The peace prize winning micro-loan movement around Grameen Bank in Bangladesh
continues to grow quickly . The Bank now has 7.5 million members ,
99000 of whom are beggars. In rural areas ,
Grameen is extending green electricity to more and more poor
villages with help from solar panels and cow dung.
With
glowing eyes Dipal Barua sits in the Swedish spring sunshine in
Berzelii Park and tells how the Grameen organization extends
electricity and light into Bangladesh’s villages and how the whole
micro-credit programme is growing on increasingly more fronts in the
country –including separate loans which will give beggars a chance to
become small scale entrepreneurs.
Dipal
Barua is visiting Stockholm this week to take part in the Globe
Forum’s conference at Berns. And according to what he says
the development is expanding at an even faster rate for the
micro-loan organization which came about when peace prize winner
Muhammad Yunus founded the rural bank., Grameen Bank in Dipal
Barua’s home village , Jobra in 1976. At that time , he was
one of the students who from the start accompanied the economics
professor out into the villages.
And now he quotes the figures on what has happened :
The
number of borrowers and members of Grameen Bank has now grown to 7.5
million , , 97% of whom are women. If you reckon with five
persons in every household , Grameen Bank reaches every fourth
inhabitant of Bangladesh. The goal is to reach half
of the population by 2015 .
In total,
over the year , the bank loaned 42 billion Swedish crowns of which
almost 37 billion is repaid. Repayment rates remain high around 98% .
Sister
company Grameen Phone continues to distribute mobile phones in the
villages and there are now 300,000 “telephone ladies” in
the country. Grameen Phone with Telenor as majority owner
and Swede Anders Jensen as managing director , is with 18 million
subscribers the country’s largest mobile phone operator.
A
total of 99000 beggars have been given micro-loans to enable them to
start selling something in the streets instead of only begging for
benefits. Unlike the conditions of normal micro-loans , the
beggars don’t need to repay if they fail, but repayment rates up to now
have been good and 12,000 of these borrowers have already
stopped begging states Dipal Barua .
Increasing
numbers of young people have received loans for school fees
or grants for higher education. Increasingly more homes are built
with loans from Grameen and increasingly more participate in the
organization’s insurance programme.
But
what most engages Dipal Barua is the expansive energy
company , Grameen Shakti where he is the managing director .
Grameen Shakti amongst other things won the Alternative Nobel Prize (
Right Livelihood Award in December 2007 ) for its work in
spreading renewable energy in Bangladesh’s villages .
This
is no small challenge in a country where the electricity grid only
reaches 40% of the population , 80% of the land area of
Bangladesh still does not have access to electricity – and in
total two billion people in the world live without electricity.
Bangladesh
is rich in sunshine but poor in cash. The difficulty is that
solar energy can be expensive but with a three year micro-loan
the investments can be financed explains Dipal Barua.
Grameen
Shakti has now distributed 150,000 systems with solar panels to almost
one million people in 32,000 villages and now the number of systems
installed increased by 6000 to 7000 per month . The goal , according to
Dipal Barua is to get one million solar panels out by 2015,
which among other thing reduces the dependence on expensive and
unhealthy kerosene. Solar cells charge batteries which are
normally enough for which are normally enough for three days use
in eg lamps, stoves , sewing machines , TVs and schools .
To
take care of this solar energy system increasingly more women are
trained so that they can take responsibility for the electricity
production.
It is a central part of the Grameen
organization’s philosophy to give women the possibility to be local
entrepreneurs instead of becoming stuck in poverty or forced to seek
jobs in textile factories with miserable wages.
My vision is to create jobs for 100, 000 women as the local electricity authority, says Dipal Barua.
But
Grameen’s green energy offensive also continues distributing
individual biogas installations to make better use of waste from
cows and chickens or other biomass . Furthermore , Grameen Shakti
aims to distribute improved stoves in the villages –also with the
purpose of achieving a more efficient use of energy .
One
solar panel with batteries cost about 2500 crowns and that will
normally be paid after three years . This is a lot of money for poor
villagers but monthly installments for such an investment are what
kerosene costs a typical family according to Dipal Barua
The goal is that everyone shall be able to have a solar connection just like a mobile connection, he says.
Grameen Bank
Grameen Bank is owned principally by its 7.5 million borrowers ( Grameen Bank means village bank )
Bangladesh has approximately 150 million inhabitants on an area of land 134,000 square kilometers ( a third of Sweden)
Mr. Dipal Chandra Barua First Zayed Future Energy Prize Winner Chairman & CEO Bright Green Energy Foundation Founding Managing Director, Grameen Shakti Co- Founder & Former Deputy Managing Director , Grameen Bank E-mail: dipal@dipalbarua.com,
