By IPS Correspondents
DHAKA, Jan 23 2005 (IPS)

Old man Maneendra Paal talks with his head bent and hands busy casting bases for bird-patterned earthen vases, one of the popular items produced at this small-scale pottery industry in the Bijoypur village in Comilla, a district in eastern Bangladesh.

All 40 employees here co-own this venture called Pottery Centre.

”Our products go abroad, many people visit us and we make handsome profits each year,” says a proud Maneendra.

But the greatest boon, says Maneendra, is his job here that brings him monthly 3,700 taka (63 U.S. dollars). In a country where about half of the 140 million people live in poverty, not many can make this much a month. Maneendra has been working here for 35 years.

It’s voices like Maneendra’s that will be brought forth at the World Social Forum (WSF), which will be held in Porto Alegre, Brazil from Jan. 26 to 31. One of the aims of the WSF is to give a voice to the world’s poor and excluded sectors, and hear of their success stories.

The WSF is an annual gathering of civil society representatives, held as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum, which brings together the world’s political and business elite in the Swiss resort town of Davos every year.

It all began in the early-1960s, when, inspired by leftist ideology, a group of local youth formed a club called Progoti Sangha, meaning ‘unity for progress’.

Around that time Akhtar Hameed Khan, a legend in the subcontinent’s field of participatory development, was heading the government’s academy for rural development situated close by. Khan’s way of cooperative movement lives on as a time-tested model for poverty alleviation and self-reliant development.

”I had just finished secondary school when we formed Progoti Sangha,” Tarani Kumar Paal, a retired primary schoolteacher, reminisces. ”Mr Khan used to walk through our villages, learning about the people and their problems. It was he who inspired us to form a cooperative of potters with a vision to creating newer markets with improved products.”

A member these days deposits weekly 10 taka as savings, which can be withdrawn anytime but generates no interest. Entering with 10 shares, each member has to buy yearly at least four shares, 50 taka each.

”In the beginning, the weekly savings was half a taka, while a share was of 10 taka,” says Gobindachandra Paal, the accountant who has been a member since the early 1970s.

Over the years, the association has accumulated a running capital that is now close to three million taka. In 2004, shares of the members were worth over four million taka. These days, it pays yearly dividends at the rate of 25 percent.

The Pottery Centre now yields yearly transactions worth about three million taka (51,000 dollars). The association now owns assets including land worth about 10 million taka (170,270 dollars).

While the majority of the potters struggle to survive in a market flooded with durable cooking pots of aluminium and steel that often come from other countries, the Centre with its decorative pots, vases and showpieces cannot cope with the demand for its products. Often, work has to be contracted out.

A united front and standardised quality help exert some control over the market. The Centre takes its products to different crafts fairs across the country and this helps promotion, even exposure to foreign buyers.

Before the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, exports to the U.S. were very good, says Gobinda Paal. ”We still have good markets in a few other countries, while the domestic market goes steady.”

”Without this business, the association could not have survived. The association leans on the centre,” says Tarani. The opposite is true too, he adds. The association attracted resources for assistance such as improved wheels, furnaces and, know-how necessary for developing new products.

At the onset, Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corp (BSCIC), the government’s agency to promote these sectors, provided training packages and technical assistance. BSCIC eventually gave one of the two gas-fuelled furnaces, which enabled the centre to glaze pottery.

Working in a team has been crucial, says Gobinda. ”The ideas of an individual are essentially limited and could never achieve this standard. But we could pool the skills, knowledge and innovativeness of many over a long span of time.”

”Besides, an individual could never invest this big,” Haradhan Paal, the production manager, points out.

Gobinda is confident that they now have a rich reserve of patterns and models to suit varying market demands: ”We got more than 3,000 designs, which can give commonplace items such as a flowerpot an entirely new look.”

”Even if an individual does very well, that doesn’t benefit the community,” Tarani adds. ”What is done here serves the collective interest.”

The association is registered with the government’s cooperative directorate. Shaktiranjan Debroy, the officer in charge of this area, said: ”We regard it as the best of some 350 cooperatives in the locality. It has not taken any loan from any institution in all these years. And there has never been any allegation of corruption against the management committees elected every three years.”

”The members meet weekly, accounts are submitted and sanctioned and thus transparency is maintained,” said, Gobinda the accountant.

”Every year we take on only 20 new members,” Gobinda relates. ”We have seen how a few other local cooperatives got into trouble with more members than they could handle. You got to be careful. One wrong person in, and you risk the survival of the venture.”

The association has 33 women as members, but the Centre took in women workers only recently. Four of 10 women who had been trained have joined work and the management sees a bright prospect for women here ”as they are very meticulous”.

In January 2004, the association started a potters’ training academy. ”Potters from other areas learn about our work and we learn about theirs,” and it helps publicity, says Haradhan, the production manager.

Meantime, in one of its tin-sheds, Deelipchandra Paal is busy learning the tricks of making fancy flower pots. ”We own this workshop,” Deelip says.

(*These stories are part of a special series commissioned from the IPS network by the TerraViva World Social Forum 2005 edition.)

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