Placing trust in the poor
Comfort
has its way of rubbing off you. After a hard work week, I was sitting in
a hotel room in Bangkok last Saturday watching television. My real
intent was to see if I could get to watch the cricket final. I had no
luck, and I later settled to being content with reading the live
commentary on my notebook computer.
So many Khans
While switching channels on the TV, I came across an interview on
BBC's 'Talking Movies' with the Bollywood actor-filmmaker Aamir Khan.
With so many Khans now on the Bollywood scene, I had to get his first
name right. He is releasing his latest film 'Peepli Live' in the UK next
month and this was a public relations stint he was on. In response to a
question about the film being touted as a political satire about
farmer's suicides in India, he quipped "Let's get to what this film is
really about. Not only in India, but in many other places around the
world, our focus is all about the cities. While rural areas still have
the majority of people living there, there is very little attention on
their plight. This film is about them".
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Professor
Muhammad Yunus |
How true. We only focus on what we see around us and what we know.
Unlike India's vast spans of the countryside, Sri Lanka is small. Yet,
most of our focus still is on the happenings around the city.
End to victimization
While my eyes were on the TV screen, rapid images of our own farmers
with bountiful harvests, being victims of rice-mill owners and hoarders,
ran across my mind. Television interviews of farmers on 'News at Eight'
claiming they will have to commit suicide, if the price of paddy falls
far below what it takes to grow them, ran parallel in the backdrop of my
memory. This is inspite of our Government's proactive policy to be
self-sufficient, cause effective regional development and redistribute
the fruits of development.
Farmers respond well and do their all to grow more and the fertilizer
subsidies help. But the problem is, when it comes to selling the
produce. There is very little done proactively to break the mill-owner
cartels. We hear stories of regions where political patronage is behind
the hoarders. If we are to keep our trust in the poor and if they are to
be rewarded for the huge contribution they make, there must be an end to
this gross injustice of idle middle persons making undue profit. It is
heartening that the might of the Auction fixing mafia has been broken at
the Port Authority with the intervention of the Security Forces. But
still this is in the city. The rural auction fixing of paddy, during
harvest time also needs to be fixed, and fixed fairly without fear or
favour.
BOP Business
Switching channels further, I got to another interview. This time a
larger than life figure I knew much about appeared on screen. On Japan's
NHK television an interesting discussion was on. The key person on the
panel was Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, the man who champions
the cause of the poor and calls for us to trust and invest in them. What
luck it was for me. The same day, in two different scenarios two people
in two polarized situations, discussing the same issues of the same
people, the rural poor.
The NHK discussion was on "The future and challenges of BOP
business". BOP meaning 'Bottom or Base of the Pyramid'. Businesses that
support the poorest of the poor, like the Grameen Bank and the
Shakthidoi Yogurt business with Danone the French dairy products company
in Bangladesh. Sumitomo Chemicals of Japan project manufacturing
mosquito nets in Africa, as a business helping eradicate Malaria. Nestl‚'s
Milk District project helping farmers to raise cattle and buy their
produce, Shakthi project of Unilever where door-door sales of
consumables eliminate the need for middle persons keeping prices
affordable while providing employment to rural youth and CEMEX Cement
Manufacture's Patromonio Hoy project in Mexico, engaging rural people in
developing housing based on indigenous technology.
Way forward
In addition to Professor Yunus, the panel consisted of top level
representatives of JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency), JBIC
(Japan Bank for International Cooperation), and a French agency
supporting BOP Businesses. The discussion focused on how companies can
be profitable when they look at the bottom of the pyramid of
populations, where the market size is large. The earlier premise that
companies should aim their sales at markets with purchasing power is
negated here. The idea is to create the purchasing power, by assisting
communities to come out of the poverty trap. All members of the panel
agreed that the BOP business model will be a way forward, to begin to
end global poverty through business driven solutions, away from the
conventional corporate social responsibility or CSR models.
Beggars no more
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Poverty has
denied them many privileges. File photo |
Professor Yunus emphasised on the need for business people to have
trust on the poor. He said his Grameen Bank gave small but adequate
loans to 18,000 beggars on the streets of Dhaka. Now, about 80 percent
of them are out of begging and have paid back their loans, emphasising
that they were grateful for the opportunity they got to begin a trade or
a business with the start-up funds. "People are poor not because they
want to be poor, but society has not given them the opportunities they
need" he said.
No single solution
During the final session, he was asked the question as to where one
should begin a BOP business and how certain one can of its success. His
answer was "Find a need among the poor and a way to meet it, begin the
business and face situations as they arise". "There is no single
solution. Solutions will emerge as you take on the activity. The
important thing is to begin," he further said.
Some argue that BOP business to be an escape mechanism in sorting out
the failure of the capitalist business model, while others insist it to
be an innovation of its own, that will be a panacea allowing the world
at large to get out of the poverty trap. Whatever that conceptual
position is; like Professor Yunus says, 'one cannot go wrong, placing
one's trust in the poor'. When there is only one way out of poverty, one
can hardly go the wrong way.
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