hair that fell off victims have been preserved behind glass etc.). The belongings of Pakistan’s founder—who died due to illness and not unrest—have been preserved much better and so I was a little disturbed by the house museum.

We then proceeded to see some of the older parts of the city, which were predictably extremely crowded with narrow lanes and lots of traffic—both pedestrian and vehicular. But as always fascinating to just stare at. We went to offer Friday prayers at the Bait-ul-Mukarram mosque which is the biggest mosque in Bangladesh—it was partially under construction so apart from its immense size, it was not at all interesting. The market set up around it on the street however…

We went to a late Mughal fort, which was characteristic of the period with its chhattris, quadripartite divisions and the red colour. It's a lesser building and has few carvings and is extremely simple for a Mughal but wandering in the gardens is always pleasant and calming. The day pretty much proceeded in this fashion and we were shown many historic buildings, the Dhaka University campus and the National Language Monument being some key sites in our travels. Bengalis take a great deal of pride in their hard fought independence and it's a bit difficult to take in as a Pakistani since we are the bad guys in this tale.

The other big highlight of the trip was wandering bored through the National Museum [I was tired and am absolutely not a fan of natural history] and seeing fabric woven from ivory—well that came in second after the famine series by Zainul Abedin—I can’t tell you how amazing they were—please google them, it was fabulous. They’re gorgeous in a stark and sad manner and just so powerful. Words cannot do the series justice.

Also, I am now simply summing up my thoughts and findings in this entry because the rest of the trip primarily consisted of meetings where we took apart the project in many ways over and over again trying to see how it could work in Pakistan, what needed to be changed and what needed to be retained. There’s an earlier blog entry where I lament the state of development organizations and this set of meetings helped reassure me quite a bit that at the top level, the planning level, a lot of thought truly goes into structural injustice, social norms etc etc.

Notes:
This country tells me that we need to stop using corruption and bad governance as an excuse. Too long have we been mired in our apathy. Poverty is not just a situation but a state of mind and to get out of this trap we need, no must, reform our thinking. It is a two-fold process as I see it—both to accept our situation & to not accept it. That sounds contradictory but let me explain:

We rail against the rampant injustices in Pakistan but do nothing because the injustice [supposedly] hampers us. There is no benefit in such a stance because we have not made our lives any better [perhaps we’ve made them a bit worse because we’ve disheartened ourselves and others with such a defeatist attitude]. The problem is that we are too focused on the bigger things [the ones out of our control] and do not realise/choose to focus on what we can do. Bengalis do, they seem to ignore the odds that are against them and keep working hard to better their lives and themselves. I’m not talking about NGOs, I’m talking about the ordinary man, the one who has a tiny field of rice or who drives a cycle rickshaw.

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I find it almost impossible to refrain from finding fault with BRAC despite how well planned and comprehensive its programmes/projects are. It is perhaps related to an innate need to justify what I myself do—that feeling that one is just not doing enough! Nonetheless, I had one major issue with BRAC’s strategy; that there is too much handholding of poor groups. Then again, maybe there’s nothing wrong with institutionalised handholding. Let me try and explain:

I don’t have to worry about money or when/where my next meal is coming from but its not as if I earn an extraordinary amount of money, so in times of need (e.g. after college I was unemployed for several months and depleted my meagre savings), I do have a back-up facility—a “lender” so to speak, in the form of my family. My parents are a form of handholding—they give out soft loans, do not need guarantors, do not set payback times etc. The poor, especially the ultra-poor, do not have this facility. Instead, every time they are strapped for cash, they have three options:

1. Mainstream lending agencies—a no-go because of the tedium of bureaucracy and the [usual] inevitability of rejection.

2. Microfinance Institutions—an excellent solution for those who need small business loans and who do not have large reserves of cash to start said business. But what about the other group of people who suddenly suffer loss in the form of the death of a family member? Or who need an expensive surgery? Or are simply unemployed and need some help? They can’t go to MFIs because they are not charities they are businesses.

3. Banya/Loan shark—the inevitable solution for the desperate poor man. And possibly the worst solution as it will lead to difficult repayment given heinously high interest rates and leads him/her into a vicious cycle of debt begetting more debt.

So why should we dismiss the so-called non-sustainable giving of freebies--they can be quite necessary.

"And still the questions continued..."

We Pakistani NGO visitors are an inquisitive bunch and can’t seem to stop asking questions. I got the feeling that sometimes our hosts were a bit tired of answering questions—one of them even said, “I’ve never hosted a group like this ever before”! At the same time they liked that we had so many questions because it showed our commitment to thoroughly understand the project and implement it properly. Or, as properly as one can implement an experimental pilot.

Unfortunately, there’s always a risk when trying to replicate successful projects. Its not just project design that guarantees success, its many, many other factors, especially the most important one of all; the human factor. It sounds cliché but that’s the only phrase that adequately describes what guarantees whether a project fails or succeeds. If a group of people cannot adapt themselves or a project to achieve desired results, no matter how much work is put into it or even money, it won’t succeed. That’s why development organizations spend so much time having field staff conduct village meetings, workshops and just general motivation. You can only help those who are willing to be helped.

I digress…Bangladesh adventures continued the next day as we spent an inordinate amount of time travelling through northern parts of Bangladesh. We first went to observe a Village Organization (VO) meeting of graduated members of the TUP programme. Many of these women are now BRAC microfinance clients but many are not. They are not expected to be, not everyone can be an entrepreneur and not everyone is willing to risk their [now] stable livelihood. These women are generally very impressive; I met an 80-year-old woman who had been part of the TUP project. I thought that her age alone would have precluded her but as it turns out she was quite willing and able to participate. She started out with livestock and now also has land that she cultivates and to top it off, she’s a spiritual healer!

After we left the meeting, we headed off to [yet another] BRAC branch office where we learnt about their legal aid project. Rural communities don’t have access to legal advice regarding various issues that they face and BRAC trains staff in basic legal advice that they can help villagers sort out or their problems or at least understand them better. They also provide third party arbitration in the case of disputes. If the legal aid programme officers cannot help out, then a professional team of lawyers is present at BRAC to provide further help.

After the legal aid clinic and our lunch break we saw the final support service that the TUP project offers to its members. And its by far the best one, the Village Poverty Reduction Committee [or as its called in Bangla: Gram Daridron Bimochon Committee—GDBC]. The GDBC is a committee made up of local community members who are activists within their community; the group of people who stand up for their community and its rights and who aid the poorer members of their village. In short, the socially responsible community members. Of course, social responsibility tends to be a lot easier when you have money to spread around without worrying that your family will go hungry without the money that you just gave away and so its not unexpected that most GDBC members are the elite of their community. They tend also to be educated or hold a steady job or have large portions of agricultural land.

The point of the GDBC is to be a direct support to the TUP beneficiaries in whatever way they need it. No matter how well spread out BRAC is, BRAC staff cannot be with every TUP member 24/7 and problems occur anytime, anywhere. The GDBC is the first group that TUP members can turn to since they are already living in the same community. It’s also a way of involving the elite members of a community rather than usurping their positions as caretakers of their community.
GDBC’s have the following objectives:
• Ensuring social security
• Ensuring asset security
• Ensuring a suitable working environment (social acceptance)
GDBC’s also have the following specific responsibilities:
1. Provide tin roof [for shed of livestock/poultry] for all TUP members
2. Ensure safe drinking water
3. Ensure sanitation
4. Ensure health care treatment
5. Ensure plantation—2 plants for each household
6. Ensure admission for all school-age children & ensure admittance
7. Ensure family planning availability/awareness
8. Ensure immunization for all children aged 0-5 years
9. Ensure tetanus toxoid (T.T.) vaccine to all women aged 15-45 years
10. Ensure government & non-government facilities through community mobilization

We got to see a GDBC meeting in action—they meet once a month to discuss the general status of the TUP enterprises in their village, to follow up on problems highlighted at previous meetings and to ask if the TUP members currently have any new problems that they need aid for. It is important to understand that BRAC does not expect GDBC members to pay out of their pocket for all unforeseen circumstances that a TUP beneficiary may face. The GDBC is expected to help by motivating the entire community to come to the aid of one of their own rather than immediately expecting help from BRAC [who will give it if no alternative can be found]. It’s good for BRAC because they end up conserving their resources but, more importantly, it is teaching a community about self-governance and organisation so that they can eventually help not only the ultra-poor in their village but also for other needs (e.g. organising sanitation for everyone rather than waiting for an NGO to come around and help out). In some ways, the GDBC is as important a component of the BRAC TUP programme as the enterprise itself because it has equally far-reaching consequences. I think this new wave of participation and community organizations [in development work] is here to stay rather than simply a fad because it works in reality rather than just theory. It gives a new meaning to grassroots activism in a way that is fresh and yet is also plain common sense. After all a project where you actually get to decide what you need [rather than the ‘perceived’ need] is bound to be way more successful.

Jugnoo

I do apologise for the delayed posts, being away for two weeks from work does not help to decrease the workload, quite the opposite.

The adventures in northern Bangladesh continue…

On our second day in Rangpur was, if possible, even more interesting than the first. We headed off bright and early to a village where a participatory rural appraisal (PRA) was being held. A PRA is one of the most popular and successful tools used by development practitioners in surveying new locations and getting a feel for the pressing issues that locals face. Its development agencies realising that local participation and guidance is necessary for long-term success of development. Anyways, the PRA is an essential component of the TUP programme as it is the first step to selecting who the ultra-poor really are. And we had the opportunity to watch a particularly good one. The facilitator was a young Bengali man who was very energetic and very much attuned to the crowd. The PRA began with a mapping of the village. First the major landmarks and ‘roads’ of the village are mapped out, followed by the listing of all the households in the village. After the entire village had been mapped out, the facilitator then moved onto wealth ranking. He started by selecting two households randomly and asking people which one was better off. He also asked them to define what they meant by being better off—i.e. how was one better off? This process would continue till 4 to 6 rankings of wealth were established. These rankings are important because not all development projects are meant for entire villages, the TUP project is one of them; it is targeting the destitute members of the village. Similarly micro finance generally targets the middle/upper class of a village.

PRAs are extremely effective forms of information gathering because they are heavily invested in a participatory approach, forcing the entire village to agree on answers making it difficult for villagers to hide the truth. Let me illustrate; if you decide to garner information by doing surveys on a household level, then there is no checking of answers, there really is no way to verify the truth. On the other hand, in a PRA everyone is sitting together and consensus has to be achieved. Of course, hypothetically, an entire village could be so unified that they could mislead you collectively but that’s statistically improbable and highly difficult to achieve. I know this makes it sound as if I’m calling all villagers/underdeveloped communities liars, I’m not, I’m just saying that people don’t share information especially the underprivileged because of the risk of exploitation. I could simply be posing as a NGO worker sympathetic to their plight when in actuality I am a ruthless land grabber.

Anyways, I digress. Once the PRA was over, we moved on to our next visit. We were now moving away from the direct component of the TUP project to the support services involved. Support services are an essential component of such a project because simply providing assets to the ultra-poor is not enough, they must also be given a chance to let their business flourish and start making a profit so that, in turn, they can start inching their way out of poverty. To do this, one needs to address the many other issues that destitute groups face. For example, if they have no income to provide daily meals to their household, how will they bear the cost of a new enterprise (e.g. feed for livestock, fertilizer for cultivation)? So BRAC provides them with a subsistence allowance, which is not a huge amount of money, but it's a cushion for those who have nothing. They don’t have to use all of the allowance; the money can start off their savings. It is essential to emphasize the importance of savings, a concept that by default cannot exist amongst the very poor (if you barely have enough money to feed yourself, where is the savings going to come from) but is ironically probably the most necessary form of insurance that the poor need to have to prevent crippling debts in the face of unexpected losses.

These are somewhat intangible support services but BRAC also uses of many of its regular services as part of the TUP project. It’s an efficient manner of doing things because there is no point in replicating programmes, which would waste valuable resources and manpower. This includes their health volunteer project. BRAC trains women as health program organizers (these are BRAC employees) who are responsible for various villages. They visit each village regularly to raise awareness about specific health issues and the care and prevention of these matters and are also responsible for community health volunteers. Each village has one woman who has been trained in basic health care, who looks after most of the village’s primary health care. It’s not a new concept or even one confined to Bangladesh, many developing countries have similar projects where cadres of health workers are deployed by NGOs and health ministries as the first level of health care for rural communities. In turn, these workers train local community members to fulfil most of their village’s basic health needs sparing them the need to go to clinics/hospitals for every small issue and, hence, saving them money and time. Such systems also allow for better health awareness in general and safer practices (a community health volunteer tends to be trained in safe delivery practices and is also trained to recognise his/her own limitations and refer patients to a physician when necessary). Decentralising systems such as health and education is necessary for better success in reaching everyone.

While we visited with a health program organizer, we also happened to pass a BRAC social awareness/advocacy session held for rural village women. These are weekly sessions where the women gather in a small group and a BRAC employee discusses various social/legal issues with them raising their awareness about these problems and their rights in such cases. This sort of short information talks occur at many stages in BRAC projects, to ensure that people are becoming well informed and that the message gets through.

After this we headed on to BRAC’s branch office where we lunched and got to see various projects that they run from the branch office, which is located close to many villages and is easily accessible [there are branch offices all over the place ensuring that villagers an get to them easily enough]. Here, there is a government doctor who works on an honorarium basis for a few hours each week after his hours at the government clinics are over and provides the necessary professional care that health program organizers and volunteers simply cannot do.

Also, we got to briefly see the training that TUP members are provided when they first join the project. All new members in an area are divided into their various types of business and are given trainings in these groups. The training itself is for three days and covers the care and management of their asset.

I’m fast coming to the conclusion that BRAC spends a lot of money on its infrastructure, which is great because they’re making sure everyone can get to them. It helps that they are so huge and that they have oodles of money but still, it would be great if other NGOs could do stuff in this manner rather than ferrying field staff back and forth. It would be even better if governments came to this realization and set up services in such a broad manner.

After all this heavy thinking and extensive travelling, our hosts decided that we deserved a break and took us sightseeing to a colonial mansion which has been converted into a museum. On the way to the Zamindar House (Note: zamindar means landowner and tends to refer to feudal landlords, which is an interesting name to give to one’s house! And as a random other note, zamindar is pronounced jamindar by Bengalis who seem incapable of saying “z”), we had a bizarre experience that I still can’t quite believe. We were passing over a stretch of road that was constructed so badly that while it seemed to be perfectly flat and smooth seemed to move the car in the same manner as a boat rolls over the waves! Anyways, the house was beautiful though not so well kept. It had the most beautiful high ceilings with stained glass windows—the old type with thick bubbly glass of translucent jewel tones. The museum objects did not hold much interest because there wasn’t much written up about them and they were rather monotonous which sounds awful coming from an art history major who wants to study it further but I am spoiled in museum settings!

That night, we also got to go see some Popular Theatre, a social programme of BRAC’s. I personally think there’s no project as good at creating awareness as theatre is. Its also great because it provides entertainment for local communities who don’t get it so often. BRAC’s theatre is performed by amateur troupes. The troupe we saw was fabulous even though I didn’t understand a word. But most of the time, language wasn’t much of a barrier—the acting was wonderful. They started off with a song, which apparently consisted of various social messages. The play was also based around social awareness themes but drawn from real life events that have taken place in the village. It was very cute and funny at times but of course had its serious moments. The popularity of the theatre was evident by the sheer numbers of people that attended. Its also telling that clearly there isn’t much in the way of formal entertainment for local communities but that’s unsurprising for any rural community around the world. I think this is also why the theatre is so successful because it manages to reach the maximum number of people.

And so, tired we went back to our rooms…

Unending fields of rice

Last night, after watching out the car windows for seemingly unending hours, we reached our destination in Rangpur; the BRAC Training & Resource Centre (BRAC-TARC). A huge facility for training BRAC staff [primarily field-based], the TARC is incredible. It has residential accommodation for 100 trainees [small children are allowed] along with additional guest rooms (for trainers and visitors like us) and training classrooms, dining hall etc. The trainings are free of cost as are the accommodations and related expenditures. At this time, 4-5 trainings are being conducted in the centre. What’s more incredible is that this is not the only facility of its kind—there are 22 TARC facilities across the country. It's the stuff of dreams for many NGOs and partially explains the high degree of loyalty that BRAC employees feel.

The morning was spent being briefed on the particulars of the TUP project. It began in 2002 in 3 districts [Rangpur is one of them] and has, so far, reached 100,000 beneficiaries (all women). They plan to reach 200,000 more beneficiaries in the next 4 years and have expanded the number of districts that they plan to cover to 42. It’s ambitious but do-able.

After lunch, we headed out to visit beneficiaries of this project in their homes. Bangladesh seems rather homogenous as a nation because of the profusion of paddy fields everywhere. Granted, they eat rice at every meal, its still amazing. Add to that they all speak the same language and are racially similar and it seems a fairly unchanging nation. The villages are interesting. In Pakistan, I am used to a village being a single cluster of houses with another village comprising of another cluster. In Bangladesh, each cluster is one part of a whole village. Therefore villages are larger, I couldn’t get an average figure but one of our hosts estimated that average size would be around 400 households, which is a large village by our standards. This function of clusters makes for interesting village design; clusters tend to be built within an area tall trees and bamboos with agricultural fields creating the separation between clusters.

The first village we went to was a mixed Hindu-Muslim community. Similar to parts of Sindh in Pakistan, the villagers were living in complete harmony and were very happy to interact with us. Pakistan is of course a pretty well known country in Bangladesh since it has only been 36 years since East Pakistan became Bangladesh. And Bengalis are pretty forgiving people—they quite like Pakistanis!

The visits were themselves very interesting. The women who have been given a start by this project have managed to be very successful in not only developing enterprises but also in uplifting themselves from such extreme poverty. Its also remarkable the degree of business acumen they display. One of the TUP members started out with 6 goats and ten hens. Through a combination of saving and selling assets (hens multiply rapidly and you can sell an asset as long as you have a replacement for it—i.e. after a goat has given birth, you retain the kid but sell an older goat), she bought first a rickshaw and then used her remaining savings as well as rent from the rickshaw to buy a cow. Her assets now include 5 goats [of which 3 are pregnant], a kid [she didn’t include the kid as a goat!], a cow, 25 hens and a rickshaw. The project allows them to save well and also to develop their enterprise appropriately so that they are benefiting from microfinance as the project intended. Some take loans for land cultivation, others buy land for a house or for new livestock, but the important thing is that they now have the capital and [perhaps, equally important] the confidence to take on such loans.

And so ended the day. I leave you with the advice of one of the senior members of our group: “Instead of getting up as if a scorpion has bitten you, ponder upon the dreams of the night before…”