The P’lovers Book Club discussed two books at its last meeting: Poor Story by Giles Bolton and Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus.

Poor Story, which has as its sub-title “An insider discovers how globalization and good intentions have failed the world’s poor”, had some good points but it only focussed on sub-Saharan Africa (not the whole world) and tended to be effective in saying what doesnt’ work but was less useful in indicating what one should do with one’s “good intentions”. While it is one thing to be aware of the problems of corruption, ineffective proliferation of small but well-meaning organizations who want to “fix” everything, and the perverse effects of foreign trade and monetary policies, the book tends to leave one depressed rather than motivated. One a positive note, using sub-Saharan Africa as an example and Rwanda as a specific case study, ther eader does learn a lot about the potential of proud people and once rich lands.

Overall, however, it was felt that Banker to the Poor was more well-rounded and was an informative and inspirational read. Its sub-title is “Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty”.
It is the story of Muhannad Yunus who, in 1976, was head of the Economics Department at Chittigong University in Bangladesh. He saw that teaching existing models of economics to his students wasn’t sufficient to help bring about change for the poor of his then young country. He therefore took his students down into the villages to meet the people, to talk with them and to try to come up with new ideas.

They quickly realized that the poorest people needed to borrow very small amounts of money to better their lot in life. If they were borrowing money at all it was from local money lenders, what we would consider “loan sharks”, or from the people who would profit from their labours and didn’t have the borrowers best interests at heart. When Muhammad approached the big national banks and pointed out how small the amounts of the loans would need to be they refused to lend the money because the poor had no collateral, couldn’t fill in the loan applications and because they didn’t trust “the poor” to be accountable for their loans with no guarantor.

Muhammad decided to guarantee the loans himself. He thought that if he could set up small groups of people from one village who wanted to apply for loans, the group would essentially be accountable to one another, to their neighbours, for repayment of their loans, like a co-op. It soon became apparent that the best borrowers were women who quickly built up good credit and could therefore borrow again for new projects to the greater benefit of their families than if their husbands borrowed the money.

Yunus formed the Grameen Bank to manage micro-credit loans. The name Grameen comes from the word “gram” or “village” and means “bank of the village”. Over the years the Grameen Bank has developed some fascinating guinding principles:

“The 16 Decisions”

1. We shall follow and advance the four principles of Grameen Bank: Discipline, Unity, Courage and Hard work – in all walks of our lives.
2. Prosperity we shall bring to our families.
3. We shall not live in dilapidated houses. We shall repair our houses and work towards constructing new houses at the earliest.
4. We shall grow vegetables all the year round. We shall eat plenty of them and sell the surplus.
5. During the plantation seasons, we shall plant as many seedlings as possible.
6. We shall plan to keep our families small. We shall minimize our expenditures. We shall look after our health.
7. We shall educate our children and ensure that they can earn to pay for their education.
8. We shall always keep our children and the environment clean.
9. We shall build and use pit-latrines.
10. We shall drink water from tubewells. If it is not available, we shall boil water or use alum.
11. We shall not take any dowry at our sons’ weddings, neither shall we give any dowry at our daughter’s wedding. We shall keep our centre free from the curse of dowry. We shall not practice child marriage.
12. We shall not inflict any injustice on anyone, neither shall we allow anyone to do so.
13. We shall collectively undertake bigger investments for higher incomes.
14. We shall always be ready to help each other. If anyone is in difficulty, we shall all help him or her.
15. If we come to know of any breach of discipline in any centre, we shall all go there and help restore discipline.
16. We shall take part in all social activities collective

Through Yunus’ story and example, we can see both the power of one man and small, community-mananged investments. Highly recommended by the group.

Poor Story – $24.95
Banker to the Poor – $18.00

The P’lovers Book Club’s next book is Into the Forest by Jean Heglund – a rivetting novel about challenges faced by two sisters when society loses the capacity to generate power.