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113-533: Grameen Bank ( Bengali : গ্রামীণ ব্যাংক ) is a microfinance specialized community development bank founded in Bangladesh . It provides small loans (known as microcredit or "grameencredit") to the impoverished without requiring collateral . Grameen Bank is a statutory public authority. It is originated in 1976, in the work of Muhammad Yunus , a professor at the University of Chittagong , who launched

226-471: A World Habitat Award . In 2006, the bank and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize . The bank's success has inspired similar projects in more than 64 countries around the world, including a World Bank initiative to finance Grameen-type lending systems. Muhammad Yunus was inspired during the Bangladesh famine of 1974 to make a small personal loan of US$ 27 to

339-552: A research project to study how to design a credit delivery system to provide banking services to the rural poor. In October 1983 the Grameen Bank was authorized by national legislation to operate as an independent bank. The bank grew significantly between 2003 and 2007. As of January 2022, the total borrowers of the bank number nearly 9.5 million, and 96.81% of those are women. In 1998 the Bank's "Low-cost Housing Program" won

452-500: A bid to lessen this burden on young learners, efforts have been made by educational institutions in the two main Bengali-speaking regions (West Bengal and Bangladesh) to address the opaque nature of many consonant clusters, and as a result, modern Bengali textbooks are beginning to contain more and more "transparent" graphical forms of consonant clusters, in which the constituent consonants of a cluster are readily apparent from

565-473: A cornerstone of Western banking – may also be absent or unenforced. Instead, solidarity lending levers various types of social capital like peer pressure, mutual support and a healthy culture of repayment. These characteristics make solidarity lending more useful in rural villages than in urban centres where mobility is greater and social capital is weaker. Efforts to replicate solidarity lending in developed countries have generally not succeeded. For example,

678-695: A day, a sanitary toilet, a rainproof house, clean drinking water, and the ability to repay a 300 taka -a-week (around US$ 4) loan. The bank is also engaged in social business and entrepreneurship fields. In 2009, the Grameen Creative Lab collaborated with the Yunus Centre to create the Global Social Business Summit. The meeting has become the main platform for social businesses worldwide to foster discussions, actions and collaborations to develop effective solutions to

791-436: A defaulting member. But, in practice the group members often contribute the defaulted amount with an intention to collect the money from the defaulted member at a later time. Such behaviour is encouraged because Grameen does not extend further credit to a group in which a member defaults. No legal instrument (i.e. no written contract) is made between Grameen Bank and its borrowers; the system works based on trust. To supplement

904-503: A defaulting member." Solidarity lending is widespread in microfinance today, particularly in Asia. In addition to Grameen Bank, major practitioners include SEWA , Bank Rakyat Indonesia , Accion International , FINCA , BRAC and SANASA . The Calmeadow Foundation was another important pioneer. The Microbanking Bulletin tracks solidarity lending as a separate microfinance methodology. Of 446 microfinance institutions worldwide that it

1017-596: A different word from a speaker of Standard Bengali in Bangladesh, even though both words are of native Bengali descent. For example, the word salt is লবণ lôbôṇ in the east which corresponds to নুন nun in the west. Bengali exhibits diglossia , though some scholars have proposed triglossia or even n-glossia or heteroglossia between the written and spoken forms of the language. Two styles of writing have emerged, involving somewhat different vocabularies and syntax : Linguist Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar categorises

1130-480: A diphthong. The total number of diphthongs is not established, with bounds at 17 and 31. An incomplete chart is given by Sarkar (1985) of the following: In standard Bengali, stress is predominantly initial. Bengali words are virtually all trochaic ; the primary stress falls on the initial syllable of the word, while secondary stress often falls on all odd-numbered syllables thereafter, giving strings such as in সহযোগিতা shô -hô- jo -gi- ta "cooperation", where

1243-465: A form of joint liability . That is, they will take any action practical to collect a seriously delinquent loan not just from the individual member, but from any member of the solidarity group with the capability to repay it. But Yunus has always rejected this concept, arguing that whatever moral responsibility may pertain among group members, there is no formal or legal "... form of joint liability, i.e. group members are not responsible to pay on behalf of

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1356-400: A group of 42 families as start-up money so that they could make items for sale, without the burdens of high interest under predatory lending . Yunus believed that making such loans available to a larger population could stimulate businesses and reduce the widespread rural poverty in Bangladesh. Yunus developed the principles of the Grameen Bank from his research and experience. Grameen Bank

1469-692: A large scale and were communally limited. Owing to Bengal's geographic location, Bengali areas bordering non-Bengali regions have been influenced by each other. Small numbers of people in Midnapore , which borders Odisha , have used the Odia script to write in Bengali. In the border areas between West Bengal and Bihar , some Bengali communities historically wrote Bengali in Devanagari , Kaithi and Tirhuta . In Sylhet and Bankura , modified versions of

1582-682: A majority in Bangladesh speaks dialects notably different from SCB. Some dialects, particularly those of the Chittagong region, bear only a superficial resemblance to SCB. The dialect in the Chittagong region is least widely understood by the general body of Bengalis. The majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one variety – often, speakers are fluent in Cholitobhasha (SCB) and one or more regional dialects. Even in SCB,

1695-476: A marginalised segment of society (Yunus and Jolis 1998), who share betterment of income with their children, unlike many men. Yunus claims that in 2004, women still have difficulty getting loans; they comprise less than 1 percent of borrowers from commercial banks (Yunus 2004). The interest rates charged by microfinance institutions including Grameen Bank is high compared to that of traditional banks; Grameen's interest (reducing balance basis) on its main credit product

1808-563: A new program, different from its traditional group-based lending, exclusively targeted to the beggars in Bangladesh. This program is focused on distributing small loans to beggars. In 1984, Grameen applied to the Central Bank for help setting up a housing loan program for its borrowers. Their application was rejected on the grounds that the US$ 125 suggested loan could not possibly build a suitable living structure. So Grameen instead proposed

1921-610: A part in the adoption of the English alphabet to write Bengali, with certain social media influencers publishing entire novels in Roman Bengali. Solidarity lending Solidarity lending takes place through 'solidarity groups'. These groups are a distinctive banking distribution channel used primarily to deliver microcredit to poor people. Solidarity lending lowers the costs to a financial institution related to assessing, managing and collecting loans, and can eliminate

2034-576: A rounded total of 280 million) worldwide. The Bengali language is native to the region of Bengal , which comprises the present-day nation of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal . Besides the native region it is also spoken by the Bengalis living in Tripura , southern Assam and the Bengali population in the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Bengali is also spoken in

2147-408: A special diacritic, called the hôsôntô (্) , may be added below the basic consonant grapheme (as in ম্ [m] ). This diacritic, however, is not common and is chiefly employed as a guide to pronunciation. The abugida nature of Bengali consonant graphemes is not consistent, however. Often, syllable-final consonant graphemes, though not marked by a hôsôntô , may carry no inherent vowel sound (as in

2260-523: A state language of the then Dominion of Pakistan . On 21 February 1952, five students and political activists were killed during protests near the campus of the University of Dhaka ; they were the first ever martyrs to die for their right to speak their mother tongue. In 1956, Bengali was made a state language of Pakistan. 21 February has since been observed as Language Movement Day in Bangladesh and has also been commemorated as International Mother Language Day by UNESCO every year since 2000. In 2010,

2373-463: A vowel in isolation from any preceding or following consonant, the independent form of the vowel is used. For example, in মই [moj] "ladder" and in ইলিশ [iliʃ] "Hilsa fish", the independent form of the vowel ই is used (cf. the dependent form ি) . A vowel at the beginning of a word is always realised using its independent form. In addition to the inherent-vowel-suppressing hôsôntô , three more diacritics are commonly used in Bengali. These are

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2486-435: Is Bengali for "Rural" or "Village" Bank. He began a research project, together with a national commercial bank and the University of Chittagong , extending microcredit to test his method for providing credit and banking services to the rural poor. In 1976, the village of Jobra became the first to be served by the project. Over the next two years, the project expanded to other villages in the area. The project, with support from

2599-500: Is Bangladesh's national march, written by The National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam in Bengali in 1928. It was adopted as the national marching song by the Bangladeshi government in 1972. Additionally, the first two verses of Vande Mataram , a patriotic song written in Bengali by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee , was adopted as the "national song" of India in both the colonial period and later in 1950 in independent India. Furthermore, it

2712-547: Is a classical Indo-Aryan language from the Indo-European language family native to the Bengal region of South Asia. With over 237 million native speakers and another 41 million as second language speakers as of 2024, Bengali is the fifth most spoken native language and the seventh most spoken language by the total number of speakers in the world. It is the fifth most spoken Indo-European language . Bengali

2825-468: Is a cursive script with eleven graphemes or signs denoting nine vowels and two diphthongs , and thirty-nine graphemes representing consonants and other modifiers. There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms. The letters run from left to right and spaces are used to separate orthographic words . Bengali script has a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the graphemes that links them together called মাত্রা matra . Since

2938-515: Is about 20%. Grameen has diversified the types of loans it makes. It supports hand-powered wells and loans to support the enterprises of Grameen members' immediate relatives. It has found that seasonal agricultural loans and lease-to-own agreements for equipment and livestock help the poor establish better agriculture. The bank has set a new goal: to make each of its branch locations free of poverty, as defined by benchmarks such as having adequate food and access to clean water and latrines. Grameen Bank

3051-400: Is an abugida , a script with letters for consonants, with diacritics for vowels, and in which an inherent vowel (অ ô ) is assumed for consonants if no vowel is marked. The Bengali alphabet is used throughout Bangladesh and eastern India (Assam, West Bengal, Tripura). The Bengali alphabet is believed to have evolved from a modified Brahmic script around 1000 CE (or 10th–11th century). It

3164-707: Is believed by many that the national anthem of Sri Lanka ( Sri Lanka Matha ) was inspired by a Bengali poem written by Rabindranath Tagore , while some even believe the anthem was originally written in Bengali and then translated into Sinhala . After the contribution made by the Bangladesh UN Peacekeeping Force in the Sierra Leone Civil War under the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone ,

3277-721: Is considered a separate language, although it shares similarities to Northern Bengali dialects. During the standardisation of Bengali in the 19th century and early 20th century, the cultural centre of Bengal was in Kolkata , a city founded by the British. What is accepted as the standard form today in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based on the West-Central dialect of Nadia and Kushtia District . There are cases where speakers of Standard Bengali in West Bengal will use

3390-416: Is estimated to be 1 billion, with a total loan demand of $ 250 billion. The present microfinance model served 100 million people with $ 25 billion of loans as of the late 2000s. The Grameen Bank staff often work in difficult conditions. Employees receive 6 months of on-the-job training while shadowing qualified and experienced individuals from various branches of Grameen. The goal of this training

3503-509: Is for the trainee to "appreciate the unexplored potential of the destitute" and to discover new ways to solve problems that arise within the Grameen branch. After completing the 6-month period, trainees return to Dhaka headquarters for review and critique before appointment to a bank branch. From modest beginnings three decades ago, Yunus has, first and foremost through Grameen Bank, developed micro-credit into an ever more important instrument in

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3616-476: Is handled by the elected leaders of a larger, village-level group called a 'centre' composed of eight solidarity groups. Because all the members are from the same village and loan payments take place during the centre meeting, the principle of using social capital for leverage is not compromised; the only difference is that all the members of the centre are collectively responsible for unpaid loans. Many microcredit institutions use solidarity groups essentially as

3729-404: Is known as Apabhraṃśa , by the end of the first millennium. The Bengali language evolved as a distinct language over the course of time. Though some archaeologists claim that some 10th-century texts were in Bengali, it is not certain whether they represent a differentiated language or whether they represent a stage when Eastern Indo-Aryan languages were differentiating. The local Apabhraṃśa of

3842-592: Is known for its system of solidarity lending . The bank incorporates a set of values embodied in Bangladesh by the Sixteen Decisions (updated to Eighteen Decisions in 2023). At every branch of Grameen Bank, the borrowers recite these Decisions and vow to follow them. As a result of the Eighteen Decisions, Grameen borrowers are encouraged to adopt positive social habits. One such habit includes educating children by sending them to school. Since

3955-495: Is more effective among women than among men. The vast majority of loans using this methodology are delivered to women. Learning from the failure of the Comilla Model of cooperative credit piloted by Akhtar Hameed Khan in the 1950s and '60s, Grameen Bank and many other microcredit institutions have also taken an assertive approach to targeting poor women and excluding non-poor individuals entirely. A major reason for

4068-490: Is set out below in the International Phonetic Alphabet (upper grapheme in each box) and romanisation (lower grapheme). Bengali is known for its wide variety of diphthongs , combinations of vowels occurring within the same syllable . Two of these, /oi̯/ and /ou̯/ , are the only ones with representation in script, as ঐ and ঔ respectively. /e̯ i̯ o̯ u̯/ may all form the glide part of

4181-555: Is the official , national , and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh , with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language. It is the second-most widely spoken language in India . It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura and the Barak Valley region of the state of Assam . It is also the second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. It

4294-508: Is the most widely spoken language in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal , and is spoken by significant populations in other states including Bihar , Arunachal Pradesh , Delhi , Chhattisgarh , Meghalaya , Mizoram , Nagaland , Odisha and Uttarakhand . Bengali is also spoken by the Bengali diasporas ( Bangladeshi diaspora and Indian Bengalis) across Europe, North America,

4407-509: The Aesop's Fables in Bengali was printed using Roman letters based on English phonology by the Scottish linguist John Gilchrist . Consecutive attempts to establish a Roman Bengali have continued across every century since these times, and have been supported by the likes of Suniti Kumar Chatterji , Muhammad Qudrat-i-Khuda , and Muhammad Enamul Haq . The Digital Revolution has also played

4520-675: The Arabic , Persian , and Turkic languages . The arrival of merchants and traders from the Middle East and Turkestan into the Buddhist -ruling Pala Empire , from as early as the 7th century, gave birth to Islamic influence in the region. In the 13th century, subsequent Arab Muslim and Turco-Persian expeditions to Bengal heavily influenced the local vernacular by settling among the native population. Bengali absorbed Arabic and Persian influences in its vocabulary and dialect, including

4633-636: The Bangladesh Bank , was extended in 1979 to the Tangail District (to the north of the capital, Dhaka ). The project's services expanded to other districts of Bangladesh over the next few years. Through an ordinance of the Bangladesh government dated 2 October 1983, the project was converted into the Grameen Bank. Bankers Ron Grzywinski and Mary Houghton of ShoreBank , a community development bank in Chicago, helped Yunus incorporate

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4746-606: The Calmeadow Foundation tested an analogous 'peer lending' model in three locations in Canada: rural Nova Scotia and urban Toronto and Vancouver during the 1990s. It concluded that a variety of factors – including difficulties in reaching the target market, the high risk profile of clients, their general distaste for the joint liability requirement, and high overhead costs – made solidarity lending unviable without subsidies. However, debates have continued about whether

4859-474: The Constitution of Bangladesh states Bengali to be the sole official language of Bangladesh. The Bengali Language Implementation Act, 1987 , made it mandatory to use Bengali in all records and correspondences, laws, proceedings of court and other legal actions in all courts, government or semi-government offices, and autonomous institutions in Bangladesh. It is also the de facto national language of

4972-579: The Kaithi script had some historical prominence, mainly among Muslim communities. The variant in Sylhet was identical to the Baitali Kaithi script of Hindustani with the exception of Sylhet Nagri possessing matra . Sylhet Nagri was standardised for printing in c.  1869 . Up until the 19th century, numerous variations of the Arabic script had been used across Bengal from Chittagong in

5085-807: The Muslim world , on the women's perspective, and on the fight against poverty. Citizens of Bangladesh celebrated the prize. Some critics said that the award affirms neoliberalism . The Grameen Bank has grown into over two dozen enterprises of the Grameen Family of Enterprises. These organisations include Grameen Trust , Grameen Fund , Grameen Communications , Grameen Shakti (Grameen Energy), Grameen Telecom , Grameen Shikkha (Grameen Education), Grameen Motsho (Grameen Fisheries), Grameen Baybosa Bikash (Grameen Business Development), Grameen Phone , Grameen Software Limited , Grameen CyberNet Limited , Grameen Knitwear Limited , and Grameen Uddog (owner of

5198-524: The Nadia region . Bengali shows a high degree of diglossia , with the literary and standard form differing greatly from the colloquial speech of the regions that identify with the language. Modern Bengali vocabulary is based on words inherited from Magadhi Prakrit and Pali, along with tatsamas and reborrowings from Sanskrit and borrowings from Persian , Arabic , Austroasiatic languages and other languages with which it has historically been in contact. In

5311-607: The University of Karachi (established by East Pakistani politicians before Independence of Bangladesh ) also offers regular programs of studies at the Bachelors and at the Masters levels for Bengali Literature. The national anthems of both Bangladesh ( Amar Sonar Bangla ) and India ( Jana Gana Mana ) were written in Bengali by the Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore . Notuner Gaan known as " Chol Chol Chol"

5424-499: The boldface represents primary and secondary stress. Native Bengali words do not allow initial consonant clusters ; the maximum syllabic structure is CVC (i.e., one vowel flanked by a consonant on each side). Many speakers of Bengali restrict their phonology to this pattern, even when using Sanskrit or English borrowings, such as গেরাম geram (CV.CVC) for গ্রাম gram (CCVC) "village" or ইস্কুল iskul (VC.CVC) for স্কুল skul (CCVC) "school". The Bengali-Assamese script

5537-557: The phonology of Eastern Bengali is seen through the lack of nasalised vowels and an alveolar articulation of what are categorised as the "cerebral" consonants (as opposed to the postalveolar articulation of western Bengal). Some varieties of Bengali, particularly Sylheti , Chittagonian and Chakma , have contrastive tone ; differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words. Kharia Thar and Mal Paharia are closely related to Western Bengali dialects, but are typically classified as separate languages. Similarly, Hajong

5650-493: The 'inclusive' approach to organizational development used by the Comilla Model accounts for its failure has not been made. While poverty-targeting has had many successes, social solidarity is not solely a tool for the lending institution – it can also be used by borrowers. A loan 'strike', if it gains the sympathy of a large number of borrowers, can lead to a rapid and highly unstabilizing escalation in delinquencies. It

5763-623: The 16th century, Portuguese missionaries began a tradition of using the Roman alphabet to transcribe the Bengali language. Though the Portuguese standard did not receive much growth, a few Roman Bengali works relating to Christianity and Bengali grammar were printed as far as Lisbon in 1743. The Portuguese were followed by the English and French respectively, whose works were mostly related to Bengali grammar and transliteration. The first version of

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5876-652: The 19th and 20th centuries, there were two standard forms of written Bengali: In 1948, the government of Pakistan tried to impose Urdu as the sole state language in Pakistan, giving rise to the Bengali language movement . This was a popular ethnolinguistic movement in the former East Bengal (today Bangladesh ), which arose as a result of the strong linguistic consciousness of the Bengalis and their desire to promote and protect spoken and written Bengali's recognition as

5989-514: The 43,681 villages covered in 2003. By the end of 2021, the bank's coverage expanded to 81,678 villages out of the country's total 87,223, for a national coverage rate of around 94%. As of the end of 2021, cumulative loan disbursements since inception reached in excess of 2.5 trillion taka (US$ 33.767 billion), and the bank claims a loan recovery rate of around 95%. David Roodman has critiqued the accounting practices that Grameen used to determine this rate. The global number of potential micro-borrowers

6102-593: The 6th century, which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for some time. The ancestor of Bengali was the language of the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty . During the medieval period, Middle Bengali was characterised by the elision of the word-final অ ô and the spread of compound verbs, which originated from the Sanskrit Schwa . Slowly, the word-final ô disappeared from many words influenced by

6215-456: The Bengali equivalent of a full stop – have been adopted from Western scripts and their usage is similar. Unlike in Western scripts (Latin, Cyrillic, etc.) where the letter forms stand on an invisible baseline, the Bengali letter-forms instead hang from a visible horizontal left-to-right headstroke called মাত্রা matra . The presence and absence of this matra can be important. For example,

6328-426: The Bengali script is an abugida, its consonant graphemes usually do not represent phonetic segments , but carry an "inherent" vowel and thus are syllabic in nature. The inherent vowel is usually a back vowel , either [ɔ] as in মত [m ɔ t] "opinion" or [o] , as in মন [m o n] "mind", with variants like the more open [ɒ] . To emphatically represent a consonant sound without any inherent vowel attached to it,

6441-399: The Grameen Bank were linked to exploitation and pressures on poor families to sell their belongings, leading in extreme cases to humiliation and ultimately suicides. The Mises Institute 's Jeffrey Tucker suggests that microcredit banks depend on subsidies to operate, thus acting as another example of welfare. Yunus believes that he is working against the subsidised economy, giving borrowers

6554-544: The Grameen housing program received the Aga Khan International Award for Architecture. Grameen Bank is owned by the borrowers of the bank, most of whom are poor women. Initially, of the total equity of the bank, the government owned 60% in 1983. This then dropped over time to a single-digit percentage by the early 2010s. However, by the mid-2010s, this number increased again to 25%. The bank grew significantly between 2003 and 2007. As of January 2022,

6667-520: The Middle East and other regions. Bengali was accorded the status of a classical language by the government of India on 3 October 2024. It is the second most spoken and fourth fastest growing language in India , following Hindi in the first place, Kashmiri in the second place, and Meitei ( Manipuri ), along with Gujarati , in the third place, according to the 2011 census of India . Bengali has developed over more than 1,400 years. Bengali literature , with its millennium-old literary history,

6780-501: The Minister of International Development. Yunus denies that this is tax evasion: There is no question of tax evasion here. The Government has provided organisations with opportunities; we have made use of these opportunities with [the] aim of benefitting our shareholders who are the rural poor women of Bangladesh. David Roodman and Jonathan Morduch question the statistical validity of studies of microcredit's effects on poverty, noting

6893-569: The Nobel Prize on behalf of Grameen Bank's investors and borrowers at the prize awarding ceremony held at Oslo City Hall. Grameen Bank is the only business corporation to have won a Nobel Prize. Professor Ole Danbolt Mjøs, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, in his speech said that, by giving the prize to Grameen Bank and Muhammad Yunus, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wanted to encourage attention on achievements of

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7006-548: The bank embraced the Sixteen Decisions, almost all Grameen borrowers have their school-age children enrolled in regular classes. This in turn helps bring about social change, and educate the next generation. Solidarity lending is a cornerstone of microcredit, and the system was used in more than 43 countries as of 1988. Repayment responsibility rests solely on the individual borrower. No formal joint liability exists, i.e. group members are not obliged to pay on behalf of

7119-483: The bank under a grant from the Ford Foundation . The bank's repayment rate suffered from economic disruption following the 1998 flood in Bangladesh, but it recovered in subsequent years. By the beginning of 2005, the bank had loaned over US$ 4.7 billion and by the end of 2008, $ 7.6 billion to the poor. In 2011, the Bangladesh government forced Yunus to resign from Grameen Bank, saying that at age 72, he

7232-551: The bank's founder, met personally with the Central Bank governor to plead for their application. When asked if he thought the borrowers would repay the loans, he replied, "Yes, they will. They do. Unlike the rich, the poor cannot risk not repaying. This is the only chance they have." Grameen was then allowed to add housing loans to their range of services. As of 1999, Grameen made housing loans totalling $ 190 million to build over 560,000 homes with near-perfect repayment. By 1989, their average housing loan had grown to $ 300. That year,

7345-536: The basis of modern standard colloquial Bengali. In the dialects prevalent in much of eastern and south-eastern Bangladesh ( Barisal , Chittagong , Dhaka and Sylhet Divisions of Bangladesh), many of the stops and affricates heard in West Bengal and western Bangladesh are pronounced as fricatives . Western alveolo-palatal affricates চ [ tɕɔ ] , ছ [ tɕʰɔ ] , জ [ dʑɔ ] correspond to eastern চ [tsɔ] , ছ [tsʰɔ~sɔ] , জ [dzɔ~zɔ] . The influence of Tibeto-Burman languages on

7458-601: The brand Grameen Check ). On 11 July 2005 the Grameen Mutual Fund One (GMFO), approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Bangladesh, was listed as an initial public offering . One of the first mutual funds of its kind, GMFO will allow the more than four million Grameen bank members, as well as non-members, to buy into Bangladesh's capital markets. The Bank and its constituents are together worth over US$ 7.4 billion. The Grameen Foundation

7571-471: The company's coffee shop) with financial support from the company. Solidarity lending has clearly had a positive impact on many borrowers. Without it, many would not have borrowed at all, or would have been forced to rely on loan sharks . However, it has been the subject of much criticism. A recent survey of the empirical research concludes that the search for alternative approaches must continue, and highlights problems such as "borrowers growing frustrated at

7684-669: The complexity of the situations involved. Yoolim Lee and Ruth David discuss how microfinance and the Grameen model in South India have in recent years been distorted by venture capitalism and profit-makers. In some cases, poor rural families have suffered debt spirals, harassment by microfinance debt collectors, and in some cases suicide. Peter Singer claims that microcredit has a limited ability to transform lives, and that other interventions are more effective. Bengali language Bengali , also known by its endonym Bangla ( বাংলা , Bāṅlā , [ˈbaŋla] ),

7797-469: The consonant which comes first is put on top of or to the left of the one that immediately follows. In these ligatures, the shapes of the constituent consonant signs are often contracted and sometimes even distorted beyond recognition. In the Bengali writing system, there are nearly 285 such ligatures denoting consonant clusters. Although there exist a few visual formulas to construct some of these ligatures, many of them have to be learned by rote. Recently, in

7910-550: The cost of attending regular meetings, loan officers refusing to sanction good borrowers who happen to be in 'bad' groups, and constraints imposed by the diverging ambitions of group members." Efforts to ensure that all members of solidarity groups are equally poor may not always improve group performance. Greater socio-economic diversity "means that group members' incomes are less likely to vary together, and thus group members' ability to insure each other increases". The solidarity lending approach, which excludes less-poor borrowers,

8023-507: The country. In India, Bengali is one of the 23 official languages . It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal , Tripura and in Barak Valley of Assam . Bengali has been a second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. In Pakistan , Bengali is a recognised secondary language in the city of Karachi mainly spoken by stranded Bengalis of Pakistan . The Department of Bengali in

8136-604: The development of Dobhashi . Bengali acquired prominence, over Persian, in the court of the Sultans of Bengal with the ascent of Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah . Subsequent Muslim rulers actively promoted the literary development of Bengali, allowing it to become the most spoken vernacular language in the Sultanate. Bengali adopted many words from Arabic and Persian , which was a manifestation of Islamic culture on

8249-700: The east to Meherpur in the west. The 14th-century court scholar of Bengal, Nur Qutb Alam , composed Bengali poetry using the Persian alphabet . After the Partition of India in the 20th century, the Pakistani government attempted to institute the Perso-Arabic script as the standard for Bengali in East Pakistan ; this was met with resistance and contributed to the Bengali language movement. In

8362-553: The eastern subcontinent, Purbi Apabhraṃśa or Abahatta (lit. 'meaningless sounds'), eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups, the Bengali–Assamese languages , the Bihari languages , and the Odia language . The language was not static: different varieties coexisted and authors often wrote in multiple dialects in this period. For example, Ardhamagadhi is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around

8475-562: The erratic behavior patterns of individual members, making each borrower more reliable in the process. Subtle and at times not-so-subtle peer pressure keeps each group member in line with the broader objectives of the credit program. … Because the group approves the loan request of each member, the group assumes moral responsibility for the loan. If any member of the group gets into trouble, the group usually comes forward to help. The Grameen approach uses solidarity groups as its primary building block. However, responsibility for delinquent loans

8588-466: The final ন in মন [m o n] or the medial ম in গামলা [ɡamla] ). A consonant sound followed by some vowel sound other than the inherent [ɔ] is orthographically realised by using a variety of vowel allographs above, below, before, after, or around the consonant sign, thus forming the ubiquitous consonant-vowel typographic ligatures . These allographs, called কার kar , are diacritical vowel forms and cannot stand on their own. For example,

8701-421: The following regions: From 2005, Grameen Bank worked on Mifos X, an open source technology framework for core banking solutions. Since 2011, Grameen Bank released this technology under the stewardship of Mifos Initiative , a US Non Profit organisation. Some analysts have suggested that microcredit can bring communities into debt from which they cannot escape. Researchers have noted instances when microloans from

8814-726: The government of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared Bengali as an honorary official language in December 2002. In 2009, elected representatives in both Bangladesh and West Bengal called for Bengali to be made an official language of the United Nations . Regional varieties in spoken Bengali constitute a dialect continuum . Linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji grouped the dialects of Bengali language into four large clusters: Rarhi , Vangiya , Kamrupi and Varendri ; but many alternative grouping schemes have also been proposed. The south-western dialects ( Rarhi or Nadia dialect) form

8927-526: The government to make rules for any aspect of the running of the bank. Grameen Bank is founded on the principle that loans are better than charity to interrupt poverty: they offer people the opportunity to take initiatives in business or agriculture, which provide earnings and enable them to pay off the debt. The bank is founded on the belief that people have endless potential, and unleashing their creativity and initiative helps them end poverty. Grameen has offered credit to classes of people formerly underserved:

9040-499: The graph মি [mi] represents the consonant [m] followed by the vowel [i] , where [i] is represented as the diacritical allograph ি (called ই-কার i-kar ) and is placed before the default consonant sign. Similarly, the graphs মা [ma] , মী [mi] , মু [mu] , মূ [mu] , মৃ [mri] , মে [me~mɛ] , মৈ [moj] , মো [mo] and মৌ [mow] represent the same consonant ম combined with seven other vowels and two diphthongs. In these consonant-vowel ligatures,

9153-412: The graphical form. However, since this change is not as widespread and is not being followed as uniformly in the rest of the Bengali printed literature, today's Bengali-learning children will possibly have to learn to recognise both the new "transparent" and the old "opaque" forms, which ultimately amounts to an increase in learning burden. Bengali punctuation marks, apart from the downstroke । daṛi –

9266-445: The idea of "shelter loans". They were again rejected, this time on the grounds that their borrowers could not afford non-income generating loans. Grameen changed tactics and applied a third time, this time to make "factory loans", the explanation being that borrowers worked from home, so the home was also a factory that made it possible for borrowers to earn income. Grameen was rejected for a third time. After this third rejection, Yunus,

9379-605: The interests of its new borrowers and depositor-shareholders. Grameen converts deposits made in villages into loans for the more needy in the villages (Yunus and Jolis 1998). It targets the poorest of the poor, with a particular emphasis on women, who receive upwards of 95 percent of the bank's loans. Women traditionally had less access to financial alternatives of ordinary credit lines and incomes. They were seen to have an inequitable share of power in household decision making. Yunus and others have found that lending to women generates considerable secondary effects, including empowerment of

9492-494: The language as: While most writing is in Standard Colloquial Bengali (SCB), spoken dialects exhibit a greater variety. People in southeastern West Bengal, including Kolkata, speak in SCB. Other dialects, with minor variations from Standard Colloquial, are used in other parts of West Bengal and western Bangladesh, such as the Midnapore dialect, characterised by some unique words and constructions. However,

9605-523: The language movement. Although Sanskrit has been spoken by Hindu Brahmins in Bengal since the 3rd century BC, the local Buddhist population spoke varieties of the Prakrit . These varieties are generally referred to as "eastern Magadhi Prakrit ", as coined by linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji , as the Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were influential in the first millennium when Bengal

9718-547: The language. Major texts of Middle Bengali (1400–1800) include Yusuf-Zulekha by Shah Muhammad Sagir and Srikrishna Kirtana by the Chandidas poets. Court support for Bengali culture and language waned when the Mughal Empire conquered Bengal in the late 16th and early 17th century. The modern literary form of Bengali was developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the west-central dialect spoken in

9831-573: The lending, Grameen Bank requires the borrowing members to save very small amounts regularly in a number of funds, designated for emergency, the group, etc. These savings help serve as an insurance against contingencies. In a country in which few women may take out loans from large commercial banks, Grameen has focused on women borrowers; around 97% of its members are women. While a World Bank study has concluded that women's access to microcredit empowers them through greater access to resources and control over decision making, some other economists argue that

9944-428: The letter ত tô and the numeral ৩ "3" are distinguishable only by the presence or absence of the matra , as is the case between the consonant cluster ত্র trô and the independent vowel এ e , also the letter হ hô and Bengali Ôbogroho ঽ (~ô) and letter ও o and consonant cluster ত্ত ttô . The letter-forms also employ the concepts of letter-width and letter-height (the vertical space between

10057-555: The mid-1990s, the bank started to get most of its funding from the central bank of Bangladesh. More recently, Grameen has started bond sales as a source of finance. The bonds are implicitly subsidised, as they are guaranteed by the Government of Bangladesh, and still they are sold above the bank rate. In 2013, Bangladesh parliament passed 'Grameen Bank Act' which replaces the Grameen Bank Ordinance, 1983, authorising

10170-462: The most pressing problems plaguing the world. The bank has diversified among different applications of microcredit. In the Village Phone program, women entrepreneurs can start businesses to provide wireless payphone service in rural areas. This program earned the bank the 2004 Petersburg Prize worth EUR 100,000, for its contribution of Technology to Development. In the press release announcing

10283-427: The need for collateral . Since there is a fixed cost associated with each loan delivered, a bank that bundles individual loans together and permits a group to manage individual relationships can realize substantial savings in administrative and management costs. In many developing countries the legal system offers little, if any support for the property rights of poor people. Laws related to secured transactions –

10396-605: The neighbouring states of Odisha , Bihar , and Jharkhand , and sizeable minorities of Bengali speakers reside in Indian cities outside Bengal, including Delhi , Mumbai , Thane , Varanasi , and Vrindavan . There are also significant Bengali-speaking communities in the Middle East , the United States , Singapore , Malaysia , Australia , Canada , the United Kingdom , and Italy . The 3rd article of

10509-458: The opportunity to create businesses. Some of Tucker's criticism is based on his interpretation of Grameen's "16 decisions", seen as indoctrination, without considering what they mean in the context of poor, illiterate peasants. The Norwegian documentary Caught in Micro Debt claims that Grameen evaded taxes. The Spanish documentary Microcredit also suggested this. The accusation is based on

10622-517: The parliament of Bangladesh and the legislative assembly of West Bengal proposed that Bengali be made an official UN language. As of January 2023, no further action has been yet taken on this matter. However, in 2022, the UN did adopt Bangla as an unofficial language, after a resolution tabled by India. In 2024, the government of India conferred Bengali with the status of classical language . Approximate distribution of native Bengali speakers (assuming

10735-608: The poor, women, illiterate, and unemployed people. Access to credit is based on reasonable terms, such as the group lending system and weekly-instalment payments, with reasonably long terms of loans, enabling the poor to build on their existing skills to earn better income in each cycle of loans. Grameen's objective has been to promote financial independence among the poor. Yunus encourages all borrowers to become savers, so that their local capital can be converted into new loans to others. Since 1995, Grameen has funded 90 percent of its loans with interest income and deposits collected, aligning

10848-424: The practice of self-help group banking is inspired by similar principles. However, solidarity groups are distinctly different from earlier approaches in several important ways. First, solidarity groups are very small, typically involving 5 individuals who are allowed to choose one another but cannot be related. Five is often cited as an ideal size because it is: Much evidence has also shown that social pressure

10961-491: The prior failure of credit cooperatives in Bangladesh was that the groups were too big and consisted of people with varied economic backgrounds. These large groups did not work because the more affluent members captured the organizations. An early pioneer of solidarity lending, Dr. Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh describes the dynamics of lending through solidarity groups this way: ... Group membership not only creates support and protection but also smooths out

11074-673: The prize, the Development Gateway Foundation noted that through this program: ... Grameen has created a new class of women entrepreneurs who have raised themselves from poverty. Moreover, it has improved the livelihoods of farmers and others who are provided access to critical market information and lifeline communications previously unattainable in some 28,000 villages of Bangladesh. More than 55,000 phones are currently in operation, with more than 80 million people benefiting from access to market information, news from relatives, and more. In 2003, Grameen Bank started

11187-535: The relationship between microcredit and women-empowerment is less straightforward. In other areas, Grameen has had very high payback rates—over 98 percent. However, according to The Wall Street Journal , in 2001 a fifth of the bank's loans were more than a year overdue. Grameen says that more than half of its borrowers in Bangladesh (close to 50 million) have risen out of acute poverty thanks to their loan, as measured by such standards as having all children of school age in school, all household members eating three meals

11300-424: The required subsidies may be justified as an alternative to other subsidies targeted to the entrepreneurial poor, and VanCity Credit Union , which took over Calmeadow's Vancouver operations, continues to use peer lending. Tapping social capital to lend money is not new to microfinance . Earlier precedents include the informal practices of ROSCAs and the bonds of association used in credit unions . In India,

11413-427: The so-called "inherent" vowel [ɔ] is first expunged from the consonant before adding the vowel, but this intermediate expulsion of the inherent vowel is not indicated in any visual manner on the basic consonant sign ম [mɔ] . The vowel graphemes in Bengali can take two forms: the independent form found in the basic inventory of the script and the dependent, abridged, allograph form (as discussed above). To represent

11526-405: The struggle against poverty. Grameen Bank has been a source of ideas and models for the many institutions in the field of micro-credit that have sprung up around the world. On 10 December 2006, Mosammat Taslima Begum, who used her first 16 euro (US$ 20) loan from the bank in 1992 to buy a goat and subsequently became a successful entrepreneur and one of the elected board members of the bank, accepted

11639-536: The superposed chôndrôbindu (ঁ) , denoting a suprasegmental for nasalisation of vowels (as in চাঁদ [tʃãd] "moon"), the postposed ônusbar (ং) indicating the velar nasal [ŋ] (as in বাংলা [baŋla] "Bengali") and the postposed bisôrgô (ঃ) indicating the voiceless glottal fricative [h] (as in উঃ! [uh] "ouch!") or the gemination of the following consonant (as in দুঃখ [dukʰːɔ] "sorrow"). The Bengali consonant clusters ( যুক্তব্যঞ্জন juktôbênjôn ) are usually realised as ligatures, where

11752-400: The total borrowers of the bank number nearly 9.5 million, and 96.81% of those are women. The number of borrowers has more than tripled since 2003, when the bank had 3.12 million members. Similar growth can be observed in the number of villages covered. As of October 2007, the Bank had a staff of more than 24,703 employees; its 2,468 branches provided services to 80,257 villages, up from

11865-482: The unauthorised transfer of approximately US$ 100 million, donated by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), from one Grameen entity to another in 1996, before the expiry of the Grameen Bank's tax exemption. However, Norad published a statement in December 2010 clearing Yunus and the Bank of any wrongdoing on this point, following a comprehensive review of Norad's support commissioned by

11978-484: The visible matra and an invisible baseline). There is yet to be a uniform standard collating sequence (sorting order of graphemes to be used in dictionaries, indices, computer sorting programs, etc.) of Bengali graphemes. Experts in both Bangladesh and India are currently working towards a common solution for this problem. Throughout history, there have been instances of the Bengali language being written in different scripts, though these employments were never popular on

12091-435: The vocabulary may differ according to the speaker's religion: Muslims are more likely to use words of Persian and Arabic origin, along with more words naturally derived from Sanskrit ( tadbhava ), whereas Hindus are more likely to use tatsama (words directly borrowed from Sanskrit). For example: The phonemic inventory of standard Bengali consists of 29 consonants and 7 vowels, as well as 7 nasalised vowels . The inventory

12204-568: Was a part of the Greater Magadhan realm. The local varieties had no official status during the Gupta Empire , and with Bengal increasingly becoming a hub of Sanskrit literature for Hindu priests, the vernacular of Bengal gained a lot of influence from Sanskrit. Magadhi Prakrit was also spoken in modern-day Bihar and Assam , and this vernacular eventually evolved into Ardha Magadhi . Ardha Magadhi began to give way to what

12317-536: Was adopted in large part because of a view that the more inclusive cooperative 'bond of association' had failed in Bangladesh (see the Comilla Model). But the founder of Bangladesh's credit cooperatives, Akhter Hameed Khan documented that the Model's practices contravened two fundamental credit union operating principles: independence from government intervention, and local financial self-reliance. The case that

12430-485: Was developed to share the Grameen philosophy and expand the benefits of microfinance for the world's poorest people. Grameen Foundation, which has an A-rating from [Charity Watch], provides microloans in the USA (the only developed country where this is done), and supports microfinance institutions worldwide with loan guarantees, training, and technology transfer. As of 2008, Grameen Foundation supports microfinance institutions in

12543-565: Was extensively developed during the Bengali Renaissance and is one of the most prolific and diverse literary traditions in Asia. The Bengali language movement from 1948 to 1956 demanding that Bengali be an official language of Pakistan fostered Bengali nationalism in East Bengal leading to the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971. In 1999, UNESCO recognised 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of

12656-724: Was tracking at the end of 2005, 39 lent only through this method, while another 205 used a mix of solidarity and individual lending. The average loan balance outstanding at solidarity lenders was $ 109 (19% of local gross national income ), compared to $ 1,024 (61% of local gross national income) among individual lenders. This shows not only that solidarity lenders are meeting the needs of a significantly poorer market segment, but also that they are doing it in significantly poorer countries. In Costa Rica , many companies enable their employees to organize Asociaciones Solidaristas ( Solidarism Associations ), which enables them to create saving funds, loans, and financial activities (for example managing

12769-425: Was years beyond the legal limit for the position. Grameen Bank soon began expanding into wealthy countries. As of 2017, Grameen America had 19 branches in eleven US cities and its nearly 100,000 borrowers were all women. "The bank has gained its funding from different sources, and the main contributors have shifted over time." In the initial years, donor agencies used to provide the bulk of capital at low rates. By

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