I know it will surprise our pals Hakka Hua and his band of angry men to find that the most horrible/greatest of Bongo hero/villains, the "accursed hindu" Rabindranath also a nobel winner was similarly reviled and praised and then reviled throught out his life and after. I think Naeem has got this quite well. Enjoy the read and reflect.
A short op-ed on the Grameen Bank controversy. .
http://unheardvoice.net/blog/2010/12/15/grameen
*
Pride and (Extreme) Prejudice*
Naeem Mohaiemen
Today I want to talk about the fickle nature of our hero syndromes. But
first, people will ask: *yes, yes, but where do you really** stand?* So,
let's get that over with in the first paragraph. Based on the public
documents, Grameen Bank acknowledges transferring funds from one entity to
another to reduce tax liabilities and support that entity. The transfer
helped the overall picture of "Grameen" entities-- a fund surplus in one
area moved to the deficit zone. Not a novel practice. But not informing the
donors? Bad decision and terrible policy.
Tom Heinemann's signature is the "aha, caught you" documentary. From *Bitter
Taste of Tea *to the investigation of Telenor's outsourcing practices in
Bangladesh. But this time the target is bigger, as the spiraling reaction to
his film shows. Whether the transfer was "notional", whether Norwegian
donors give Grameen a clean chit, becomes almost irrelevant. The damage is
the first screamer headline: "siphoning". No one has attention span for long
news cycles.
The Grameen Bank script could have simply been of the Chittagong economist
who modified existing economic models and grew it to global scale. But the
universal desire for a "wise man of the east" narrative inserted a highly
personalized, Gandhianethos into the project. In an uber-cynical age, such
saintly stories have a predictable arc: the rise and fall. The bullseye is
proportionate to the halo.
A Yunus-centric Grameen Bank story has created a problem of succession and
leadership. When the Heinemann scandal broke, senior managers like Muzammel
Huq and Khalid Shams and Dipal Barua, who had been with the Bank for
decades, were no longer there. The person left to face the media was the
woefully unprepared M Shajahan. Maybe he's a good daily administrator (I
don't know), but under the klieg lights of television he was frozen.
Road-kill on the scandal highway.
Microcredit started as a solid concept. Grameen succeeded in developing a
business model, targeted sharply on the bottom poor and women. An
enhancement and successor to Akhtar Hamid Khan's two tier co-op in the
1960s, and the government's "Integrated Rural Development Programme" of the
1970s. But far more self-financing and successful than those earlier
experiments.
Global ambitions pushed expansion to an epic scale, and within that scale is
the Achilles heel. Until the mid-90s, the Bank was relatively small,
motivation of staff was strong, and credit was well supervised. Then
international attention exploded and the microcredit dam broke. Grameen Bank
became gigantic and extremely difficult to manage, and hundreds of large and
small microfinance institutions also entered the fray.
As documented extensively in research studies, the larger the microcredit
movement became, the wider its exposure to those borrowers who could not
generate enough earnings and therefore might default. A cycle began: some
borrowers took out new loans to cover existing loans, getting stuck in a
feedback loop. Other borrowers defaulted, creating more pressure on existing
loans.
The more famous Dr. Yunus became, the more he traveled abroad, the more the
absence of a strong management in Dhaka to get things under control. And
here the lack of seasoned managers (the Huq and Shams of early years) was
acutely felt. There was no one to enforce rectification, reduction-- a good
dose of micromanagement to get fundamentals in order.
The flaws of the microcredit model have been analyzed by Lamia Karim, Anu
Muhammed, Omar Tareq Chowdhury and others. But Grameen Bank's response has
been to ignore or steamroller the critique. But now comes Heinemann's fairly
average documentary, and as Afsan Chowdhury once remarked about the arsenic
crisis, it's when the western/white narrator arrives that issues finally
become "important".
The state machinery has taken up aggressive positions. The public
disagreement between the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister gave
everyone signals and marching orders. Dr. Yunus' election foray in the early
days of 1/11 laid the course for this unraveling as well. I would not expect
the Awami League to forgive that political adventure, and some payback seems
inevitable.
Robust economic critique and a push for reform are always needed. But
there's a parallel stream of glee here. *Schadenfreude* is joy at the
distress of others. Blood in the water and others want a bite. The chatter
in town is sprinkled with "bhalo hoise", "bujho thela" and "ekhon khela
shesh".* *
* *
I'm remembering China-Bangla Moitree Shommelon. That huge reception after
the Nobel Prize. It seemed everyone in *shushil* Dhaka was there (you were
there too, don't deny it). People crowded around the honey-pot during fame
times. I wonder what happened to that crowd, the multitude? Very few of
those people seem to be stepping forward to defend Grameen Bank, even a
little. Nobody wants to say:* the Bank made mistakes, the model has flaws,
things need to change, but this can't become a personal crucifixion.*
* *
Humayun Azad once wrote,* When Bengali wants to lift someone up, they lift
him to the skies. And when they want to bring him down, they rip him down
into the mud. *The secret pleasure over the controversy speaks volumes about
the crowd. I'm reminded of the nihilistic dance at the end of 'Lord of the
Flies': *Kill the beast! Cut his throat!*
* *
The visceral and poisonous thrill of communal bloodletting.
*Naeem Mohaiemen is a member of Drishtipat Writers' Collective and can be
reached at naeem.mohaiemen@drishtipat.org.*
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