Project for the extreme poor

The performance of a three-year project called Jibika initiated jointly by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) and Chevron, a US oil company, and implemented by BRAC and a Sylhet-based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) looks commendable indeed. Under the BRAC's Integrated Development Programme, as many as 110 local organisations were involved in the execution of the project. On completion of the project, a function organised in a city hotel was informed that 20,000 marginalised and vulnerable people could be helped out of the extreme poverty they were in. Chevron's involvement with the project is significant. In focus were poor and marginalised farming households located around Chevron-operated gas fields in Sylhet, Moulvibazar and Habiganj. The objective was to develop local institutions and promote entrepreneurship and the target people for their sustainable income growth. If the target group has come out of extreme poverty under the project, it has to be hailed as a laudable success.

With long and extensive experience in work among the rural poor, the BRAC knows how to utilise special opportunities in a given locality. The vulnerable community cannot choose their livelihoods because of the lack of support like small capital, right kinds of implements and inputs. Not that they are idle and morose and will not accept challenges. Exploited and neglected for generations, they surely need special care to get their confidence back and material support to start innovative enterprises. If organisations like the BRAC and Chevron stand by them, they are armed with the prerequisites for embarking on ventures once they dared not even think of undertaking. Additionally, an organisation like the BRAC follows strategies on ground conditions so much so that it takes into account the prospect and risks into account. It monitors the progress of programmes undertaken and tries to avoid reversals through regular consultations.

The success of community-based projects depends on inspired local participation. When the cause of the poor is advanced, the vested interest quarters are unlikely to be well disposed towards projects meant for the well-being of the poor. Sometimes such quarters feel threatened and make the life of NGO workers miserable by harassing them on different pretexts. There are incidents where rural NGO offices were torched and looted by local goons under the wings of influential people. So the NGOs have to avoid clash of interests between the poor and the privileged.

Clearly, not all intricacies of project implementation in localities around Chevron-operated gas fields can be replicated in other areas, say, in coastal areas of the country's south. The realities there are completely different for reasons understandable. Different approach and strategies will have to be followed in order to deal with the special situations obtaining there. Yet some experiences will shed light on difficulties facing in new conditions. If sprawling shrimp enclosures managed by big farmers have rendered neighbouring small farmers' tiny plots of crop fields uncultivable, it may be compared to the small private lands or homesteads farmers had to abandon in the interest of gas extraction. In such conditions, not only the BRAC but other NGOs working among the poor can work in partnership with the government agencies in order to reduce extreme poverty, particularly when maldistribution of wealth is causing yawning socio-economic disparity.