To Be an Entrepreneur

Social Enterprise and Disruptive Development in Bangladesh

Julia Qermezi Huang

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781501749551, 9781501748271
• eBook ISBN: 9781501748738
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

In To Be an Entrepreneur, Julia Qermezi Huang focuses on Bangladesh's iAgent social-enterprise model, the set of economic processes that animate the delivery of this model, and the implications for women's empowerment. The book offers new ethnographic approaches that reincorporate relational economics into the study of social enterprise. It details the tactics, dilemmas, compromises, aspirations, and unexpected possibilities that digital social enterprise opens up for women entrepreneurs, and reveals the implications of policy models promoting women's empowerment: the failure of focusing on individual autonomy and independence.

While describing the historical and incomplete transition of Bangladesh's development models from their roots in a patronage-based moral economy to a market-based social-enterprise arrangement, Huang concludes that market-driven interventions fail to grasp the sociopolitical and cultural contexts in which poverty and gender inequality are embedded and sustained.

Part I

DISRUPTING ETHICAL MODELS

iAgent Megh’s Story

I was born in a middle-class family, but now we are poor. My name is Megh. My father was a farmer. He had a little amount of land, and he earned his livelihood by cultivating those lands. Both my parents lead a very simple life. They did not have any kind of jealousy or arrogance. My father always dreamed that they would have a son and that he would take care of the family. But I didn’t have any brothers. We were four sisters. My elder sister got married before my birth.

My mother told me that they married off my sister after selling most of the land we had. My sister’s husband was also a farmer. Their financial condition wasn’t good. My sister had three daughters. In our country, people still think that it’s a curse to have a daughter. They think this because we have to raise our daughters up and then marry them off, which is very expensive. “They’ll work at other people’s homes their whole lives.” People say so many things like this. My sister couldn’t reply to any of these comments. She had to suffer a lot for being born as a girl.

I started to grow up. I had two elder sisters at home, and they loved me a lot because I was the youngest of all of them. I heard that my eldest sister didn’t get any education. The next two got admitted to school. My father was the only earning member in the family. His little income couldn’t fulfill all of our needs. He couldn’t manage our food, education, and other needs. He worked cultivating other people’s lands, and he worked inside other people’s houses too. He didn’t have any other way.

I got admitted to primary school and went there every day. I loved going to school. I made so many friends there. I studied after coming back home. My friends studied with the help of private tutors, but I never studied with the help of someone from outside. My sisters taught me everything. My parents were not educated, so I learned everything from my sisters. Days passed by like this. Although I could not understand our poverty, my sisters could because they were older. They couldn’t buy the clothes they liked or eat the foods they loved. We couldn’t do anything about it because this is what happens to a poor middle-class family.

My father kept saying one thing again and again. “If I had a son, would there be so many problems?” The neighbors said, “Get married once again, and then you will have a son.” But my father didn’t remarry because he thought, “What will happen if I get another girl child!” Father said, “It’s all my fate.”

When I was only ten, I began to understand everything. I could hear my father saying that he would get his middle two daughters married because he couldn’t bear the cost of their study and other expenses. I heard this often. My sisters couldn’t hear what our parents said because they slept in a separate room. But I was younger so I heard everything.

My second sister’s name is Somita. One day father was telling mother, “Somita grew up. We will get her married after her secondary school exam ends.” Mother replied, “Do whatever you think is best.” Father said, “We need to sell all the rest of the lands if we want to get her married, because there are so many expenses. We need so much money including dowry and other expenses. Let’s tell everyone that I’m going to sell lands.” Then my father told everyone in the village that he would sell his lands. Meanwhile, Apa’s [elder sister’s] exams began. She did not know about any of this.

One day a man came inside our home to see Somita Apa. Apa didn’t realize that he came to see her. Then my father’s land got sold, and father accepted the marriage proposal for Apa. Maybe I didn’t understand everything then, but now I do. Maybe Apa wanted to study more, or maybe she liked someone else. But she couldn’t say anything that day.

It’s normal that there will be poverty after a girl from a middle-class family gets married. You need a lot of money for a wedding. Plus, we were four sisters. My father always said, “I’ll sell all the lands I have and get my daughters married. Then whatever is in my fate will happen.” From that time, I could understand that girls don’t have any freedom after getting married in this country. They have to do everything according to their husband’s will. Those girls are being deprived of the light of education due to facing such problems. I used to feel really bad when I thought about these things.

In 2003 I was in the eighth grade. I began to understand about people’s suffering. My other sister, Mituni Apa, would be attending the secondary-school exam that year. And father arranged her marriage. He didn’t want any of his daughters to study much because he knew he’d need a lot of money to do that. He also told my mother, “Megh is also growing up. We have to get her married too.”

Mituni Apa cried a lot during her wedding because she didn’t want to get married at that time. But she couldn’t say anything to father. I cried a lot because all my sisters were gone and I was alone.

Ninth grade finished. Now I was a student in tenth grade. I had to study a lot because it was my turn to attend the secondary-school exams this time. I was so scared in the exams because people told me that if I move during the exam, they’re going to take away my answer sheet. So I was scared all of the time. When they published our results, everyone passed, and only I failed. They all started to go to college but I didn’t.

Later, I had to retake the exam, and I passed. Then I got admitted to the humanities section at the girls’ high school. I met so many girls. Runa was my best friend. We always stayed together. I used to tell my thoughts and secrets to Runa. She used to tell me hers too. Runa told me about her dreams that she wanted to become a schoolteacher after finishing her studies. And I loved that occupation a lot. So I also said that I would become a teacher when I grow up. Runa told me, “It will be great. We will both be teachers.”

Suddenly one day we heard that our friend Chameli would get married. She invited all of us. When we were second-year students, almost all of my friends were married. I was really afraid because my father was prepared to get me married. I remembered what happened to my sisters. I saw how their dreams got broken in front of my eyes. Runa told me that she didn’t want to get married quickly. But I said, “I can’t say this to my father.”

When high-school exams were over, I got admitted to a college near my sister Somita’s home, and I lived with her. My new life started. I saw new dreams, and I started moving forward. I made a lot of friends in college. My days passed very well. They were so colorful.

Then what I feared the most became real. My father came to my sister’s place and said, “Megh, let’s go home. Your mother is sick.” I asked him, “What happened to mother?” Then father said, “You’ll see after you get home.” The next day, we went home. My parents and sisters knew everything about my wedding, but I didn’t because no one told me about it. After I came home, I saw that mother was okay and nothing had happened to her. I asked her, “What happened to you?” “Why? Nothing happened to me,” she replied. Mother said, “I don’t know what your father told you!”

I didn’t like this. Because I knew my father, I began to suspect him. I asked my sisters, “Tell me, why did father bring me home?” Then my sisters said, “It’s your wedding! Don’t raise any objection.” I just listened to them. I cried a lot because I had thought that maybe my dreams wouldn’t break like this. I thought to myself, “I didn’t even get the chance to love someone.”

My husband’s name is Ibrahim Ali. One lakh taka was given at my wedding and two lakh taka was spent, including wedding expenses. I had to move to his house. Everything was new. I’d never seen my husband before marriage. I didn’t know him.

The new environment was awkward, but everyone loved me. I started building good relationships with everyone. My mother-in-law took care of me a lot because I’m her eldest son’s wife. We became close in a really short time.

My husband was jobless. He didn’t do any work. Still, it was a new marriage and a new family. I didn’t know what was to happen. They had some land, and my brother-in-law had a business. But he saved all of his money for himself. I told my husband, “You should do something.” He said, “Yes, I will!” But he never did any work. I felt very bad sometimes.

My husband spent the one lakh taka that was given by my father for his daily expenses. I was worried about what would happen when all of it was spent. I was very tense about it but I couldn’t say anything because I was afraid that he would beat me. Ibrahim Ali just chatted with his friends sitting in the bazaar, eating snacks and drinking tea. The year 2012 passed like this.

Then in 2013, a man from ACRU asked, “Your wife passed high school, right?” Ibrahim Ali said, “Yes, she did. Why?” He learned that ACRU had a new project. He told me everything when he came home at night. He said, “Your father gave so little money, and now it is gone. Here is a chance for you to start earning now.” I said, “If you want, then of course I will do the work.” He told me, “Try it. We can have a little income from our village through this.”

A few days later, our training began. But I couldn’t stay through the whole training because I got sick there. After two months of trying to work, I became very weak because I had to do so much hard effort while working outside. I also had to do housework after going back home. My husband said I should try harder. One day, I felt dizzy and began vomiting. Day by day I was becoming weaker. I went back to my father’s house. I felt so bad that I couldn’t do those works. Then one day I heard that everyone was giving back their machines and tools. It felt a little bad. I didn’t think that the work would end before I even started it well.

I went back to my husband’s house. After going there, I heard that my friend Runa had gotten a job. She is now a teacher in a primary school. I became glad that her dreams came true. But I couldn’t communicate with her because her posting was very far, and I was sick, and family life wasn’t going very well. My husband still didn’t do anything. The year 2013 ended like this.

In 2014, one day my husband told me that he would take me to Dhaka with him. He said, “I will do a job and you will stay with me” A few days later, we both went to Dhaka. He got jobs for both of us in a company called Epyllion. My job was in the drawstring section. That company made many kinds of shoelaces, blazer laces, and other stuff like this. We worked for eight hours every day. His salary was 8,000 and mine was 6,000. But even with this money, it wasn’t possible to live in Dhaka. It was very hard to manage everything. But we were earning together. This went on until suddenly I became pregnant, and I went back to my in-laws’ house to give birth.

One day in 2016 my father suddenly passed away. He didn’t have any sickness. I felt very sad because I never thought he’d suddenly leave us like this. My mother became alone too. I had two uncles; one of them is a teacher and another is a politician. None of them helped my mother. Everyone is selfish. They think only about themselves. We, the four sisters, decided that my mother would go to my elder sister’s house.

Before, my father had sixty-six satak [0.66 acres] of land. It was all gone because he sold them to get us married. We could do nothing to help support our mother. Everyone cried a lot. Maybe this wouldn’t happen if we had a brother. But what’s done is done.

I had a dream, and it was becoming a schoolteacher. I recently attended two tests but didn’t get any job. You can’t get government jobs without bribing. And after ACRU, I don’t want to work at any NGO. But for now I must work on my family and raise my child. Now, my child is one year and five months old. This is my life’s story.

1

WOMEN’S WORK

The Arena of Disruption

While Megh was unable to work long as an iAgent, many of the challenges she experienced in life were precisely the challenges for which Technological Innovation for Empowerment hoped to solve through the iAgent model. TIE delineates the theory of change that it claims to catalyze through participation in the iAgent model in the following statement:

Challenging the status quo and creating voice was the essence behind the concept of “iAgent.” The iAgent model challenges the status quo at two levels—the individual and the social. At the individual level, the model breaks the fear and apprehension of a young village woman, who lives in a low-resource setting and has limited access to knowledge about the world beyond the village. It is a transformation for the woman herself; she rides a bicycle and challenges the status quo in a male-dominated society, where it is perceived that riding a bicycle is a man’s business. She takes a profession that embraces the latest information technology, like laptops, Internet, and smart phones. Again, she challenges the stereotype that women cannot deal with technology. Finally, because the young woman earns from the work she performs, her voice is counted both in the family and in the community.

This statement assumes that, by performing paid work outside the home and using technologies typically confined to the male domain, young women will become more equal to men in knowledge, confidence, and skills and will earn respect in their communities. These assertions suggest that acts such as riding bicycles and using computers generate specific, desirable, and predictable social effects. TIE bases its work on a model of “disruptive innovation” for development, where disruption of the status quo leads to empowerment. The objects of disruption, according to this model, are women’s mental and physical states, social and gender norms, and perceptions of women and their place in the village. Through disruption, restrictive, discriminatory views transform into appreciation, respect, and inclusion. Fear and ignorance yield to the illuminating effects of technology and money.

While this statement and other material published about the iAgent model did recognize both individual/personal and social/relational factors, they fundamentally misunderstood the content and interplay of those two aspects. The model did not consider why women might or might not want to challenge certain aspects of the status quo. It also did not account for any reactions from families and the wider society that might have resulted from women’s defiance of established patterns. Nor did the model take note of possible reasons why targeting women as earners might amplify their exploitation by men at home.

While the iAgent model and many other market-driven development programs celebrated the Silicon-Valley ethos of “disruptive innovation,” they did not acknowledge the other types of disruptions these programs caused. Turmoil at home, public shaming, and the undermined value of women’s domestic labor were common consequences not anticipated by project designs. Yet the participants, facing family poverty and the prospect of being sent away to work in the disreputable garment industry, were attracted by the rags-to-riches narratives of social enterprise. This chapter explores how these market innovation development processes both became central to and also threatened women’s efforts to position themselves as upwardly mobile and ethical persons.

We have already seen that the actual implications of iAgent activities were equivocal and that multiple forms of disruption generated opposing effects for participants. The vignette that began the introductory chapter highlighted the divergent experiences of Rahela and Taspia, iAgents in Lalpur and Amirhat. The trajectories of these two individuals represent particular patterns of outcome in the iAgent network and in the political economy of market-driven development. In their work, Rahela and Taspia gained the confidence to travel on their own through villages and to towns. They both learned to ride a bicycle and operate digital technology. And they both, at least to some extent, earned money from their efforts. Yet “empowerment”—in TIE’s definition of gaining mobility, respect, and voice through women’s work outside the home—was achieved by only one of the two entrepreneurs, and only after several years of struggle.

Rahela eventually experienced a high degree of mobility, the self-earned purchasing power to elevate her social standing, and the ability to fulfill social obligations on behalf of herself and her family. Taspia, by contrast, experienced harassment from strangers about cycling and from family members about incurring a potentially ruinous 75,000-taka (962 USD) debt for her household. Although she could fulfill some social obligations, such as purchasing Eid gifts, she did not possess the ability to support her family in a substantial way or to change her life circumstances. Her family now faced the risk of losing everything—not only her unpaid-for laptop and bicycle but also the family’s house, land, and social standing. The iAgent process enabled the performance of successful ethical personhood for one group of young women but not for the other. Both sets of women experienced “disruption” in their everyday lives and the ways other people related to them, but not in a predictable, uniformly positive way. The iAgent could be seen as either a new kind of female community leader or a new kind of stigmatized female hawker. These divergent experiences and valuations of iAgent work indicate that outside labor, technology entrepreneurship, and disruptive innovation in themselves do not lead to empowering outcomes.

The Silicon Valley–inspired model of disruption has infused the discourse and practice of many social enterprises. This model of change undergirded the iAgent program’s raison d’etre and the narrative of women’s empowerment, and it formed the basis of the social enterprise’s claims of being an ethical organization that provided social benefit. A primary device for accomplishing this result ...

Table of contents

• List of Figures and Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Note on Style
• Prologue: Digital First Responders
• Introduction: Disruptive Development in Bangladesh
• Part I DISRUPTING ETHICAL MODELS
• Part II UNSETTLING ENTREPRENEURSHIP
• Part III RECONFIGURING CLASS RELATIONS
• Conclusion: The Time of Social Enterprise
• List of Key People
• Glossary of Non-English Words
• Notes
• References
• Index