Rahul Gandhi to visit Dhaka's suburban areas, Grameen Bank

Anisur Rahman

Dhaka, Aug 3 (PTI) Congress General Secretary Rahul
Gandhim, who is on a five-day tour of Bangladesh, is to visit
villages near the capital city during which he is expected to
interact with the 'Grameen Bank' officials on the country's
microcredit projects.

Officials said the young Indian leader is to shortly
visit the development projects of Grameen Bank of Nobel
Laureate Muhammad Yunus, whose experiment of poor men's
banking earned Bangladesh the repute of being the home of
micro-credit, a day after he visited the bits of B.R.A.C.,
world's leading NGO.

"Dr Yunus is accompanying him as Rahul Gandhi visits
our microcredit programmes in (suburban) Singair and Manikganj
today," Grameen Bank official Lamia Moeshed told P.T.I.

Rahul evaded a media exposure during his visit to
B.R.A.C. projects Saturday in suburban Gazipur but mixed
freely with rural people and even walked to a roadside village
teashop and asked for a cup of tea, puzzling the security men.

Witnesses said elite-anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion
(R.A.B.) and Special Security Force (S.S.F.) and Indian
security team could not stop him from interacting with common
people.

Attired in a short-sleeved shirt, jeans and sneakers,
he saw for himself the struggle of a few families to pull
themselves out of poverty with B.R.A.C. micro-credit in
several villages of Gazipur. He also witnessed village
organisational meetings of women, primary children's
education, mass library and women health care programme and
adolescent centre.

Son of Congress President Sonia Gandhi and former
Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul listened to the
stories of how the village women came out of the poverty cycle
after receiving small loans and training on farming, fishing
and cattle rearing.

Rahul also visited the dwelling houses of two micro-
credit recipients, Farhana and Rejina defying drizzles.

On return to Dhaka late Saturday, Rahul had a meeting
with B.R.A.C. chief Fazle Hasan Abed.

The Congress leader arrived here Friday on a private
visit' to get a first-hand experience of rural development
projects of the country.

"He will mainly visit the projects undertaken by
B.R.A.C. and Grameen Bank," a foreign ministry official
earlier said.

Rahul's grandmother former prime minister Indira
Gandhi visited Bangladesh in March 1972 and his father former
premier Rajiv Gandhi visited the country twice.

The young parliamentarian met Yunus in Delhi in March
last year and has already started some micro-finance and
women-empowerment projects in his poverty-stricken Lok Sabha
constituency of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh.

Sources close to Rahul earlier said he would try to
see if the Grameen Bank and B.R.A.C. projects could be
replicated in India.