A Grameen Subjectivity: Notes from a Field Visit to Shakpura, Chattogram Division

In early March 2024, I was joined by two other interns at Grameen Bank – Yuzuki Hosoi from Japan and Daniele Busato from Italy – for a three-day field visit to Shakpura in Bangladesh’s Chattogram Division. The trip was organised by our resourceful hosts at Grameen’s International Program Department, Mizanur Rahman and Tipu Sultan. We were generously welcomed by the area manager, Mohammad Rafiqul Islam, his family, and the branch office staff. Following our introductions and a delicious Iftar dinner, we explored the beautiful market of Shakpura and learned about the diversity of local cuisine. The next day, during a tour of one of the nearby villages, we met Munide – a mother of four, who had been a Grameen borrower for twenty years. She kindly shared with us that her first basic loan in 2004 had been 5.000 Taka (43$), while her current loan was 120.000 Taka (1.021$). Initially, Munide used her small loan to grow potatoes and tomatoes, which she sold on a small rural market. Standing with us in front of a big pond next to her house, she proudly explained that she had ‘moved on’ to the cultivation of fish, which her husband now sold for a much higher price to a wholesale market in Chittagong, Bangladesh’s second-biggest city. Munide was one of approximately 20 female borrowers, whom we had the pleasure to meet, as they congregated, like every Monday, for Grameen’s weekly centre meeting. The village centre meeting provides a space for all banking transactions except loan disbursement. As such, it is the physical manifestation of Grameen’s mantra of microfinance: “the Bank that comes to the poor”. But it is more than a bank’s conventional provision of financial services that comes to the poor here in rural Bangladesh. The centre meeting brought into relief a particular Grameen subjectivity among borrowers – a common set of personal beliefs and forms of behaviour strictly oriented at the bank’s core principles: discipline, unity, courage, and hard work. Inside the village centre building, we witnessed first-hand what borrower ‘discipline’, which our hosts at Grameen’s headquarters in Dhaka had emphasised, looked like in practice. As the bank’s centre manager entered the building, all borrowers swiftly rose from their seats and saluted. This routinised performance signalled loyalty to Grameen, honour to its principles and obedience to its local representatives. Our hosts foregrounded ‘discipline’ as a key pillar of the bank’s ‘success story’ of poverty alleviation, which was recognised with the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. An institutional culture of ‘discipline’ in loan repayment is forged through social control and mutual financial assistance within groups of 5- 10 borrowers. It is monitored by an elected centre chief, herself a borrower, who is trained by Grameen officials to ensure borrowers’ prudent management of household finances. The reach of the Grameen subjectivity transcends the walls of the village centre building. Grameen’s microfinance schemes are embedded in the construction of a broader ‘lifestyle’ and ‘mindset’ that determine borrowers’ household decision-making. Grameen offers comprehensive and long-term financial services that go far beyond the entrepreneurship loans that have given rise to the bank’s global acclaim since the early 2000s. Innovative asset-building programmes, such as housing loans, education scholarships for borrowers’ children and pension schemes are just some of the other pro-poor services that transform the promise of ‘female empowerment’ into a lifelong, multigenerational dependence of borrower families on Grameen Bank. Yet the creation of a Grameen subjectivity among rural women is ideational at least as much as it is material. Even before becoming members of Grameen, prospective borrowers undergo a week of training, which highlights punctuality and the instruction of basic writing. At the heart of training are the so-called 18 decisions – a list of commitments that encourage the ‘new micro-entrepreneurs’ to take responsibility for the bottom-up creation of a local human development infrastructure. Grameen officials stressed that they continuously monitor compliance with these 18 decisions in borrower households to “change their way of thinking” and show them “paths to economic progress” through a self-help attitude. In addition to encouraging savings and the attendance of village centre meetings, the 18 decisions promote values of respect, solidarity and social work in borrower communities. Additional pledges by borrowers, including the provision of safe accommodation, a healthy diet, environmental protection, body hygiene, and the education of children, are oriented at the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Other mandated personal changes for poverty alleviation are more specific, instructing borrowers to have less than two children and to help them become economically self-reliant ‘entrepreneurs’ themselves. Overall, these socioeconomic conditionalities and their creation of a unique subjectivity among borrowers make Grameen Bank not just an award-winning financial institution but one that will powerfully shape social services and welfare governance in rural Bangladesh for years to come.

Simon Ahrens

MPhil in Development Studies and Clarendon Scholar, University of Oxford

June 2024

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Acknowledgements: I am very grateful and greatly indebted to the women, who shared their personal stories with us, introduced us to their families, and invited us into their homes. I also sincerely thank my colleagues at Grameen Bank’s International Programme Department in Dhaka and Grameen’s Kanongopara Boalkhali Branch Office for their kindness and hospitality.