The Morning Inspection - Malinda
Thrift and credit is blue in colour
A few days ago I wrote about village ‘tanks’. Some call these
‘ponds’. Considering that there are reservoirs of Parakrama Samudra
dimensions there is a certain logic in naming most facilities holding
water in villages as ‘ponds’. Peter Wise believes that wewa is not about
water and that a fixation with dimensionalities can dilute meaning and
de-value function. I agree.
When I wrote about wewas it was in a larger context of ‘developmentalism’.
Today I want to be more specific. The other day I spoke of wewa as
symbol of thrift and credit. I fear I did not elaborate enough.
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Prof Muhammad Yunus
Born - June 28, 1940
Nationality - Bangladeshi
Occupation - Banker, Economist
Known for Grameen Bank Microcredit
Religion - Muslim
Awards - Nobel Peace Prize (2006)
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Today whisper the term ‘microfinance’ and you will hear an echo: ‘Grameen’.
To those who are out of the loop ‘Grameen’ is a system pioneered in
Bangladesh by Prof Muhammad Yunus. It is based on the assumption that
people can save. The model, crudely put, would be about giving small
sums of money to poor people. Prof Yunus believed that people can repay
manageable amounts and that in time, when they acquire the
saving/repaying habit they can handle larger loans. That’s one model.
Village tank
There is nothing ‘Grameen’ about our traditional wewa. The focus is
self-help. There’s no dependency on ‘foreign aid’. The village tank or
wewa is typically a larger irrigation facility and built through
collective effort. People pour their labour into the ‘earthwork’,
construct the sluices, the spill and the canals.
They divide the dam-length by number and extent of cultivation plots
downstream and apportion sections for maintenance to each household. In
times of emergency, the entire village gets together to do whatever is
necessary to protect the weva. There are times when flawed construction
and/or unexpected volumes of rain cause rupture. Dams break. People
weep. Villages are abandoned. Nature reclaims her traditional homelands.
Ecological system
There are key elements here. The first is thrift. Labour is congealed
in the construction. There are no wages paid, not for construction and
not for maintenance. The entire collective, i.e. the village, benefits.
Apart from there being water for cultivation, the wewa helps raise the
water table.
The wells around the wewas get filled. There’s a swimming pool for
the children and for the adults a place to immerse in liquid flavours
that take away the day’s weariness. There is water for the cattle. There
is fish. There is aesthetic beauty. The trees are greener.
Embedded in the wewa is the notion of credit. One borrows water for
the fields and repays by doing everything possible to ensure that
there’s water again the next season. This includes keeping intact the
watershed. Tree is not seen as timber but a necessary player in an
ecological system whose health one’s livelihood is inextricably linked
to. Trees are harvested for firewood.
That’s dry branches and not mindless chopping. We are talking here
about micro ecologies. Microfinance. Little things. Disavowal of greed.
The recognition of the greater worth of the collective.
Microfinance
We’ve done our little experiment with the lies and poisons of the
Green Revolution. We’ve tried state-led and growth-led. We’ve deferred
to the private sector. Failed. We rubbished cooperatives.
We have come a full circle. We have come to Little Drops of Water. We
are at Little Grains of Sand. We are at a gate called ‘Microfinance’.
The way I see it, it is a buzz word and nothing else. A stolen concept,
twisted beyond recognition.
We have spent our bucks and those of our children too, ecologically
speaking. We have come to ‘thrift’ the hard way. We cannot borrow any
longer.
Let us save. Ourselves. It boils down to water. A wewa. That’s the
microfinance, the thrift and credit if you will, that sustained our
ancestors and built a civilization that we gave us some bragging rights.
And if you think we’ve gone past all this, that this is too
idealistic and a city man’s romantic flirtation nothing else, here’s a
story that might inspire.
I know of a man called Dissanayaka Mudiyanselage Punchi Banda (‘PB’
to all who knew him) living in a village called Alutwela situated about
six kilometres off a place called Veherayaya, a bit North of Kuda Oya on
the Thanamalvila-Wellawaya Road. PB’s property is swept by dry winds of
the South East Dry Zone and also by a coolness that floats down from the
central hills and through the waters of the Kuda Oya, the blending of
the two producing a distinct ecology where literally anything can be
grown.
PB after serving a prison sentence for involvement in the JVP
insurrection of 1971 had been given a two-acre plot in the area. He was
one of some 70 plus beneficiaries. The others had tried, tired of it and
left. PB did not. He found a small wewa, repaired it and started growing
vegetables. He has since acquired more land and constructed two more
wewas.
He knows thrift, PB does. He knows microfinance. He knows wewas. He
knows that it is all blue in colour.
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