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is there anything that's happened in the microcredit movement or in your own life
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as it as it relates to this to this work that has changed the way you view microcredit is there something that's
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said oh have you ever said to yourself oh I should have done this instead of this or I should be doing this instead
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of this have any of your initial assumptions changed over the years the assum basic assumptions remain the same
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we have expanded it lots of other things came we thought let's try this one and
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we tried it and it worked we felt happy about it um if you just look at the if I
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reflect what I have done if I have to do anything differently probably one area probably I would have done differently
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uh when we began in 1982 uh uh there's a tremendous amount of enthusiasm among the donors to give
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us money because we had a small project they wanted to help us and we are very reluctant to take money because we had
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plenty of money at that time is very small project we didn't need any money we had no idea about taking money but
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they kept on pressuring pressuring Us in the central bank with which we were working and finally Central Bank yeld it
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because they thought why not if they want to give money let's take some money
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as a loan not even a grant from epad International fund for agricultureal development so in 1982 we took the
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external money before that we never had any external money and the donors other donors came in they wanted to give us
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more money so we thought why not once we have taken one we can take two we can take three we have started taking it and
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lots of money keept coming and we kept on expanding then one complaint kept coming saying that well gamine Bank
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works because it gets a lot of money and that's what donors keeping it a Flo vot
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I said no that's not true that's not what we we didn't need the money they
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gave the money so we took it so in 95 we decided not to take any money at all CU
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we thought uh we can do it ourselves so from 95 on we never took any external money entirely it's local money local
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thing so if I have to go back I would have changed that 82 decision never taken any never take any money so that
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that confusion was not created for a long time people said well donor has to be there
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otherwise they cannot survive these are donor kind of uh supported program which
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stays alive I said that's a very wrong idea because that's not how we wanted to
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work and that's how we never worked right so that's one change I thought I
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should have done I have one last question uh how do you define success just like any other case that uh
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whatever your objective was if you came to that your success it depends on what your objective was how do you relate it
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that yes we made it uh in our case uh we wanted to bring credit to the poor people and saving services to the poor
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people uh people said it never work we hope that it will work and it did and then say Well it may work in one Village
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it don't work for two villages we did they said maybe 10 Villages it don't
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work if you grow big it will collapse we are stretching your luck too much uh we
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did so that is a success that even Beyond what we imagine we never thought that we can continue uh with this uh
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such a repayment record years and years because uh organizations get uh weakened
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or as you grow big your management becomes a problem and this was a big worry for us uh as we grow uh can the
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quality of administration quality of management continue to grow with it or deteriorate because you not running it
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yourself anymore you are depending on hundreds and hundreds and thousands of young people who just came to know about
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it marginally knows about it we leave everything in their hands and the decisions but it worked and then say it
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may work in Bangladesh it don't work outside so now as I said it's worked all
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over the country all over the world in many countries they said well our country is not like Bangladesh we don't
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have such a huge density of population and not so much po poverty concentrated in our population so in our country it
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don't work we said well you debate about your country and Bangladesh give the
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task to us we go and do it for you and uh they accepted that many countries did that so we started doing that we did it
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in Turkey we did it in Kosovo we do it in Costa Rica guala in China India many places to demonstrate those kind of
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thing and we started one in New York City uh last year it's called Grammy in
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America we do the same kind of work that we do in The Villages of Bangladesh and
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a beautiful result we have more than 600 borrowers in New York City all women five member group weekly repayment
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savings $2 each week uh we have given um loans to all of them and average loan is
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$2200 repayment rate is 99.3% no collateral nothing so it works uh I would say the strength of the idea
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that it's not country specific or uh people of particular location specific it's a global it's it's a human thing
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it's not uh uh something that works with one particular trait of character of a
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particular community