Grameen Dialogue -- a regular publication from Grameen Trust

Of Bangladesh's leading microcredit programs, Grameen Ban, has launched a bold new initiative to lend money to beggars at easy repayment rates, to wean them off the streets and into small-scale ventures. The bank has already involved 3,000 destitute people in the scheme all over the country on a trial basis. It takes no collateral, does not pressure the borrowers to repay the money and is even ready to forego the amount for some who are unable to use it profitably.

The bank intends to take the new microcredit programme ultimately to 10,000 beggars by the end of this year and keep expanding across Bangladesh, where around half the population lives below the poverty line. One of those whose lives the bank has touched, is wheelchair-bound Kohinoor Mian, 60. Reminisced Mian, "I was a professional cook a year ago. But I became paralysed after an accident. I was left with nothing to do, but beg."

Mian would earn $3-$4 a day through seeking alms and he had to share the money with a boy who pushed his wheelchair. "I always told myself that if I got some money, I would set up a dairy farm and give up begging," he recalled. His dream came true when Grameen Bank lent Mian $17. He spent $12 to buy a goat and two chickens. Mian, a resident of Pathantola village in Dhamrai, near Dhaka city, now sells milk and eggs.

For Ismail, 45, of Nagarkunda village in Savar on the outskirts of Dhaka, the loan helped him start a business of selling pickles at busy road crossings and in front of schools. He makes a profit of $1-$2 daily. A tuberculosis victim, Ismail repays the loan through weekly payments of 30 cents. After Ismail began his business, his wife Jamila too stopped seeking alms. He is thrilled at not being a beggar anymore, whom he says "people always look down on".

Most other former beggars whom Grameen Bank has helped, now raise poultry or run some other small-scale business.

Muhammad Yunus, Managing Director of Grameen Bank, said: "The main objective of the programme is to bring sunshine to the lives of people on the fringes of society by helping them erase the curse of begging." He pointed out, "This is the first time a bank is standing behind beggars. The scheme is different from any other microcredit or credit programme. There is no collateral or compulsion for loan repayment."

Unlike the regular borrower of Grameen Bank, a beggar does not have to belong to a group to avail of the scheme. In some cases, the bank makes an arrangement with a wholesale shop under which the shopkeeper gives a borrower up to $34 in goods, and the bank gives a guarantee to the shopkeeper.