As part of the BRAC History Project (BHP), a joint endeavour by BIGD and BRAC, we are currently collecting and analysing primary and secondary data on the early phases of the Manikganj Integrated Project (MIP). In this short write-up, we will present an overview of the project’s salient features, with a focus on women’s economic empowerment. Let us begin with some background on the project. The project had three phases between April 1976 and March 1985 before being absorbed into other projects. Phase-I ran from April 1976 to March 1979, Phase-II from April 1979 to March 1982, and Phase-III from April 1982 to March 1985 (BRAC, 1985).
After BRAC’s inception in Sulla (see Ahasan et al, 2022), Manikganj was the first major area to see experimentation and implementation of a broad range of developmental activities by the organisation. Manikganj was chosen for several reasons, including its proximity to Dhaka headquarters, which made it easier for monitoring and supervision. This also meant better connectivity, thus providing greater opportunities for utilising the existing infrastructure and creating linkages. Additionally, the area represented a more typical scenario of rural Bangladesh in terms of land usage for agricultural purposes. Moreover, the area had a high population density with little alternative means for income, making it an area with a high level of poverty (BRAC, 1982; MacMillan, 2022).
However, before various interventions were undertaken as part of the project, BRAC initiated Food for Work (FFW) schemes in the locality. Between November 1975 and March 1976, a total of 10 FFW programmes were completed (BRAC, 1977). Bread for the World and Oxfam Canada funded the preparatory phase of the MIP (MacMillan, 2022). According to project reports, these programmes served multiple purposes for BRAC, including identifying (i) the poorest section of the community who were engaged in manual labour, (ii) community leaders willing to assist in such schemes, and (iii) community youth interested in working for BRAC activities (BRAC, 1985). These programmes also helped BRAC establish its identity in the locality and paved the way for later interventions that we will discuss shortly.
Phase-I of the project was dubbed as the “developing strategies” phase. During this phase, BRAC experimented with innovative methods and strategies of development and tried to find the most effective approaches. Phase-II can be termed as a phase of expansion. During this phase, BRAC refined its strategies and expanded its coverage. Phase-III was the time of expansion and consolidation. During this phase, BRAC intended to cover the poorest half of the 180 target villages (BRAC, 1985).
Based on programme reports and narratives from early BRAC personnel and people involved in the project, it is evident that the MIP employed a targeted approach. The criteria for group formation in the project included (i) owning no means of subsistence such as land or boats, (ii) selling manual labour for survival, and (iii) lacking the protection of powerful political patrons (BRAC, 1985). Therefore, around this time, BRAC as an organisation had a clear operational definition of who the most marginalised people were: landless and destitute men and women, marginal fishing communities, and other rural artisans. However, this way of targeting emerged slowly from BRAC’s experiences in other existing projects.
By this time, BRAC had three major experiences of working with the poorest groups, including its activities in Sulla, Jamalpur, and Rawmari. The necessity of a targeted approach was already apparent from its experience in Sulla. During the first phase of Sulla, which ran between February and October of 1972, BRAC attempted to implement a “community-wide development” programme. However, the organisation soon realised that the “community” is not a homogenous or neutral entity, but rather consists of groups with varying degrees of power, entitlement, and interest. From the second phase of Sulla, which run between November 1972 and December 1975, BRAC opted for targeted interventions for the most marginalised groups. The most recent monograph published as part of the BHP points out that “BRAC came to view persistent poverty not as an accidental condition but as an effect of unequal social relationships and power distributions” (Ahasan et al., 2022, p. 31) [emphasis added]. The focus of the organisation then turned sharply towards the life condition and upliftment of the most disadvantaged groups, including poor women.
The Jamalpur Women’s Project (JWP) soon began to implement a functional education programme that was solely designed for destitute and extremely marginalised women of the region. However, it would soon expand into other developmental activities as well. In the aftermath of the 1974 famine, UNICEF launched an FFW programme for the women severely affected by the crisis. The organisation, however, observed that during the lean agricultural periods, these women had very little household or paid work. Therefore, it partnered with BRAC to provide functional education classes to these women to improve their development potential. The teachers of the functional classes were also women, recruited from the local community. In the initial phase, BRAC (BRAC, 1976) provided functional education classes to about 840 women. The lessons were heavily informed by Paolo Freire’s ideas of education as articulated in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In contrast to the conventional “banking model” of education, where teachers are the sole source of knowledge, the Freirean approach believed that learners were not “passive containers” but possessed prior knowledge and understanding and were capable of critical reflection. The role of the educator was to facilitate this process (Ahasan, et al., 2022).
However, to undertake developmental activities, the organisation had to deal with the messy and complicated socio-economic realities; an entire ecosystem or model had to be crafted. Consciousness raising and organising marginalised women into groups proved to be a vital part of BRAC’s strategy for initiating developmental and economic processes. Several factors played an important role in this regard.
Firstly, the marginalised women were highly interested in finding economic opportunities as it would allow them to liberate themselves from the severe dependency on their husbands. Since the husbands themselves often had no land or any other stable income sources, the women found any income-generating activities to be fundamentally in their interest. Drawing on Naila Kabeer’s work on rural patriarchy, Ahasan et al. (2022) argue that the catastrophic 1974 famine broke down many of the traditional patriarchal ideas, including the notion that men are the sole protectors of and providers for the family. A testimony to this statement was that women were already out in the town looking for whatever job that was available.
Secondly, while the group members were individually quite powerless and often depended on the charity and patronage of more powerful people, they could rely on each other for a nominal level of support as a group. They could undertake social and economic activities by working together. Functional education classes acted as a forum to discuss their problems and needs, as well as a glue to keep them together. Moreover, when they faced backlash from the community, they could resist by relying on their numbers and the solidarity coming out of the group activities. For instance, when the local influential people wanted to prevent women from joining functional classes or undertaking economic activities, the women went to the powerful men’s houses and collectively protested.
Regarding the economic empowerment of women more specifically, it was crucial to understand the potential of the women themselves. So, a social correspondence had to be established between the programme personnel and women in the community (Ahasan, et al., 2022). This also meant having constant debates and conversations among the early BRAC workers in the field and headquarters on what development meant for poor women and how to go about it.
For instance, Khushi Kabir, Ayesha Abed, and Martha Chen (Kabir et al., 1976), three pioneering figures of early BRAC in terms of their contribution towards organising, mobilising, and “educating” rural women, authored an important article titled “Rural Women in Bangladesh: Exploding Some Myths.” This was presented at a conference in Dhaka as part of the effort to stimulate discussion on the United Nations Decade for Women. The paper discussed 10 enduring myths on women and development. One of the myths discussed in the paper was about conflating development in general with the alleviation of women’s role and status. In other words, the idea was that taking care of development itself would automatically translate into improved status and role for women. The paper argued, drawing on their learnings from the field including Sulla, that development had to focus specifically on the women’s needs and capacities. In short, this called for greater attention to women’s role in development and their potential for work and transformation.
References
Ahasan, A., Iqbal, S., & Islam, S. (2022). Inception, Sulla, and the 1970s BRAC’s Trajectory and a Decade of Learning by Doing (BIGD Monograph No. 2; BRAC History Project).
Ahmed, R. (2022, October 11). আমিন ভাই ও ব্র্যাক: চলার বেগেই পথ কেটে যায় (প্রথম পর্ব). আমিন ভাই ও ব্র্যাক : চলার বেগেই পথ কেটে যায় (প্রথম পর্ব). https://bigd.bracu.ac.bd/amin-bhai-and-brac-part-1/
BRAC. (1976). Report on Jamalpur women’s programme, January to December 1976. © BRAC. http://dspace.bracu.ac.bd/xmlui/handle/10361/5804
BRAC. (1977). Manikganj project report April ’76 to March ’77. © BRAC. http://dspace.bracu.ac.bd/xmlui/handle/10361/5934
BRAC. (1982). Manikganj project report, phase II April, 1979 to March, 1982. © BRAC. http://dspace.bracu.ac.bd/xmlui/handle/10361/5936
BRAC. (1985). Manikganj project report III – April 1982 to March 1985. http://dspace.bracu.ac.bd/xmlui/handle/10361/5944
Kabir, K., Abed, A., & Chen, M. A. (1976). Rural Women in Bangladesh: Exploding Some Myths. Ford Foundation.
MacMillan, S. (2022). Hope Over Fate: Fazle Hasan Abed and the Science of Ending Global Poverty. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Md. Shafiqul Islam is a Research Associate at BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD). He is involved in the ongoing BRAC History Project, a joint initiative of BRAC and BIGD. The project is currently being coordinated by Jumana Asrar. Golam Ahmed Rabbi is also involved in this project.
Acknowledgement: The author would like to thank Golam Ahmed Rabbi and Jumana Asrar for their assistance with inputs and analysis during draft preparation. They were very integral to the process of the write-up.
