Beneath the Surface
With the Candle They are to Kindle
THE other day, I came across a village woman at Kapasia - 62 km north of Dhaka city. Her name is Houari Begum (called Houa Begum) and she is aged nearly 40. She happened to be a beneficiary of the credit programmes enunciated by a local NGO, Pallimongal.
For the fourth time, she took loans from Pallimongal to carry out income generating activities.
As I was told, Houa Begum was married when she was just seven - an age level when children mostly adore dolls and balls to play with. "I was not matured enough to understand what went on in the name of 'marriage' and 'husband' ... in fact I did not give "ageen" (acceptance to marriage) my father gave it on my behalf" - Begum narrated to me in an emotionally choked voice. However, after few years, she was forced to go to her husband's house at the age of 10. Now she is mother of four sons and five daughters and Houa Begum was 12 when she had her first baby.
Darkness shrouded her immediately after marriage. Her husband was a poor man with one acre of land and a hut to live in. None advised her to contain family size in the face of very limited resources. "We were producing many children but not enough food to feed them ... my children neither got education nor anything to live humanly". As days rolled by and frustration gripped her, Begum came to know that NGOs provide credit to carry on with income generating activities. Desperate as she was, she came out of her house and knocked at Grameen Bank's door. Only recently she opted for Pallimongal.
Have your economic conditions improved over the years? "Yes, substantially," she replied to add, "over the last five years, I have built two tin-shed houses, bought two bullocks worth Tk 17,000 and accumulated small savings too." I was told that Pallimongal targets those households for credit delivery which (a) send school-age children to schools; (b) adopt family planning practices for eligible couples and (c) immunize children. Such preconditions only imply that economic imperatives are closely linked to social indicators. Houa Begum also performs the "missionary" task of educating poor women in and around her village about small family size, immunization and adult literacy.
I asked her as to why she had become so much interested in canvassing about what our rural women should do or not do? "It is simply because I want that no woman should pass through the turmoils that I personally had to go. I yearn that children should not be married at childhood, should not stay away from schools and women should not yell under the yoke of traditional social norms."
There were about 100 women - mostly poor and Pallimongal clients - who came from far flung areas to Kapasia to attend one of their group meetings. Discussions with some of them tend to show that they were not the bunch of rural women that we are generally told about. They have already mastered ideas about the virtues of family planning for eligible couples, immunization, literacy, breast feeding etc. All of them, like Houa Begum mentioned earlier, portrayed a gloomy past that they had to grapple with. Their involvement with NGOs, as they reported, gave them golden opportunity to empower themselves both economically and socially. What more struck me is their vow to see that their children are not as neglected as they themselves were in childhood.
The aim of this note is not to propagate the positive roles of NGOs in Bangladesh. Admittedly, there are pros and cons of what is going on in the name of NGOs in some places. Rather, the idea is to argue that the present level of awareness among rural women regarding health, family planning and literacy probably owe much to the activities of NGOs in rural areas. And on that score alone, government activities should supplement NGO activities. For example, some women told me that they are now convinced that for effective check on population growth, long-term measures like ligation is relatively healthier and cost-effective than short run measures like use of pills, condoms etc. But, they alleged, local level hospitals and clinics do not have sufficient capacity in terms of resource endowments to deal with the number of clients. That leads to long que, large transaction costs and other problems to discourage a long-run solution. Likewise, primary health care services are also not available at door steps in due time. The government should by now realize that there is no other cost effective way of reaching the poor at grassroots levels than NGOs. And so its primary task is to help NGOs reach the grassroots, supply them with necessary social inputs.
We left Kapasia with the impression that women are gradually growing with drive to emancipate themselves not only from economic hardships but also simultaneously to redress their social backwardness. But they all are poised to do it not only for themselves but also for others. They are moving with candles to kindle awareness among rural women population who are forced to be outcast on all fronts. To Houa Begum of our story, the recently concluded UP election where women directly participated both as candidates and as voters, signals the dawn of a new era for them who are painfully married at child age, are forced to give birth to a large number of children and are ignorant about basic health care services. Houa Begum informed me that she had already conveyed the lessons to her sons and daughters and they promised to abide by their mother's advice.
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