Comilla Model
Encyclopedia
The Comilla Model was a rural development programme launched in 1959 by the Pakistan
Academy for Rural Development (renamed in 1971 the Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development). The Academy, which is located on the outskirts of Comilla
town, was founded by Akhter Hameed Khan, the cooperative
pioneer who was responsible for developing and launching the programme.
While the results of the Model ultimately frustrated Khan’s ambitions, it has important implications for rural community development
, particularly cooperative
microfinance
and microcredit
and West Pakistan
with technical assistance from the US government. The V-AID was a governmental level attempt to promote citizens participation in the sphere of rural development.
Khan argued that for Comilla to develop rapidly, the farmers in its villages must be able to rapidly expand their production and sales. The main constraint they faced was inadequate local infrastructure
– especially roads, drains, embankments
and irrigation
. But even if the government had the resources to build this infrastructure, Khan argued, the problem would not be solved. Once constructed, infrastructure must be regularly maintained. The benefits of it must be managed effectively based on rules that users could accept and predict. In Khan’s view it was essential to develop ‘vigorous local institutions’ capable of performing this type of local maintenance and management.
For this reason, the Comilla Model piloted a methodology for stimulating agricultural and rural development, based on the principle of grassroots cooperative participation by the people. Dr. Khan found inspiration for the cooperative development aspect of his Model from German cooperative pioneer Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen
, whose rural credit unions had been an early example of institution-building in predominantly non-literate communities
.
1. establishment of a training and development centre,
2. a road-drainage embankment works program,
3. a decentralized, small scale irrigation program, and
4. a two-tiered cooperative system, with primary cooperatives operating in the villages, and federations operating at thana level.
Considerable emphasis was placed on distribution of agricultural inputs and extension services, for example by helping farmers to grow potatoes in the sandy Comilla soil, and using cold storage technology.
Another key implementation challenge, Dr. Khan wrote, was to ensure that the four programs grew stronger at the same time in a mutually supporting way. In particular,
In the villages, the Academy introduced a number of pilot projects beginning in 1959. These pilot projects were guided by two goals: first, to provide a real-life learning situation for its trainees; and second, to devise pilot programmes and institutions which could serve as models capable of replication. In guiding and operating the projects, a set of principles and strategies were formulated as the bases for developing the pilot projects, resulting in a unique rural development approach.
These features distinguish the Comilla Model from other rural development approaches, such as community development
, the target group approach, and intensive area development.
Escalating loan defaults became a particularly important concern, undermining the hope that the cooperatives would become self-reliant and develop into strong institutions. Dr. Khan reported that influential local people had secured management positions in the cooperatives. “They are powerful and well informed. They know that the old sanctions (certificates, notices, pressure by officers) are now dead, and they can repudiate their obligations with impunity.” In addition, the new government annulled loans issued by its pre-independence predecessor.
Chowdhury reports that by 1979 only 61 of the 400 cooperatives were still functioning. She attributes this result to four factors: fraud/lack of internal controls, stagnation, diversion of funds, and ineffective external supervision. The central problem of fraud and weak controls "was possible not only because of individual dishonesty, but because the people were not made aware of their rights, and were not in a position to voice their rights ..."
At the same time, there were difficulties with government relations made more difficult by the departure of Khan for Pakistan.
and Grameen Bank
in the 1970s, both Dr. Muhammad Yunus
and Fazle Hasan Abed
tested cooperative approaches to delivering credit to poor people. They concluded that the cooperative strategy could not work in rural Bangladesh. Instead, both directly targeted the poorest people, while attempting to keep out those who were not poor.
Dowla & Barua recently summarized the thinking at Grameen Bank:
Later cooperative development initiatives in Bangladesh, like RD-12 and the Swanirvar (‘self-reliance’) Movement also adopted a targeting strategy.
Both Yunus and Abed also attempted to catalyze collective enterprises that were locally owned and controlled. However, problems with internal control and elite manipulation continued, and by the 1990s Grameen and BRAC, along with all the main microfinance NGOs in Bangladesh, had abandoned cooperative approaches and developed highly centralized control and service delivery structures.
institutions have adopted poverty-targeting, most cooperatives reject it. The 1st principle in the Statement on the Co-operative Identity
affirms that cooperatives are open to all persons in a community. Poverty-targeting is seen as ‘reverse discrimination’ on the basis of social or economic status.
In this view, the main problem with the Comilla Model was that it neglected the 4th cooperative principle: independence from government. This neglect is clearly visible in the Khan’s initial design of the Model, since the cooperatives were conceived of as an instrument for maintaining public infrastructure, and were dependent on the delivery of government extension services and credit for their success. Cooperatives however, have fallen prey to elite capture in many oral communities
, and in less densely populated nations than Bangladesh, it still proves challenging to deliver microfinance to them.
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
Academy for Rural Development (renamed in 1971 the Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development). The Academy, which is located on the outskirts of Comilla
Comilla District
The district of Comilla consists 4543 mosques, 379 temples, 98 churches, 34 Buddhist temples and six tombs.-Places of interest:Important landmarks include Kotbari, a cantonment, or military installation and Kandirpar, considered the heart of the Comilla district...
town, was founded by Akhter Hameed Khan, the cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
pioneer who was responsible for developing and launching the programme.
While the results of the Model ultimately frustrated Khan’s ambitions, it has important implications for rural community development
Rural community development
Rural community development encompasses a range of approaches and activities that aim to improve the welfare and livelihoods of people living in rural areas. As a branch of community development, these approaches pay attention to social issues particularly community organizing. This is in contrast...
, particularly cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
microfinance
Microfinance
Microfinance is the provision of financial services to low-income clients or solidarity lending groups including consumers and the self-employed, who traditionally lack access to banking and related services....
and microcredit
Origins and purpose
The Comilla Model was Khan's reply to the failure of Village Agricultural and Industrial Development (V-AID) programme, launched in 1953 in EastEast Pakistan
East Pakistan was a provincial state of Pakistan established in 14 August 1947. The provincial state existed until its declaration of independence on 26 March 1971 as the independent nation of Bangladesh. Pakistan recognized the new nation on 16 December 1971. East Pakistan was created from Bengal...
and West Pakistan
West Pakistan
West Pakistan , common name West-Pakistan , in the period between its establishment on 22 November 1955 to disintegration on December 16, 1971. This period, during which, Pakistan was divided, ended when East-Pakistan was disintegrated and succeeded to become which is now what is known as Bangladesh...
with technical assistance from the US government. The V-AID was a governmental level attempt to promote citizens participation in the sphere of rural development.
Khan argued that for Comilla to develop rapidly, the farmers in its villages must be able to rapidly expand their production and sales. The main constraint they faced was inadequate local infrastructure
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
– especially roads, drains, embankments
Embankment (transportation)
To keep a road or railway line straight or flat, and where the comparative cost or practicality of alternate solutions is prohibitive, the land over which the road or rail line will travel is built up to form an embankment. An embankment is therefore in some sense the opposite of a cutting, and...
and irrigation
Irrigation
Irrigation may be defined as the science of artificial application of water to the land or soil. It is used to assist in the growing of agricultural crops, maintenance of landscapes, and revegetation of disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of inadequate rainfall...
. But even if the government had the resources to build this infrastructure, Khan argued, the problem would not be solved. Once constructed, infrastructure must be regularly maintained. The benefits of it must be managed effectively based on rules that users could accept and predict. In Khan’s view it was essential to develop ‘vigorous local institutions’ capable of performing this type of local maintenance and management.
For this reason, the Comilla Model piloted a methodology for stimulating agricultural and rural development, based on the principle of grassroots cooperative participation by the people. Dr. Khan found inspiration for the cooperative development aspect of his Model from German cooperative pioneer Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen
Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen
Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen was a German mayor and cooperative pioneer. Several credit union systems and cooperative banks have been named after Raiffeisen, who pioneered rural credit unions.- Life :...
, whose rural credit unions had been an early example of institution-building in predominantly non-literate communities
Orality
Orality is thought and verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy are unfamiliar to most of the population. The study of orality is closely allied to the study of oral tradition...
.
Implementation
To simultaneously address problems caused by the inadequacy of both local infrastructure and local institutions, the Model integrated four distinct components in every thana (sub-district) where it was implemented:1. establishment of a training and development centre,
2. a road-drainage embankment works program,
3. a decentralized, small scale irrigation program, and
4. a two-tiered cooperative system, with primary cooperatives operating in the villages, and federations operating at thana level.
Considerable emphasis was placed on distribution of agricultural inputs and extension services, for example by helping farmers to grow potatoes in the sandy Comilla soil, and using cold storage technology.
Another key implementation challenge, Dr. Khan wrote, was to ensure that the four programs grew stronger at the same time in a mutually supporting way. In particular,
In the villages, the Academy introduced a number of pilot projects beginning in 1959. These pilot projects were guided by two goals: first, to provide a real-life learning situation for its trainees; and second, to devise pilot programmes and institutions which could serve as models capable of replication. In guiding and operating the projects, a set of principles and strategies were formulated as the bases for developing the pilot projects, resulting in a unique rural development approach.
Features
The main features of the Comilla Model were:- The promotion of development and of refining of various institutions, both public and private, and establishing a system of interrelationships between them;
- Involvement of both publicPublic sectorThe public sector, sometimes referred to as the state sector, is a part of the state that deals with either the production, delivery and allocation of goods and services by and for the government or its citizens, whether national, regional or local/municipal.Examples of public sector activity range...
and private sectorPrivate sectorIn economics, the private sector is that part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is run by private individuals or groups, usually as a means of enterprise for profit, and is not controlled by the state...
s in the process of rural development; - Development of leadership in every village, including managersManagementManagement in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
, model farmerFarmerA farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...
s, women organizerOrganizerOrganizer could refer to:*Union organizer, a trade union official*Party organizer, a political party official*Community organizing, a way of building democratic power for the powerless*Personal organizer, a type of diary...
s, youth leadersYouth workIn the United Kingdom youth work is the process of creating an environment where young people can engage in informal educational activities. Different varieties of youth work include centre-based work, detached work, school-based work and religion based work....
, and village accountants, to manage and sustain the development efforts; - Development of three basic infrastructures (administrative, physical and organisational);
- Priority on decentralized and coordinated rural administration in coordination with officials of various government departments and the representatives of public organisations.
- Integration and coordination of the various developing services, institutions and projects;
- Education, organisation and discipline;
- Economic planning and technologyTechnologyTechnology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
; - Development of a stable and progressive agricultureAgricultureAgriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
to improve the conditions of the farmers, and provide employment to rural labour force.
These features distinguish the Comilla Model from other rural development approaches, such as community development
Community development
Community development is a broad term applied to the practices and academic disciplines of civic leaders, activists, involved citizens and professionals to improve various aspects of local communities....
, the target group approach, and intensive area development.
Difficulties
For various reasons the Comilla Model was unable to achieve its goal. It had particular troubles with government relations and efforts to build strong cooperative institutions. According to Dr Khan:
… in actual practice, the four programs suffered from distortion, mismanagement, corruption and subversion. After Independence of Bangladesh, while the First Five Year Plan gave general endorsement, both theoretical criticisms and practical difficulties became more severe.”
Escalating loan defaults became a particularly important concern, undermining the hope that the cooperatives would become self-reliant and develop into strong institutions. Dr. Khan reported that influential local people had secured management positions in the cooperatives. “They are powerful and well informed. They know that the old sanctions (certificates, notices, pressure by officers) are now dead, and they can repudiate their obligations with impunity.” In addition, the new government annulled loans issued by its pre-independence predecessor.
Chowdhury reports that by 1979 only 61 of the 400 cooperatives were still functioning. She attributes this result to four factors: fraud/lack of internal controls, stagnation, diversion of funds, and ineffective external supervision. The central problem of fraud and weak controls "was possible not only because of individual dishonesty, but because the people were not made aware of their rights, and were not in a position to voice their rights ..."
At the same time, there were difficulties with government relations made more difficult by the departure of Khan for Pakistan.
The officers and change agents were not ready to plan with the local people and to report to them directly…. The dynamic personality of Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan helped to mobilize and harmonize diverse groups to work towards a common goal for rural development. Afterwards, the contradictions within the Comilla approach manifested themselves.”
Lessons from the Comilla experience
Comilla Model provided an experience to be profited by later practitioners. In the early years of BRAC (NGO)BRAC (NGO)
BRAC, based in Bangladesh, is the world's largest non-governmental development organization. Established by Sir Fazle Hasan Abed in 1972 soon after the independence of Bangladesh, BRAC is present in all 64 districts of Bangladesh, with over 7 million microfinance group members, 37,500 non-formal...
and Grameen Bank
Grameen Bank
The Grameen Bank is a microfinance organization and community development bank started in Bangladesh that makes small loans to the impoverished without requiring collateral...
in the 1970s, both Dr. Muhammad Yunus
Muhammad Yunus
Muhammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi economist and founder of the Grameen Bank, an institution that provides microcredit to help its clients establish creditworthiness and financial self-sufficiency. In 2006 Yunus and Grameen received the Nobel Peace Prize...
and Fazle Hasan Abed
Fazle Hasan Abed
Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, KCMG is a social worker with dual Bangladeshi/ British nationality and the founder and chairman of BRAC . For his outstanding contributions to social improvement, he has received the Ramon Magsaysay Award, the UNDP Mahbub Ul Haq Award and the inaugural Clinton Global Citizen...
tested cooperative approaches to delivering credit to poor people. They concluded that the cooperative strategy could not work in rural Bangladesh. Instead, both directly targeted the poorest people, while attempting to keep out those who were not poor.
Dowla & Barua recently summarized the thinking at Grameen Bank:
Later cooperative development initiatives in Bangladesh, like RD-12 and the Swanirvar (‘self-reliance’) Movement also adopted a targeting strategy.
Both Yunus and Abed also attempted to catalyze collective enterprises that were locally owned and controlled. However, problems with internal control and elite manipulation continued, and by the 1990s Grameen and BRAC, along with all the main microfinance NGOs in Bangladesh, had abandoned cooperative approaches and developed highly centralized control and service delivery structures.
Continuing debates
The merits of poverty-targeting continue to stimulate debate in microfinance. While many microcreditMicrocredit
Microcredit is the extension of very small loans to those in poverty designed to spur entrepreneurship. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimal qualifications to gain access to traditional credit...
institutions have adopted poverty-targeting, most cooperatives reject it. The 1st principle in the Statement on the Co-operative Identity
Statement on the Co-operative Identity
The Statement on the Co-operative Identity, promulgated by the International Co-operative Alliance , defines and guides co-operatives worldwide. It contains the definition of a co-operative as a special form of organization, the values of co-operatives, and the currently accepted cooperative...
affirms that cooperatives are open to all persons in a community. Poverty-targeting is seen as ‘reverse discrimination’ on the basis of social or economic status.
In this view, the main problem with the Comilla Model was that it neglected the 4th cooperative principle: independence from government. This neglect is clearly visible in the Khan’s initial design of the Model, since the cooperatives were conceived of as an instrument for maintaining public infrastructure, and were dependent on the delivery of government extension services and credit for their success. Cooperatives however, have fallen prey to elite capture in many oral communities
Orality
Orality is thought and verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy are unfamiliar to most of the population. The study of orality is closely allied to the study of oral tradition...
, and in less densely populated nations than Bangladesh, it still proves challenging to deliver microfinance to them.
See also
- Akhtar Hameed KhanAkhtar Hameed KhanAkhtar Hameed Khan was a Pakistani development activist and social scientist credited for pioneering microcredit and microfinance initiatives, farmers' cooperatives, and rural training programmes in the developing world. He promoted participatory rural development in Pakistan and other developing...
- BRAC (NGO)BRAC (NGO)BRAC, based in Bangladesh, is the world's largest non-governmental development organization. Established by Sir Fazle Hasan Abed in 1972 soon after the independence of Bangladesh, BRAC is present in all 64 districts of Bangladesh, with over 7 million microfinance group members, 37,500 non-formal...
- Grameen BankGrameen BankThe Grameen Bank is a microfinance organization and community development bank started in Bangladesh that makes small loans to the impoverished without requiring collateral...
- Orangi Pilot ProjectOrangi Pilot ProjectThe Orangi Pilot Project refers to a socially innovative project carried out in 1980s in the squatter areas of Orangi Town, Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. It was initiated by Akhtar Hameed Khan, and involved the local residents solving their own sanitation problems...
- Solidarity lendingSolidarity lendingSolidarity lending is a lending practice where small groups borrow collectively and group members encourage one another to repay. It is an important building block of microfinance.-How it Works:...
- OralityOralityOrality is thought and verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy are unfamiliar to most of the population. The study of orality is closely allied to the study of oral tradition...