Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus, Alan Jolis Read Free Book Online

uncultivated fields. It was the dry winter season, the season when the tubewell should have been irrigating the land for a new crop. But nothing was being done. The tubewell just sat there, brand new and unused.
    When I asked why the tubewell was idle, I learned that the farmers were supposed to pay for the water but that they had fought with each other over the issue of money collection during the previous dry season. Since then they would have nothing to do with the deep tubewell.
    This struck me as a terrible shame. In a country of famine, here was a 300-foot deep tubewell—a driven well—that could irrigate some sixty acres. I decided to make the tubewell work again.
    It was not easy. Of all the modes of irrigation then available, deep tubewells were the most capital intensive. With their high operating costs, they proved highly inefficient and encouraged rampant corruption among those who dealt in fuel oil, lubricants, and spare parts. For the deep tubewell to operate efficiently, it needed an efficient water distribution system. In other words, it required a large number of small farmers to implement uniform crop decisions on their fragmented holdings. These farmers also needed instruction on fertilizer use, plant protection, and the repair and maintenance of the pumps. Unfortunately, although the government generously invested in modern irrigation technology, it did not provide the time, the resources, or the effort to resolve the people-centered problems such technology brought with it. Because of perennial management problems and technical breakdowns, the farmers were reluctant to reopen their tubewells. As a result, almost half the deep tubewells in Bangladesh had fallen out of use. The rusting machinery in abandoned pump houses was a testimony to yet another failure of misguided development.
    In Jobra, I called a meeting of local farmers and sharecroppers. I proposed an experiment, in which we would all join a new type of agricultural cooperative called the Nabajug ("New Era") Three Share Farm. The landowners would contribute the use of their land during the dry season; the sharecroppers would contribute their labor; and I would contribute the cost of fuel to run the deep tubewell, the seeds for high-yield crops, the fertilizer, the insecticide, and the technical know-how. In exchange, each of the three parties (farmers, sharecroppers, and myself) would share one-third of the harvest.
    At first the villagers were suspicious of my proposal. So much ill will and distrust had built up between the well operators and the farmers that they were not ready to listen to my plan. Some argued that paying me one-third of the harvest would be too much. Even with my offer to bear all losses, my proposal failed to interest them.
    At a second meeting, one week later, I was able to convince them that they had nothing to lose. They would receive irrigation water, fertilizer, seeds, and insecticides without any up-front payment. They only had to agree to give me one-third of their harvest. The poor sharecroppers greeted my proposal with enthusiasm. The relatively well-off farmers reluctantly agreed to give it a try.
    This was a difficult period for me. I would often lie awake at night, anxious lest anything go wrong. Every Tuesday evening I visited the farmers and held a formal meeting with the four student "block leaders" I had appointed as well as my thirteen-man advisory team. We discussed and reviewed the problems of fertilizer, irrigation, technology, storage, transport, and marketing.
    The first year's efforts ended in success. The farmers were happy. They had not spent any cash and had gotten a high yield. I, however, lost 13,000 taka because some farmers gave me less than the one-third they had promised. But I was still thrilled. We had managed to grow a crop where no crop had ever grown before in the dry season. The fields had been full of the emerald green of standing rice. Nothing is quite as beautiful as farmers