ActionAid, a British charity, mentioned in a recent report that 90% of commercial sex workers in Bangladesh are addicted to Oradexon, a steroid meant for cattle. Diaspora Bangladeshi blogger Anushay Hossain explains why they use this drug:
This medicine meant to fatten cows has become the preferred drug among the madams [employers of sex workers] of Bangladesh. They are using the pills to mask the real age of the underage girls working for sex in their brothels by making them appear older and at the same time making the more ‘seasoned’ sex-worker look plum and voluptuous.
Let me introduce to you a great project from Australia. From the website of the Great Aussie Rickshaw Ride [GARR]:
Spanning ten weeks and five states and territories, the Great Aussie Rickshaw Ride will launch some 400 Aussie rickshaw wallahs on a 2000-kilometer quest to raise awareness about global poverty.
The message is simple: alleviating global poverty is achievable through people powered change. It happens when people like you, people who care, decide to take action.
Central to the Great Aussie Rickshaw Ride is the humble rickshaw – our people-powered vehicle for change.
On why GARR chose the cycle Rickshaws in Bangladesh:
During the GARR our Aussie rickshaw wallahs will be pedaling cycle rickshaws made in Bangladesh. These three-wheel machines are typical of the estimated half a million rickshaws that choke the streets of Dhaka.
Bangladeshi rickshaws are the most colourful in all Asia and have been called ‘mobile works of art’. A quarter of the cost of a rickshaw may go into its artwork.
The ride will visit towns and cities, speaking in halls, universities, parks, schools, churches, (or anywhere that will take us really) about poverty alleviation and how Australians can help.
The inspiration:
The idea began with a man named Jeff whose passions include cycling and helping the poor of Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world. In an inspired moment, Jeff combined the two to make the Great Aussie Rickshaw Ride. Jeff believed that a mammoth rickshaw marathon, could help Australians become aware of global poverty.
Pat and Di Jeffs have fond memories of a recent trip to Bangladesh, during which they were inspired to take part in the Great Aussie Rickshaw Ride to help alleviate global poverty. Image courtesy World Countries - Australia
You can see the actions of the Great Aussie Rickshaw Ride in this Facebook album and get informed by following their Twitter account.
Adidas, the German sports giant, is to make €1 trainers for millions of people around the world who cannot afford to buy shoes, with pilot production to begin next year in Bangladesh.
This is rather at a conceptual state still as the final price will be slightly higher than this. But the important thing is that the shoes will be sold on a non-profit basis by Adidas. other sports companies accused of exploitation in the developing world, Adidas is keen to improve its image and reputation for corporate social responsibility.
The original idea came from Dr. Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh's Nobel prize winner and an Adidas spokesman said "It is correct that Adidas Group in conjunction with Muhammad Yunus aims to put such shoes on the market."
According to the report Dr. Muhammad Yunus convinced Adidas that Bangladesh needed "social businesses" which would create jobs in the country.
Now, this may be groundbreaking step in the fight against poverty. One of the noticeable differences between the developed nation and the developing nations is the wider gap of rich and poor. From looking at the people in the streets of Berlin, Milan or New York you will rarely make out who is earning minimum salary or who is from higher middle class. Because there is a wider choice of apparel and footwear according to the power of wallet and all are in a standard quality. But if you look at the streets of Dhaka, Delhi or Lahore, you can easily make out who are poor from their clothes. There are cheaper versions of apparel and footwear for them but neither they are manufactured by brands nor do they keep up a standard quality.
The Tata Nano in India revolutionized in saying that car is not a luxury item and even lower-income groups can afford them. So why not lower-income groups should be allowed to afford more items from renowned brands in reasonable qualities? If you want to eradicate poverty then you need to bridge the gap between rich and poor.
If you don't know what a flashmob is, its a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse. The word is spread via social networking sites, including Facebook, Myspace, Wikipedia, private blogs, public forums, and personal websites. (Wikipedia)
Fugstar is reporting that a recent flashmob in Lincolns Inn Fields (Chancery Lane/Holborn) in London was arranged to have Iftar (evening meal breaking the fast during Ramadan) with the homeless. The instruction was to spread love, "just bring food, friends and share them around." Isn't that exemplary and if you are religious isn't that your religion tells you to do?
Now are you ready to flashmob your social cause in your locality?
Only 13% of Bangladeshis have access to traditional banking accounts (19 million accounts). The rise of Dr. Muhammad Yunus's Nobel prize winning microcredit model Grameen Bank provides banking facilities with its 2100 branches spread in Bangladesh to 7.34 million people (as of October 2007, 97% of those are women). There are also many other microcredit institutions trying to bridge the gaps with their financial services but the purpose of those are purely self sustaining and ignore the wider social agenda of the Grameen Bank model.
According to the article, commercial banks in Bangladesh have begun to focus only on “rich clients” and have reduced attention on rural areas, leading to a “gradual decline” in credit to those areas of the country. The article also cites “exploitation of the poor loan-seekers from a section of micro-credit providers” and a lack of incentives for “small savers” as hindrances to expanding financial services.
Supporters of commercial institutions would argue that despite the success of the Grameen Bank and other non-profit Bangladeshi MFIs, the fact that Bangladesh’s poor are still without basic financial services points to a need for quicker expansion fueled by profitable organizations. Those opposed to for-profit organizations would contend that commercial institutions ignore the poor and that Bangladesh requires an expansion of non-profit lending in order to benefit the poor.
Funneling money to rural Bangladesh is crucial for poverty alleviation because 80 percent of the countries poor live in these areas and 54 percent of the country is employed in the agricultural center.
Another option is of course mobile banking. Bangladesh is well connected with mobile telecommunication networks thanks to the competitive industry and so far they have tapped about 45 million users. A huge portion of them do come from the remote rural areas where even the basic infrastructures like telephone, paved road or electricity are lacking. Mobile banking can really provide them opportunity to avail banking and financial services in their locality without investment in infrastructures like setup of branches etc.
The idea of mobile bank is floating and people are trying to make that possible in Bangladesh but they are facing resistance from the traditional banks.
“Banks, the traditional leader in payment systems, see mobile banking as a new threat if private telecom operators are allowed to use their outlets for money transfer without law,” writes journalist Sajjadur Rahman. I don’t know what he means by “without law”, but I do know what’s behind this quote by a government official: “We won’t let anything, which hurts the banking industry, happen.”
It is a classic example of powerful lobbyists delaying a new technology to protect their industry interests. Mobile banking allows any mobile phone customer to deposit money into his or her phone account at any mobile phone outlet (which are everywhere in countries like Bangladesh) and transfer that money to any other mobile phone user. M-PESA in Kenya has shown how this can bring basic banking services to millions of rural residents who would otherwise never open a traditional bank account.
..Traditional banks in Kenya are irked that Safaricom is able to operate its M-PESA mobile banking service with so few regulations in place. With 2.7 million clients, it may be that M-PESA became too successful too fast and, having learned their lessons, banks in other developing countries won’t allow mobile phone companies to dig into such a large market share.
The price of rice, the staple food of Bangladeshis keeps on going up. If one is paid the minimum wage that is about 2000 Taka a month, he/she will be able to buy a kg rice a day with nothing to spare. So how one is going to survive? WFP says poorer households are the hardest hit who spend up to 80 percent of their income on food. And this may cause political and social unrest in Bangladesh soon.
Meanwhile Chairman of the Regulatory Reforms Commission and ex adviser of the care taker Government Akbar Ali Khan slammed the Government for furnishing 'rosy' development scenario. His quote that the country is undergoing silent famine has provoked much reaction. In certain parts of the country the silent famine or Monga is again surfacing. According to Independent Bangladesh:
Compared to national average gross domestic manufacturing product at Tk 2,720, it is Tk 254 for Lalmohirhat, Tk 263 for Nilphamar, Tk 341 for Kurigram, Tk 400 for Gaibandha and Tk 820 for relatively well-off Rangur among the monga-prone northern districts.
1. The government (ie taxpayers) will have to pay more for the past debt. This will mean less money for other expenditure such as health or education.
2. Government will find it harder to borrow. The call for government expenditure beyond its revenue is likely to increase.
3. Private sector will also find it hard to borrow. And this will mean investment will slow, with follow ons to employment and household income.
4. Exports will suffer, especially if Europe enters a recession.
5. Remittances will suffer, even without a global recession. This is because most NRBs will have to pay higher interest payments in their house/credit card/personal loans, and it will mean less money to send home.
Looks like its a double blow for Bangladesh and the situation is so volatile now that a little spark can turn to big fire of protests in the country. We are sadly watching the meltdown and are able to do nothing.
In this week's roundup we will highlight some of the discussions happening in the Bangladeshi Blogosphere on the issues of Poverty, LGBT and Travel .
Poverty:
Bangladesh is a developing country and the main problem of this country is overpopulation. It has one of the highest population density among the worlds big countries. Although the reduction in the growth of population to 1.7 percent (3% in the '70s) is a miracle its vast rural population with their simple style of living are dropping its per capita income average to make it a poor country. It is almost self-sufficient in food for its population of 140 million (over 90%) if no natural calamity strikes in a year. We look at the Blogosphere to see how the country is fighting to get out of the cycle of poverty.
If poverty could be eliminated solely by the hard work and determination of the poor, then third world poverty would have ended a long time ago. The poor in the developing world are some of the hardest working people on the planet....I once again point out something I learned long ago: the poor aren’t lazy.
Here is the video produced by Shawn (used under creative commons license):
Bangladesh's fight back to reduce poverty is largely contributed by its clothing industries which flourished from the late eighties. Lower income class women used to have no options other than working as housemaids for food, lodging and a small amount of money, now work in thousand of garments and other factories. And the proliferation of micro-credit introduced by the Nobel Laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus targeted women to help them get out of poverty. And this had impacted a great deal in empowering women in a predominantly Muslim society.
Dr. Kathryn Ward of Bideshi Blue is a co-founder of Nari Jibon project, a provider of alternative skills for women, which has done commendable job in providing low cost classes in Bangla, tailoring, English, and computers. Kathy informs:
Many of our students have gone on to develop their own businesses, improve their salaries from literacy in Bangla and skills, jobs in offices and NGOs, and pursue their higher education with computer and improved skills in English and Bangla speaking, writing, and reading.
From Drishtipat blog we are pointed to an article published in Himal South Asian magazine which sheds a light into the Bangladeshi gay community. As homosexuality is still a taboo in the society people are using the internet to form a virtual community and meeting place of the gay-identified men in Bangladesh.
It was in late 2002 that the first online gay group for Bangladeshis – a Yahoo group called BOB, for Boys Only Bangladesh – was started by a handful of educated men. Tired of looking for other gay men in public places such as the Ramna Park hangout, they were hoping to build friendship ties online so as to begin talking about their sexuality comfortably. Since BOB is the biggest congregation of gay-identified men in Bangladesh, it has since come to be seen as something of a barometer of the gay community in the country. As such, BOB helps to gauge the political aspirations of this group – and, more recently, has provided a window into how the past year of emergency rule has affected the gay community of Bangladesh.
Travel:
Joybangla.info, a travel blog from Bangladesh informs:
After many delays, interruptions, disagreements and a fence, the train ride between Kolkata and Dhaka will begin running again on 14 April.
Bodda in Scattered Words Blog had taken a new year's resolution that he will visit places in Bangladesh and blog about it. The blogger visits Kushtia, which is famous for Lalon, the singing mystic of Bengal and Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali Nobel Laureate. Raza Rumihas more on Lalon Fakir.
Ahmed Sharif writes a photo essay in his PhotoBlog "Desher Chobi" after his visit to Lawachara Rain Forest & Sreemangal.
Poverty in Bangladesh in the eyes of an expat Ashley Wheaton:
Living in a country like Bangladesh constantly forces me to redraw the lines around my mental conception of poverty. A factory worker seems hard done by until you meet the construction worker. The construction worker earns your sympathy until you see the child collecting trash. The child is then outdone by a disabled beggar... When I was not immersed in this reality it was easy to treat them all as poor, to condemn all of the conditions they faced as equally bad. But in reality the poverty here is extremely complex and it isn't realistic or meaningful to treat each person's poverty as if it were the same.
Yes, poverty is really a complex thing. It all depends on where you set the standard. If you go to a village you will find the simplicity of a living. They may not have TV refrigerator or even electricity but they are surviving. They can still live an eventful life with their sorrows, joys, love and patriotism. A village family's monthly expense can be less than what a rich family dines in a restaurant in the capital in one night. Yet if you compare those riches with a rich people in a Western country they will be outclassed.
In the West there are also poor people but you can barely notice them. Its not only that they are protected by social security, but there is hardly any difference of appearance between rich and poor.
Except for the über rich people (who have their limos and jets) people do not show off their richness to others. They don't have maids at home, they are not more shiny in appearance than the less well-offs. Even you cannot distinguish between a day-labor and a rich lawyer in the streets as they are treated as equals.
But the picture is different in Bangladesh. There is a pseudo class notion among the people. Ask anyone from a village, their goal is to be rich one day to have maids and cars to show off. From lower income class to middle class, upper middle class to rich every body dreams to oppress the lower class; there is no sense of equality. And that is why the poverty is so complex and ugly. Because there is a competition to be richer and show off your shiny cloth, assets in every strata of society. So you get a hierarchy of poors, a million dollar mansion overshadowed by slums beside it. And nobody seem to care about others.
Shawn, who came to Bangladesh to do something about poverty finds out this reality:
"With an estimated 80% of the country surviving on less than $2 a day, Bangladesh is sharply divided between those struggling to survive and those living it up. Being rich, in Bangladesh typically means being insulated and detached from the tragedies that fall upon the country.
The rich tend to congregate in Dhaka City where they live in up-scale apartment complexes and homes. These are strategically built on higher ground, in gated communities, with their own backup generators and reserve water tanks. Most of the urban rich do not have to worry about driving, cooking, or cleaning as it is relatively inexpensive for them to hire chauffeurs, cooks, and maids. Having lived in this country for the past six months, I have observed that the typical routine for rich Bangladeshis is to stay sheltered at home during floods, riots, and curfews and then - when it is all over - resume daily activities as if nothing has happened."
Its true that the recent inflation is taking the toll of the poor and the rich and political elites of the country seem to be not effected by it and are not doing much to tackle it.
The first step to solving a problem - is to admit there is one. Refusing to acknowledge or publicly speak about P O V E R T Y in Bangladesh keeps us further away from solving it.
And poverty can be fought only if it is possible to narrow the gap between the rich and poor and sense of equality established.
“Eat the Poor” will take a satirical look at poverty in the 21st century– a golden era when the designation “Millionaire,” having lost both its luster and its meaning, needed to be replaced by a new category: the simple yet apt “Super-Rich.”
* 3.5 percent of U.S. households experience hunger. Some people in these households frequently skip meals or eat too little, sometimes going without food for a whole day. 9.6 million people, including 3 million children, live in these homes (source).
* Almost 100 billion pounds of food is wasted in America each year. 700 million hungry human beings in different parts of the world would have gladly accepted this food. (source)
Play a vocabulary game and end the world hunger. For each word you get right, 20 grains of rice is donated to the United Nations World Food Program.
What do you get?
* Formulate your ideas better * Write better papers, emails and business letters * Speak more precisely and persuasively * Comprehend more of what you read * Read faster because you comprehend better * Get better grades in high school, college and graduate school * Score higher on tests like the SAT, GRE, LSAT and GMAT * Perform better at job interviews and conferences
So what are you waiting for? Go and play it. Warning: its insidiously addictive.
This news just broke my heart. But I salute the fighting spirit of the people of Bangladesh who just don't break down and life goes on. Sadly you don't find these people in the current politics of Bangladesh. They are just vote banks to be exploited.
You don't often see great ideas to reduce poverty. Here is a great video which just shows the background of GrameenPhone in Bangladesh, which boast to reduce poverty with connecting poor people who had no access to telecommunication (I am ignoring the criticisms against it, which is a broader issue).
"Connectivity increases productivity and reduces poverty"
- Iqbal Quadir, founder of Gonofone and GrameenPhone. He is currently the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Program in Development Entrepreneurship, Senior Research Associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the founding co-editor of Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization, a journal published by MIT Press. (Wikipedia)
"About 150 million people are crammed into this overcrowded country, making for a density of 1,000 people for every square kilometer. The country is only 40 percent the size of Germany." - reports Matthias Gebauer, a German consultant. He writes a series on the dangers of the effects of the Global warming in Bangladesh in Der Spiegel Online.
However if you read his reports (link below) minutely you will see that it tells about rampant poverty in the Char areas, new found floodplain sediment islands in river deltas. These are located in an active river basin and are subject to erosion and accretion. They are the shelter of some of the country's poorest people, who cannot afford to live elsewhere and try to fight for their lives here.
"The island has no electricity, and Shahidul has only heard of the existence of telephones."
This is a sharp contrast to the countries record cellphone growth. The infrastructure like roads and electricity are bestowed upon after a long time when these lands have sufficient inhabitants and settles down.
And the truth if anyone can get:
"Subject to nature's whims, the farmers have just been able to feed their families on the hard-earned returns of their work. It is enough for a daily bowl of dal -- a yellowish porridge of lentils -- onions and a little rice. A piece of meat or fish is added once a week. In the evenings, the exhausted farmer gets one or two packages of paan, a mixture of nutmeg and lime rolled up in a green leaf. This local drug is relaxing and has turned Shahidul's teeth blood red. Besides, he says, you forget your problems; as if on cue, his friends grin and show their own sets of red teeth."
Well Paan is rather a digestive than a drug and you don't always need a drug to find happiness amongst extremest poverty.
Yes poverty is written all over the articles. Netherlands can build proper flood protections having a lot of its surface areas under see level. Why Bangladesh cannot provide a lot of protection to its oversized population is because of poverty.
According to Matthias:
"The average Bangladeshi produces just 178 kilograms of carbon dioxide per year -- a mere drop in the bucket compared to the 21 tons per capita released annually by Americans."
Still they will be the first ones to face the adverse effects of the Global warming mainly because they don't have enough means to protect them.
Climate change is of course a vital issue. But poverty reduction is a far more greater issue in Bangladesh. And I think the world should also put that in perspective.
There are many international organizations engaged in Char development projects (1, 2, 3). I don't know about the successes of the projects. But I met one consultant working on one such project who commented "If these NGOs/IOs could just distribute the millions of dollars funds directly to the poor people rather than spending on consultants, researches and ineffective strategies, there could be a significant reduction in poverty."
The Seattle Initiative for Global Development is an alliance of business and civic leaders of United States whose goal is eliminating extreme global poverty. They have identified that the necessary elements in eliminating extreme poverty are: political will and increased resources, a long-term commitment, a multilateral approach and a coherent policy strategy. Their policy paper outlines the critical need for U.S. leadership in the following areas:
Investing in People: Promoting Development Through Healthy, Educated People and Economic Opportunity. Investing in Countries: Supporting Good Governance and Open Political and Economic Systems. Making Markets Work: Opening the Global Marketplace to Poor Countries and Poor People. New Initiatives: Encouraging Innovative Approaches and Public-Private Partnerships.
I wish there were more such initiatives in every developing country.
