"Hello, I'M Calling From Parulia��" - Grameen Bank offers mobile phones to customers - Brief Article

Farid Ahmed [*]

A micro-credit programme set up by Grameen Bank enables rural villagers to acquire cell phones. For many, it means a break with poverty and isolation

Once, it was hard for Fatema Begum and her day-labourer husband to provide three meals a day for their family, who lived in a thatched hut in a remote village called Parulia in Bangladesh's Narshingdi district. But a mobile phone she bought as a means of earning money for her impoverished family has changed her life. In a couple of years, she managed to acquire a brick-built house with electricity, an electric fan, a black and white television set and several other modern amenities. Mobile phones have not only improved the lives of villagers like Fatema, but also brought remote villages like Parulia out of isolation.

"Since my phone is the only one within three kilometres, many people come here to use it," Fatema says. She earns about 5,000 takas (US$100) a month from her mobile phone, after meeting all the costs--four times the average per capita monthly income. Fatema adds, "People in my village who have relatives abroad often give me gifts in addition to payment of their bills because I bring the phone to their houses when there are incoming calls for them." Mobile phones make up for a lack of services that the State-owned phone company is hard-pressed to provide. According to current statistics, Bangladesh has one phone for every 380 inhabitants, compared with one for every 50 in neighbouring India.

Fatema started her struggle for a better life ten years ago when she joined Grameen Bank, an internationally acclaimed micro-credit institution, to obtain a small, short-term loan of 2,000 takas ($40). She started a small business hawking various essentials, including rice, door to door in villages. When Fatema repaid that loan, she was granted another one of 5,000 takas ($100), which she also promptly paid back. In 1997, Grameen Telecom, a unit of Grameen Trust, one of the world's largest organizations working for poverty alleviation, introduced village phones for Grameen Bank members. Soon after, Fatema was allowed to purchase a phone at a cost of 19,500 takas ($390), reimbursing 400 takas ($8) every week in regular instalments.

Like Fatema, many other poor villagers throughout Bangladesh have opened phone shops in their homes to boost their income. GrameenTelecom has provided some 1,400 village telephones in rural areas across the country, serving tens of thousands of villagers. According to Mohammed Showkat Ali, a Grameen Telecom officer in Narshingdi, the programme was designed to help poor people in villages, especially women, who make up 94 per cent of Grameen Bank's borrowers, to earn additional income. As a result, the call-rate is cheaper than that of other existing telephone lines.

Apart from talking to relatives, villagers who grow crops or raise poultry or livestock now have a chance to speak with wholesalers in the capital or other big cities directly instead of selling their products at a cheaper price through a middleman. Some 100 village phones are in operation in the district of Narshingdi, which is famous for fruits, especially bananas, as well as green vegetables and handmade fabrics. Jamirunnesa, who runs a poultry farm in a farming village, bought a mobile phone on credit. Besides providing a service for her neighbours, the mother of four says, "there are buyers who want to cheat me. But they can't because I've got the phone, which comes in handy to know at what rate the chickens are selling in the markets."

Abdul Awal, a Bangladesh Railway ticket clerk at the train station in Narshingdi, keeps his village phone with him at work, where many people come to use it. Awal charges six takas (eight cents) per minute for a local call and 100 takas ($2) per minute for an overseas one. "I make a profit of 100 takas ($2) every day. Most of the people who come here are farmers and textile weavers and they talk to the wholesalers in Dhaka, the capital, or other cities," he said, adding: "Because of the additional income, I can afford to send my children to school."

(*.) Journalist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh

A TOOL FOR TRANSPARENCY

Abou Abel [*]

"Without mobile phones, violence would have been rampant in Senegal during the presidential election," according to observers who monitored the poll in February and March 2000.

This may seem an excessive claim. And yet mobile phones had already won their spurs in the battle over the results of local elections in November 1996. Senegal's interior minister was caught out when he admitted in a low voice near an open mobile phone that there had been fraud. As a result, President Abdou Diouf was forced to annul the election.

In the presidential election in 2000, mobile phones forced the two candidates, President Diouf and Abdoulaye Wade, to accept the results that were announced almost instantaneously by private radio stations.

The two main stations, Wal Fadjri FM and Sud FM, had sent reporters to cover polling stations all over the country. Equipped with mobile phones--a new work tool which is largely replacing the tape-recorder--they were able to announce the results as soon as the votes had been counted. The presence of reporters was boosted in key constituencies with a large number of voters or where there was a particularly hard-fought contest.

This organized presence of journalists and the speed with which the results were announced facilitated the peaceful handover of power from Diouf to Wade. No fraud was possible. The outgoing president conceded defeat very quickly for an election in Africa. This defused the tension that had built up before the second round of the election and the much-feared clashes between supporters of the two political leaders were avoided.

And, by the way, the Sud FM reporters had to buy their mobile phones on monthly credit.

(*.) Dakar-based journalist

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