Bangla Bari Ltd

MY STORY WITH THE MESSIAH. The year was 2010. I was in my third year of teaching at the Department of Architecture at NSU. Heart full of dreams, mind full of ideas. I was a coordinator for Grameen Bank's internship program. Back then hundreds of starry-eyed wanderers from all over the world would come to do internships at GB. Some of them complained from the moment they got off the plane "Why is it so hot here?" "Why is Dr. Yunus not here to receive me". But some were here genuinely to learn about poverty reduction. They threw the best parties. My research was concentrated on trying to find sustainable and affordable housing solutions for the marginalized community of rural Bangladesh. In simple words, "Cheap, strong and sustainable houses for the poor mass". Most people don't know that the first AGA Khan Award in Bangladesh was given to the Grameen Bank Housing Program in 1989. They made 60,000 houses at $300 each. By the time I arrived, the Grameen Bank Housing was a skeleton of its past, almost defunct. Some of the decision-makers didn't think of it as a profitable venture and defunded it. I spoke to Dr. Yunus at length about the need for sustainable mass housing and how the economy of scale can drive the cost down. Dr. Yunus was a great mentor and asked me to study all the failed projects. Despite resistance from the grameen directors, I wanted to build the houses with CSEB (Compressed Stabilized Earth Blocks) which is widely used in Latin America and China. I just came back from Auroville. Earthblock was in my blood. We made some prototypes with a small funding from UNDP. Along the way, I realized that providing water and sanitation is as important as providing a house. I summarily rejected the CI sheet (tin) as a building material. Days of debate ensued. Grameen Shakti wanted to include their solar with the package. I didn't mind. HBRI was overseeing the civil engineering part. Everyone was on board. We were almost reaching a certain point of a complete package. Even a poor village farmer would be able to own his home now. They can give 10% down and own their homes. Individually, it's almost impossible for a poor farmer to save enough money to build a house and make it cheaply. Because we would be doing it on a mass scale, we'd provide a strong sustainable house cheaply with an extremely low interest rate. The housing revolution for the poor was about to embark on Bangladesh. Everyone was excited. Bangla Bari Ltd. (www.BanglaBari.org) was born from this. Then... slowly but surely, around 2011 a dark cloud descended upon us and took all our sunshine away. Suddenly the government went completely mental and within a year, Dr. Yunus was thrown out of Grameen Bank. The government hijacked the bank and all the innovative projects (including ours) were shut down. The heartbreak took many years to recover. I got married and went back to teaching. All fell apart. But working with Dr. Yunus during 2010 was the best year of my life.