Can financial products be designed to provide peace of mind?

Microfinance institutions are lending billions to the poor
each year.  Can they make that money more valuable to
clients simply by redesigning their loans?

 A few months ago I wrote that peace of mind was a first-world luxury.  While I have never seen a study putting a value on it, I think that it’s an important ingredient in development thinking, especially where finances are concerned.

Last week I spoke with the leader of an urban microfinance institution in Dhaka about its clients and their needs: was it mainly credit or savings they were after?  He said,

“When we first talk to them, they ask a lot of questions about credit.  All of them say they want it.  We sign them up for a savings account and after a few months, they get access to credit.  Ultimately only half of them end up using it, but all of them want to know that they can if they want to.”

Which is harder: writing a novel or improving a national legal system?

I had the privilege of seeing Zia Haider Rahman this morning at the 4^th annual Dhaka Hay Festival talking about his recent novel In light of what we know.  Seeing the author of a book that you love is always risky; it’s possible that the book eclipses the person who wrote it, and meeting its creator will actually tarnish it.

But today I got lucky! Zia’s discussion was as thoughtful as his writing.  I loved that his book managed to weave together a story that literally takes you around the world, while exploring class and nationality, while also ambling through many asides, interesting quotes, and other tidbits. And a love story for good measure.  Zia said that he hoped the book made its readers feel uncomfortable—until one feels uncomfortable, it’s hard to get to a place where you see things in a new light.   It did not make me uncomfortable, but it did make me think and brought many thoughts into sharper focus.  For example, at one point, one of the main characters finds himself parachuted into Kabul in the midst of the development frenzy.  His commentary on the American “my rights end where your nose begins” attitude to other cultures, the expat party scene, and general lack of humanity among many aid workers is a section that all development workers should read and consider.

Technology as an empowerment strategy

When I'm not too busy flying around the world (if only it were as glamorous as it seems!), my favorite thing to do is to get out of the office and go see what's happening "in the field," where our staff interact with clients.

One of the recent areas where I've been focused a lot is on technology, and specifically giving our frontline staff technology to either capture information from their interactions or even aid them in providing better services.

There's a constant discussion about whether technology reduces "the human touch" of service delivery.  Anyone who has been to the doctor and felt that he spent more time trying to enter information into the system than actually examine you will understand why this is a risk!
But what I've been hearing recently from several different visits around Bangladesh is that technology is extremely empowering.  Mastering technology builds confidence!

Did you go in the bathroom?

Just seeing the classroom won't give you a
full picture of her education.

For me, one of the hardest parts of living in a developing country is the lack of clean bathrooms.  Especially when I go outside of Dhaka, I limit my fluid intake to avoid the need to use a smelly, dank toilet at a gas station or restaurant.

In any case, one place where I always make a point to visit the bathrooms is when I visit a school.  And not the teachers' bathrooms, which are separate.  I want to see where the students, especially the girls, have to go.  There's plenty of literature that shows that girls' attendance is linked to bathroom availability and quality, especially when they reach the age of menstruation.  And it's no wonder!  Imagine if your child had to come home from school every time he or she needed to pee.  It's more than a little humiliating.

Can you really teach people to wash their hands?

Occasionally I'll see in the American newspaper breaking stories about how rarely doctors wash their hands.  Or even the average American citizen.  Maybe getting people to wash their hands is actually much harder than one would think.

But Americans don't seem to suffer from diarrheal disease, typhoid, and all these other fecal-oral diseases that plague many developing countries.  Why not?

I'm convinced that Americans are essentially saved by two things: utensils and toilet paper.  Their hands have essentially been removed from both ends of the equation, which drastically reduces the opportunity for transmission and consumption.

Maybe the WASH folks are going about this the wrong way--why can't we start an advertising campaign to get people in places like Bangladesh to eat with a fork and a knife, and wipe with toilet paper?  Perhaps started with the wealthy so that this might be perceived as a "wealthy" behavior (and therefore something others aspire to)?

It's easy to get tunnel vision on the "best" outcomes, or the "ideal" outcomes, but it's important to keep looking for other approaches that we may have missed.  Sure, people should wash their hands.  And use condoms.  And wear their seat belts.  But unlike economists, we can't just assume rational behavior, especially when we've got a lot of evidence to the contrary.  So we also have to think about which behaviors are easier for people to pick up, even if the gains are marginal compared to "best" case.

The grossest thing I've ever seen

A community hand washing demonstration in a village in Habiganj.

Everyone knows that they are supposed to wash their hands.  And yet, many don't.  So many people still get sick sick from things that simple hand washing can prevent.

One of the techniques that our Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) program uses is a simple public demonstration.

A community educator gathers up a group of villagers and ask one person to come up to the front.  First the educator asks the volunteer to wash his/her hands just with water.  She pours water from a pitcher over their hands and catches all the water in a glass bowl.  Already anyone can see that the water is dirty.

Should Europe's city planners build slums?

When I was walking around Milan last weekend, I saw many homeless people.  Several parks that I walked through had a substantial number of park benches taken by sleeping men.  On some of the big avenues, others sat or slept next to a few bags of belongings. Kind of a buzzkill for the Ferrari show rooms or designer stores.

In Dhaka, we rarely talk about homeless people.  There are beggars, but there’s an assumption that they live somewhere.  We talk about “pavement/street dwellers” and even “railroad platform dwellers”, which if you think about it, is pretty much the same as calling someone a “park bench dweller.”  I’m not sure if the problem itself is different—recently brac started centers for street children to get a warm meal and a safe place to stay, which sounds a lot like a homeless shelter—but the way it’s approached is different.

Maybe part of the problem is that in wealthier cities, the available housing options are not low-end enough.  Dhaka’s creative residents have built options that start at the ground level and go up incrementally, to a plastic sheet over your head, to a plastic tent-like structure, to using cardboard and bamboo, to tin, to having a cement floor, brick base, and so on.  I doubt that the police and city officials across America or Europe would stand for this--they would clearly prohibit these types of houses and force people to go elsewhere, wherever that may be.  Park benches and sidewalks on busy avenues, perhaps.  Slums have plenty of problems, but they provide a foundation for many to start working their way up.  

Should Milan think about developing some slums to get people off the streets? 

For more thoughts on how we need to shift our thinking on urban design, especially to tackle the growing challenges posed by "mega-cities," check out the great, recent piece "Welcome to the billion man slum" by Joel Kotkin.