COMMENT BY TFD: Empowerment for Development

To empower people they have to know how. Power is nothing you can give to people - you can only show them how to use it - if they accept it. The idea and the understanding of how people can change their situation can only evolve from insights of processes they are dependent on. Only the second step towards “development” is the availability of capital and infrastructure. Important is that mostly capital with interest sets higher incentives for ideas that create a surplus. Moreover is capital a limited resource and only if money is payed back - somebody else can borrow this money.

The western mentality of social equality measured in money has a distinct conflict of goals with this rising ideology of micro credits. It assumes a certain status quo of rich and poor people equivalent with happy and unhappy people - a type of “god given” situation which can only be solved by giving money to the poor from the rich. The smile of a starving child in Bangladesh may not be political correct but shows the absurdity of defining happiness by welfare. The low social mobility in countries like Germany and France are the result of a heavy regulated welfare state for the “good of the poor”.

However the West is lucky. The developing countries are coming to help us. The people that learned to believe in the poor. The countries that live entrepreneurship to survive are coming to help to achieve what we failed to do - to empower the poor and give them dignity over their own destiny. The Grameen Bank is the first micro credit institute giving micro loans for micro entrepreneurs in the slums of LA, in the United States. Germany’s welfare system - supplying the poor with the “drug”: money and Germany’s judicial circumstances - however - is still considered to be too competitive for this type of micro credits.

Additional information: What the West can learn from Bangladesh

The West can learn from this little interview Dr. Yunus is giving at theVision Summit 2007 in Berlin.

. He is basically saying that everybody can and should be an enterpreneur and that education must promote this idea. I am happy that Dr. Yunus as a role model from Bangladesh turns out to be a voice for Germans as well since enterpreneuship irocanally has a very negative image in Germany.

 

Additional information: business for development

To build business means to design and sell a product that somebody else is willing to pay for. The resulting improvements of any working process helps to develop an economy. To obtain the needed insights and inspiration to create a new product or service transparency is needed. Only through a visible incentive motivation is induced.
Those are very basic thoughts - causally determined - which are the essential basis of many successful organizations and initiatives making a change in Bangladesh.

In the following I will introduce some examples:

BRAC is an integrated network organization providing legal education, credit, health insureance and business oportunities through there store chain named Aarong.



Cellbazaar founded by Kamal Quadir - brother of Iqbal Quadir – is a sophisticated sms based market plattform. I found the following video on a very nice blog by arvetica.



If you want to know more about business in bangladesh - here are some information plattforms

velki
business info bangladesh
bgyellowpages
Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry

I also recommend the commercial guide of the U.S. Embassy in Bangladesh. It contains basic information about the Bengali market from an outside view. At this point the United States are still the major source of direct investments in Bangladesh. However the missing transparency and the unknown etiquette of making presents gives Western Investors a difficult time. Nevertheless especially Asian investors reveal an increasing interest in Bangladesh. Singapore, India, Thailand, Hong Kong and South Korea are the biggest second tier investors. On Bengali business portals Chinese Companies are very present – this is maybe a sign for a possible trend in the future.


Extra: Jacqueline Novogratz is giving a diplomatic lesson in favor of giving aid through incentives - not through charity. She critizes the moral absolution defined by the sum of money transfered to developing countries and demands a shift to a market based market-based philanthropy. Most of all incentives need transparency - for development!

Additional information: A tribute to the 3rd world view

The blog "3rd world view" is a great blog about issues from and around Bangladesh. I chose three very interesting Article for a a little more "transparency for development" :-)

cheers

Microlending -> a "fresh" future trend in the financial world

As in every society a look beyond one's own nose also for a journalist is a challenge. The self-imposed moral borders are critical in period of change.
As French and German journalists have a problems with the denial of social romanticism…As Russian journalist have problems with the belief into democracy…
Here an article about the self-censorship in Bangladesh


This is a comment on an article about climate change and poverty in Bangladesh.

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a candy for the interested: a clip from the excellent movie “surplus” illustrating the paralyzing struggle around social romantics, consumerism, economic understanding and ignorance of the western world