In his book, Banker for thePoor, Prof Md Yunus recounts how the idea of Grameen Bank germinated when he was taking a walk through a village adjacent to his university in Chittagong, Bangladesh in 1976. He met a woman, Sufia Begam, who was making beautiful stool with bamboo. She told him that though she sold the stool for five taka and fifty paisa (22 cents) she earned only fifty paisa (2 cents). This was because to buy the bamboo, she had to borrow money from a local trader on the condition that she will sell the stools only to him on a price fixed by him. All she needed was a low interest loan of five taka to escape the clutches of the money lender.
Yunus asked his students to find out how many in the village were similarly borrowing from the traders.
They found that there were 42 such people who collectively needed $27 to move
out of the cycle of exploitation. He wrote:
“People were
not poor because they were stupid or lazy. They worked all day long, doing
complex physical tasks. They were poor because the financial structures which
could help them to widen their economic base simply did not exist in this
country. It was a structural problem, not a personal problem.”
What Yunus was describing was the
concepts of “Opportunity Structures”[1] –
i.e., the outcomes of a person’s efforts are mediated by the external
factors which permit or prohibit one’s access to opportunities.
Even when “equal opportunities”
exist, the access to those opportunities is not equal for all due to the different
social structures and contexts in which people live. For instance, while the
RTE (Right to Education) Act stipulates free and compulsory education for all
children in the 6-14yrs bracket, there is
considerable difference in the enrollment and drop-out rates between
girls and boys. Many girls are unable to avail the opportunity to get education
due to cultural and family norms which discourage girls’ education, or due to
the physical distance of the school from home. In contrast, boys are subjected
to a more conducive “opportunity structure” (e.g., they are encouraged to
study, they don’t have to help in household chores or take care of younger siblings,
they are not subjected to harassment on the roads, etc.), and so have easier
access to education.
Powell, Heller and Bundalli describe three kinds of opportunity structures, which determine the
outcomes of efforts by the individual or communities:
1. Physical Opportunity Structure: Physical locations differ in terms of the
opportunities they offer to individual and communities. Some places are high
opportunity locations and provide easy access to facilities such as educational
institutions, healthcare facilities, banks, markets, employment opportunities,
etc., while other locations are deprived of these. Farmers living in villages
which are well connected to markets, for example, have better chances of improving their lives than
farmers living in places which are
isolated and distant from markets. As Drier, Mollonkopf, & Swanstrom, observed:
- “Whether we
are highly skilled professionals or minimum-wage workers, place affects our
access to jobs and public services (especially education), our access to
shopping and culture, our level of personal security, the availability of
medical resources, and even the air we breathe. The inequalities across places
reinforce the inequalities among people.”
2. Social Opportunity Structure: One’s social connections, i.e., who one knows,
how well one knows them, which group does one belong to, etc., play an important
role in one’s chances to access opportunities. Individuals who know the
decision makers or potential employers, belong to an influential group (e.g., an
alumni network or a particular class, caste or community), or have friends or
relatives who are well-placed, influential and/or knowledgeable, etc., have
more influence on the outcomes of their efforts. Compared to those who are not
so well connected, they would have easier access to employment opportunities, loans
and financial help, market information, legal entitlements, services such as
education or healthcare, etc.
Like
individuals, communities too differ in terms of their social opportunity
structures. Some communities, due to their history and heritage, location of
their members in the society, or even their language or customs have strong
social connections with influential agencies as compared to other communities.
For instance, communities/ constituencies of powerful politicians, or with
members who are placed in influential positions, are likely to have better
access to resources, government schemes, social justice, etc.
3. Cultural Opportunity Structure: The shared norms, values and goals of one’s
community and family facilitate or hinder with an individual’s efforts towards certain
aims. Communities which have traditionally relied on specific occupation (e.g.,
trade and commerce, farming, weaving, etc.) would have more resources,
technical knowledge and inclination to support similar behaviors and efforts,
and would discourage other pursuits. Similarly, differences in the gender norms
of different communities may encourage or discourage girls’ education, women to
work outside home, or men to pursue up supposedly ‘feminine’ occupation (e.g., dancing,
cooking, fine arts, etc.).
In
India, in many rural (and even urban) communities, the caste norms within the
community also determine the differing access to common resources (e.g., water
resources, educational and healthcare facilities, common space, etc.) among the
community members.
Differing
opportunity structures lie at the heart of social inequalities. Individuals
with strong and favourable opportunity structures are able attract and leverage
more resources and facilities as compared to those who lack such external support.
That is why, despite the availability of resources in the society, the poor and
marginalized communities are unable to access them with same ease as people
who, due to their external circumstances, are endowed by privileges. As Narayan and Petesch noted:
“…these
inequalities are both reflected in and perpetuated by the dominant social
structures and values and norms that determine the opportunity structure poor
people face. Given these barriers, poor people’s own efforts to move themselves
out of poverty are often unsuccessful.”
****
[1] The idea of “Opportunity
Structures” was proposed by sociologist Robert K Merton in 1938 in his paper “Social
Structure and Anomie” to explain why differing structural opportunities make some
people successful, while push others towards delinquency.
No comments:
Post a Comment