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Micro-credit is a very familiar subject matter in our economic and socio-economic life in Bangladesh since its inception in 1976. Actually the motive was unlocking the door of the rural poor in Bangladesh through its small-scale loan programs and its popularity was rising tremendously due to its major effectiveness. Bangladesh is a poverty prone country and half of the population is almost living below the poverty line. At this juncture, the initiation of the micro-credit was definitely claiming a great magnitude. People especially women are getting benefit from it and the target population of the program also lies to women. Through micro-credit programs empowerment of women also entangled vis-à-vis various types of income generating activities, which makes their life some real changes instead of traditional one.
   Nowadays about 43 countries of the world are exercising the Bangladeshi model of micro-credit. This is obviously turning a good image for Bangladesh abroad and Bangladesh may the role model for micro-credit. After Grameen Bank a few other leading national NGOs also started micro-credit program side by side like BRAC, ASA, PROSHIKA and PKSF (Autonomous body). So far about thirty years later of its inception we should now evaluate or realize some merit or demerits of the much talked development program for poverty alleviation. I had the opportunity to work with people on micro-credit program somewhere. I think, the knowledge should be share to anybody.
   The micro-credit program immensely change the life of rural peoples undoubtedly. But few loopholes may not be overlooked. Some organizations are practicing saving scheme before loan disbursement some are not. There are multifarious complications are arising after the loan disbursement in different dimensions which I would like to mention here slightly. People are very enthusiastic during the first one or two terms of disbursement and the range is very low like two thousands BDT or four thousand BDT per year with 15% interest rate and it is varied from one NGO to other. In term of government regulated PKSF interest rate about 13%. People are showing great interest the recovery rate is hundred percent during the two or three phases of loan disbursement. Unfortunately, when the range getting higher the recovery rate is gradually decreasing day by day which creates bad affect of the overall program. Those people are escaped or dropped their installment that creates a negative impact surrounding their local village organization called ‘VO’ or ‘Samaity’.
   Actually the objective of the micro-credit or its target population is mainly for marginalized or the hard-core or vulnerable peoples. The vulnerable communities are getting money but they are not really able to repay their loan efficiently due to lack of proper income sectors or lack or works or jobs. That kinds of peoples are only benefited those who previously deserve some external or internal resources for income generation. They are getting enormous benefit and they usually recovering the loan smoothly. But the extreme poor or landless people forfeit their money through their day-to-day sustenance. At this point of view some micro-credit regulating areas in Bangladesh are really in danger situation. So to say, the overdue rate in some areas is alarming. The range of overdue debt is some where about a crore or more. When I was attached in a particular area the overdue was about 75 lacs BDT. The overdue money is increasing day by day through cumulating process. So I have a feeling that how long it will work. Some NGOs are calling overdue as a ‘bad debt’ terms. It may be recovered or not. During the financial year closing some NGOs used to realizing the default installments from cutting the members savings of his or her designated passbook. In this situation, the field workers creates their pilferage system from the borrowers money not organization money. The situation may also hinder the micro-credit program and genuine people getting disheartened because the loan defaulter are not accusing or getting punishment at a befitting manner. Some areas are then treated for black listed or highly overdue branch and not take any initiatives further in the immediate future. The development organization may need alternative solutions for preventing possible hindrances. Moreover, loan defaulters are used to fear or intimidation or policing etc by the relevant organization. Some of the branches of the NGOs the realization rate is hundred percent and they have access money after month of their own expenses and they used to send money to the head office also.
   From such a point of view, people in extreme poverty are living in their own state of uncertainty. Their state of deprivation really a matter of great concern unless they are making themselves self-sufficient or so on. We should never think the unthinkable one. Nowadays rural people are very much accustomed to development activities. They somehow are getting familiar about the actual pulse of any proposed activity through training or any kind of dissemination process. Since the liberation of Bangladesh people have seen lots of donors or development agencies enter the region of development. People are very much conscious about their own problems. So when we initiate any program or prospect we should look it in a holistic approach which will be really comfortable for the people and never creates any anxiety or uneasiness. They real solution should be identified properly so that to reduce the possible loopholes. The overdue areas or branches obviously creates negative image may erode the micro-credit supreme values. For the sustenance of the successful micro-credit program we could think small-scale disbursement among the extreme poor people for all time. When the maturity level is identified successfully only then can the big range be introduced among the target people.
   The writer is a development activist

BESET by problems, harried by our own confusion, we can’t go on like this forever, lurching from one uncertainty to another, internationally criticized for every sin under the sun. The time has come to cut through the nonsense and reach for the substance of things.
   Small things first. Why after 57 years of uncertain statehood are we still obsessed with sect, caste and creed? Enough of Maliks, Chaudhries, Rais, Raos, Sardars, etc: enough of castehood or tribal denominationalism. No country sports more useless honorific titles than we do. Being a Pakistani should be good enough for all of us.
   Hence time to send notions of caste/creed swimming down the waters of the five rivers. From all official documents the requirement of having to fix your faith, sect, sub-sect or caste should at once be erased. On pain of punishment and disqualification, no government servant, military person or public representative should draw attention to these primitive distinctions.
   While we are at small things, an immediate and total ban on that most hideous symbol of the modern age: the plastic shopping bag. No ifs and buts, this should be done at once considering how all things plastic are blighting the national landscape and clogging the republic’s water channels, big and small.
   Mineral water in plastic bottles is fast becoming a national affliction too. Hydrogenated cooking oil (manufactured ghee) is a bad enough thing in itself. If its use is allowed to go on unchecked we’ll soon have the highest rate of heart disease in the world. But to think that some ghee manufacturers market this pestilence in plastic buckets. Henceforth this should be a non-bailable offence.
   Even milk and fruit juices should come in glass bottles. Mountaineering expeditions should face the strictest penalties if they spread litter on the mountains. On flights to Pakistan it should be mandatory to announce that drugs and plastic bottles are forbidden items in Pakistan. If we can’t make Pakistan a land of milk and honey, we can at least do our bit to keep it clean.
   On to other things. Reform of education, an end to the cocktail of education systems we have in Pakistan, must be the first priority of the republic.
   If we are seeking to forge a single nationhood — although given the stupidity of some of our actions serious doubts must be entertained on this score — then it follows that from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea, from the hills of Balochistan and Pakhtoonkhwa to the plains of Punjab and Sindh, there must be one education system for all Pakistani students, one syllabus, a common examination system, and, in the fullness of time, when the Lord of the Worlds smiles on this country and its people, a glass of pure milk at state expense, at eleven in the morning, for every student.
   No O and A levels. India did away with O and A levels back in 1965. What blowback effect of retarded colonialism makes us stick to them? For Pakistani nationals no going to American schools in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. No madressahs for they militate not so much against reason — although they do that too — as against the requirements of a single nationhood. It is futile to think of reforming the madressah system. Some things are unreformable, this being one of them.
   The great Abdus Salam, the only Pakistani winner of the Nobel Prize (in physics or any other subject) was a product of the matriculation system. We need more Salams, a whole army of them, in our schools and universities, and not a generation of confused western clones who think that cool is talking with an American twang and sporting a funky hairstyle.
   By all means wear what you want and have your hair cut the way you want but remember that to be educated in the real sense is to be cool. To be a top gun mathematician or physicist is to be cool. To hear a Beethoven or Mozart tune and be able to name it is cool.
   Classical music, subcontinental and western, should be a part of the national curriculum. There should be a national orchestra for symphonic and operatic music in Islamabad, preferably in the pseudo-Mughal structure on Constitution Avenue which houses the Prime Minister’s secretariat. If there is any accountability at the gates of paradise, Nawaz Sharif should have a hard time getting in if only because he was the prime mover behind the erection of this astonishing structure: neither much Mughal nor anything else, just an enthusiastic celebration of official Pakistani taste gone wild (and vulgar).
   And who do you think did the interior decor of this centre of Pakistani governance? A Benazir cousin. Some people have all the luck. Judging by the state of the furniture inside you get an idea of the killing this enterprising person must have made. Anyway, handing over this structure to the national orchestra will be some atonement for the architecture. And never mind if the orchestra is out of tune in the beginning. Such things take time to improve.
   The supremacy of science and reason, an end to the mumbo-jumbo of superstition, a proper reverence for the arts, excellence in music, achievement in sport, the liberation of Pakistani womanhood (a priority task given the sorry state of Pakistani manhood), an all-round refinement of culture (culture, not F-16s, being destiny): we could make room for these things by taking out all the useless lumber with which our national faculties are clogged.
   Pakistani education should be on the lines of Cuban education: free, totally free, for everyone, based on solid foundations and aspiring for the stars. The Cubans are ahead of America in some branches of medical research. That should be our aim, having the best education system throughout the lands of Islam, the best colleges and universities in Asia, and once near this goal, the need to shore up national pride with such symbols of military prowess as expensive tanks, submarines and aircraft will disappear.
   No one could have been beaten more thoroughly than the Germans and Japanese in the Second World War. But even when their cities lay in ruins they retained the gift of knowledge and scientific expertise and not so much with money as with their mastery of science and technology did they rebuild their countries.
   After education, health care, no shame leaving deeper scars on Pakistani pride than the state of our hospitals. Not fancy state-of-the-art facilities, just enough to provide basic, essential health care to every Pakistani in need.
   Where do we get the funds for these massive enterprises, for restructuring education and health are major undertakings? Well, we seem to lack no funds when it comes to defence and stupid luxuries for the ruling classes. We can’t do without defence, not in this world and not in our region, there being too much turbulence and uncertainty around. But we can reorder our priorities, rethink defence strategy in order to rely more on trained manpower and a committed national militia than expensive weaponry, all of which, in any case, we cannot afford. We should not match India item for item for down that road lies fiscal exhaustion.
   It is not even certain that with this extravagance we get the kind of defence we need. The ability to fight 17-day wars and then look for international mediation to broker ceasefires doesn’t amount to much value for money.
   The Iraqi people are giving the American occupation army a tough time not through the use of armour or airpower but grit and valour, and the skill to use low-cost weapons. In weaponry the Viet Cong were no match for the Americans but they gave them the most resounding defeat in American history. We need to think on these lines instead of reinforcing the failures of the past.
   Restoring the republic’s mental equilibrium will remain incomplete if General Ziaul Haq’s religious laws — all products of expediency — the changes he brought about in the penal code and the Constitution, are not repealed altogether and in one go. The great dictator brought darkness to this land. If we are to switch on the lights, we must undo his legacy. Or our brave talk will be just that — words floating in a void.
   This article has been published by arrangement with Dawn

There have been a lot of statements, comments and write-ups on this subject of integrating small power plants as a power distribution resource for the national grid. Unfortunately, however there are quite a few issues which are not spelled out clearly in the recent guidelines set by the government for the modality of purchase of power by the public utility, and the role of energy regulatory commission in the respect.
   An important aspect which is power quality has not been touched upon. Will the energy regulatory commission introduce and enforce power quality standards, which are totally absent in our public power supply scenario? If this is not done, private power producers when coupled to the utility grid will have to make unnecessary capital expenses for extra protection of their units, apart from its effect on their operation, considering the poor power quality of our public power supply.
   The power tariff is indicated at 2.73 US cent which is a flat rate of Tk.1.638 (@Tk.60=1 $). Does it mean that the payment which possibly will be made in equivalent taka will change according to the US Dollar vis a vis Bangladesh taka conversion rate? This needs to be clarified. Also the above rate was based on purchase price from Haripur a large power plant with better thermal efficiency (combined cycle operation) in comparison to a small power plant of say 10 to 30 MW without any scope of combined cycle operation. A realistic power tariff structure needs to be in place for small power plants.
   Further, it was stated that public power utilities can either take or avoid taking load depending on their need. As the power utilities are commercial operating units it should buy the power on the same principle as it sells power to the industrial customers. Under these conditions public utility must pay a maximum demand charge, minimum charge, and service charge and the normal industrial tariff at say at 80 per cent of the price at which the public utility sells power to industries. A fair 20 per cent gross margin is allowed to the public utility to cover for its transmission and load management costs, which is practically constant irrespective of load in the power distribution system and profits on retail sale of power.
   What are the boundary conditions of the statement, ‘The developers must install in their plants a system of supplying power to the national grid’? This needs technical specifications and boundary parameters. Will the energy regulatory commission set these? If not who?
   Duty exemption for import of petroleum alone has been considered for oil-fired plants. Logically, this should have been allowed also for import of coal for coal based power plants which is more logical for western part of Bangladesh located fairly near to Indian coal sources. Later these units can switch over to coal from northern Bangladesh. Otherwise, we are unfairly penalising the north and western part which even today is more power starved than the eastern part of Bangladesh.
   Regarding gas tariff, it is proposed to be at par with PDB gas tariff, then what about many running small gas power plants installed earlier in the private sector which is paying higher gas tariff compared to PDB? These units too in all fairness should enjoy PDB gas tariff. How shall they go about getting this revised rate? The modalities for obtaining PDB rates for gas should be public information.
   Will some extra benefits be considered for small units say maximum up to rated capacity of 5MW? If this is done there will be promising opportunity for investment for recovering power from gas pressure reducing stations which is a very cost effective but totally unexploited source of power without fuel. Also considering location, terrain and absence of nearby sources of coal or gas there should be corresponding more attractive rates for buying power by public utilities. Tax and duty benefits on investment to encourage more power capacity in the riverine districts and remote areas like Chittagong Hill Tracts, should be provided; where the need for power to initiate development deserves this special support.
   Without having these clear cut guidelines the government is creating a built in handicap for prospective power plants to supply power to the public distribution utility. It seems the guideline only favours the public utility and the onus is on the private power units to take it or leave it despite a very uneven playing field. These are some of the important issues that need to be clearly defined in the interest of encouraging quick investment in private power sector.
   The writer is director engineering, Partex Group