Why is Bangladesh probably the world leader in NGOs?
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Bangladesh, a country numbering almost 140 million, whose population is 90 percent Muslim, is a prime example of a nation under siege from a deluge of NGOs. Since 1981, foreign NGOs have created an indigenous mercenary army and set up a parallel government of their own in the country. Given handsome salaries, bribes, awards, vehicles, machinery and huge funds, the nouveau riche mercenaries pretending to be writers, lawyers, teachers, artists and human–right activists, among others, have set up factories, printing presses, and publishing houses.
Bangladesh is probably the world leader in non–governmental organizations, NGOs, perhaps because economically it is near the bottom of the heap. The 20,000 or so NGOs there operate mainly in the country's 86,000 villages, providing education, health, small loans and agricultural development far more efficiently than the corrupt and inefficient government. Yet, while outsiders have lavished praise on the NGOs, Bangladeshis themselves are ambivalent. Some fear the organizations are becoming a parallel State, financed by foreigners and accountable to nobody.
Most of the foreign money (around $ 250m a year) goes to a handful of famous NGOs such as the Grameen Bank, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), Proshika and the Association for Social Advancement. These are among the biggest rural–development organizations in the world, and they have an awesome reach.
BRAC alone has 1900 full–time employees, 34,000 part–time teachers, and 2.3m members (96% female) in 66,000 villages. Its schools admit only those who do not attend or have dropped out of government schools, and at least 70% of these must be girls. It hires teachers from each village, of whom 96% are women without teaching qualifications. They run schools in rented thatched huts, set neither exams nor homework, and have flexible school hours that enable children to work in the fields with their parents, reducing the incentive to drop out. Teachers are paid 600 taka ($ 12) a month and reach children that government teachers (paid six times as much) cannot.
The Grameen Bank has pioneered small loans to the poor. Commercial banks say it is too risky to make loans of around $100 to people without assets. But Grameen organizes borrowers into groups which guarantee a loan to any member (exerting peer pressure for repayment). Its repayment rate is over 95%. Other NGOs have followed this route, and now more than poor people (almost all women) have obtained small loans for shops, sewing machines, chicken farming and the like.
Micro–credit is one reason for the fall in poverty in Bangladesh, from 59% of the population in 1991–92 to 53% in 1995–96. A more important reason is the attention to women that NGOs have given. By directing education, jobs and credit at women, the NGOs have created a social revolution in a conservative Muslim society. This is mainly why the fertility rate in Bangladesh has crashed from 6.1 births per woman in 1960 to 3.4 births today. It is expected to decline to 2.5 births by 2010. The mullahs hate NGOs for eroding the traditional male–dominated structure, and occasionally attack their offices.
Resentment also comes from politicians, bureaucrats and leftists, all of whose shortcomings have been exposed by the success of NGOs. Leftwing critics accuse NGOs of exploitative rates of interest: BRAC charges 15%, Grameen up to 22%. Yet the high rate of repayment is the best evidence of affordability. In fact, in labour–intensive work, interest charges are a small proportion of total costs.
Grameen Bank has a policy of only giving its loans to women. This has led to calls that its effects are weakening the institution of the family. It is interested in pursuing a policy that will lead Bangladesh to a situation to that we see in the West where the institution of marriage is on the retreat (marriage break down is at an all time high). When one examines who the patrons of the Grameen Bank are things become much clearer. The World Bank, ADB together with the UN, sets the whole agenda of the Grameen Bank. The World Bank is of course the best example of an NGO, whose abject failures at alleviating poverty are all too well documented.
Politicians complain that NGOs have money and power without accountability, embezzle foreign funds and cook their books. The NGOs reply that their accounts are audited, and sometimes not just in Bangladesh but also, to satisfy donors, by auditors abroad. They say they are accountable both to donors and the villagers they serve. The easy availability of donor funds has encouraged some crooks to set themselves up as NGOs. But corruption among NGOs is a trickle compared to the rivers in government.