論文
停滞産業と成長産業をつなぐバングラデシュNGOの試み
―貧困層の経済機会としての養蚕業―
2006 年 15 巻 2 号 p. 101-118
詳細
2006 年 15 巻 2 号 p. 101-118
When the poor in rural South Asia attempt to improve their livelihoods by participation in a viable economic activity, they face many difficulties. One of them is how to coexist with equivalent activities of richer people, including local elites. Local elites are “the people who make or shape the main political and economic decisions” and “whose income and status derive (in part) from their control of large landholdings” (Hossain and Moore 2002). Through an analysis of a sericulture programme implemented by a local NGO and other players in the Bangladesh sericulture and silk sector, this paper explores how the poor can capture an economic opportunity in such an agrarian society controlled by local elites.
In Bengal, the sericulture and silk industry has a long history which started before the arrival of the British. However, in recent years, sericulture has become a declining industry in Bangladesh due to corruption within the Bangladesh Sericulture Board and unfavourable competitions with imported silk yarn. In contrast, the weaving and garment sub-sectors have comprised a growing industry, taking advantage of cheaper and better-quality imported yarn.
Supported by the World Bank's Silk Development Project, an NGO, the Institute of Integrated Rural Development (IIRD), has attempted to generate employment for the landless poor in sericulture by linking their sericulture activities with the growing domestic market of silk yarn and its final products. Local elites in the IIRD programme area regarded sericulture as a declining industry from which they could not gain profits. The experience of the IIRD sericulture programme suggests that a declining industry can generate an economic opportunity for the poor without any competitions with the local rich. The critical issue is not to make the economic opportunity sustainable, but to allow the participants to improve their livelihoods as much as possible until the declining industry dies out or is reconstructed as another prospective industry for the rich.
