Bangladesh

A country of relatively recent formation, Bangladesh was the result of the East Pakistan secession from West Pakistan in 1971. The new nation was immediately confronted with massive economic problems that still plague it in the 21st century. With its almost 160 million people, Bangladesh is an overpopulated country whose large majority is employed in the agricultural sector. It is estimated that almost 40 percent of Bangladeshi live below the poverty line, although the country has grown at a 5–6 percent rate since 1996. This is due to widespread corruption and inefficient bureaucracy. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as Asha, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), Proshika, and CARE are working to improve this situation through the establishment of social networks based on microcredit loans and income generation. These formal networks, however, often rely on more informal and local connections to promote their ideas and mobilize individuals into active citizenship. Through these informal networks, NGOs encourage the diffusion of some principles that country officials may perceive to be against Islam, the Bangladesh official religion, and the sharia.

In rural Bangladesh, there are few official social networks to bind people together. However, the social capital of wealthier family members is significant and helps them on both an individual and a group level. Social networks among richer Bangladeshi allow them to have access to public and private resources and to fully leverage local opportunities. Several scholars have remarked that while the Bangladeshi constitution upholds universal human rights, the inclusion in social networks is critical to be entitled to those rights. Because of this realization, the organization Nijera Kori, active in Bangladesh since 1980, has refused the usual NGO focus on service delivery, privileging instead the constitution of networks among the poorest people in the country to increase their collective capability to demand more rights. Bangladeshi women also try to improve their condition through social networks such as Mahila Parishad, Nari Pragati Sangha, Nari Pakkho, and the collective Oikyabaddha Nari Samaj.

With the founding of the Bangladesh Grameen Bank (village bank), Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, was responsible for establishing one of the country's most successful networks, which has considerably improved the condition of rural areas. In the late 1970s, Yunus launched the Grameen project to provide microcredit and loans not simply to provide banking facilities to the poor but also to create self-employment opportunities for the rural unemployed. Initially limited to some districts, the project acquired a national scale in 1983 when it was transformed into an independent bank, 90 percent of whose shares are now owned by its borrowers. The philosophy of the [Page 68]bank, which grew considerably in the new millennium, is to inject credit into low-income communities and groups to stimulate a virtuous cycle of more income leading to more investment. The Grameen approach of solidarity lending is firmly rooted into the constitution of networks of people who control each other to ensure that borrowers follow the prescribed procedures and are eventually able to repay the loan. Borrowers are required to get in groups of five and, while the responsibility for repayment is individual, the group should make sure that its members behave responsibly. There is no legal contract between the bank and its borrowers. Trust is key to the system, as are the Sixteen Decisions that borrowers are asked to follow. These 16 points encourage the bank's customers to lead a more responsible and conscious social life and to contribute to building a more equal society. Village banks have also created village companies providing education—one of the key elements of the Sixteen Decisions—and information technology to the poor. Standard rules do not apply to the bank's beggar program, which was initiated in 2003 with the aim of generating income for Bangladeshi beggars by encouraging them to sell inexpensive objects. The significant majority of the bank's borrowers, and therefore owners, are women, and it is estimated that the bank schemes help 5 percent of its borrowers to cross the poverty line each year. Grameen is also the largest telecommunications service provider in Bangladesh.

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