Case Study: 'The Rickshaw Queen of Bangladesh'

Farida Begum, a member of Grameen Bank since 1993, now owns fifty-five rickshaws. Until a few years ago she wore used clothes and did not own any plates or glasses. Now she has a well–stocked crockery and glassware cupboard. Previously, nobody would lend her even 25 cents; now people gladly hand over 25,000 taka, no questions asked. Even though she lacks electricity, she owns a TV and a cassette player powered by batteries. These newfound riches are all due to her membership in Grameen Bank. Hidden behind the assets and luxury goods, however, lies a tale of struggle and misfortune.

When Farida was very young her village home was wiped out by the mighty river Padma. Her family moved to the town of Faridpur and her father took a job managing the property and other business of a rich landlord. In return, he received a salary and a place to live. Eventually he saved enough money to buy a small plot in the town and they were able to move into their own home, but there was not enough money to send Farida and her siblings to school. At the tender age of fourteen she was married off to a folk singer whose extended family of ten depended on his seasonal income. The first challenge Farida faced was to persuade her husband to give up folk singing for a profession with a higher and more predictable income. Her husband found a job cleaning date trees and collecting sap from them. She sold some of the date juice to other households in the village and reduced the rest into molasses to sell in the market.

Unfortunately, tending the trees was seasonal work. During the off season Farida's husband worked as a day laborer and occasionally drove a rickshaw. Her in–laws did not appreciate her hard work, and after the birth of their first daughter the young family was forced to set up their own household. They build a house with a roof made of hay from the remnants of wheat plants. Farida did not even have a cot to sleep on: everybody slept on a bamboo mat on the mud floor. The roof leaked during the rainy season, and during the periods of torrential rain she was forced to take shelter on the neighbor's porch. She did not even have a plate; all she owned was one bowl. She would serve her husband food first in the bowl, and she would eat afterward. A used milk can served as a drinking glass. The juice from the date trees was her breakfast, and her lunch consisted of plain rice with green papaya added to increase the volume so that the three of them would have enough to eat.

She learned about Grameen Bank from her husband's aunt and joined without telling her husband, though she got permission from her mother–in–law. Initially her husband objected, but when Farida told him about her plan to buy him a rickshaw with the loan money, he relented. She indeed used the first loan of 3000 taka to buy a rickshaw for her husband, which allowed him to keep all the income for the family. Farida paid the weekly installments with the income from the rickshaw, and even managed to save 5 to 10 taka a month. Her next loan was for 5000 taka. She used 3000 taka to buy two used rickshaw and used the rest to fix them. She rented out two of the three rickshaws that she now owned and used the income to build a temporary garage. She used 1400 taka out of the 6000 taka of her third loan to buy a heifer from her father–in–law. With her savings and the remaining loan amount she bought three more used rickshaws and one rickshaw van. She used her daily income to repair these rickshaws, and she ended up owning six regular rickshaws and one rickshaw van. With so many rickshaws to manage, her husband quit driving and leased out the rickshaws, and started repairing them in their garage.

Her fourth loan was for 8000 taka, which she topped up with the proceeds from the sale of the heifer for 8000 taka. She bought ten additional used rickshaws, at a price of 19,000 taka, from another owner and paid him 16,000 taka from her total funds. She drew on her savings to fix the new batch of rickshaws and eventually the loan from the bank as well as the credit balance of 3000 taka with the previous owner with the rents from the rickshaws.

By repeatedly and successfully buying used rickshaws at a discount,1 fixing them, and renting them out, and also buying heifers, which she fattens and sells for a profit, Farida has built up a sizable base of assets that are generating the income to enable her to move out of poverty. She has used the income to build a brick house with a corrugated tin roof, and she has set up a shop selling rickshaw spare parts. She has repaid all loans from the bank on time; her only remaining loan is for a village pay phone.

But Farida Begum is not finished. She plans to take a large special enterprise loan to expand her shop and wants to send her daughter to the university for advanced studies. Granted, Farida Begum is an exceptional success story; not every borrower of the bank can be as successful as she. She is the manager of her enterprises and her husband is a willing partner. In most cases, the female borrower needs help from the male member of the family to be truly successful, sometimes having to hand over to him the actual management of the loans. Still, her story suggests that it is possible for a nearly destitute person to become a rickshaw queen over time; all that she needed was a helping hand.

Extracted from Chapter 8 of the book The Poor Always Pay Back: The Grameen II Story. Published by Kumarian Press.