Diarist 02

Diarist 02 in the year to June 2026:
Status: husband, father, household head. Household size: 4 (he, wife, 2 daughters).
Occupation: battery-assisted rickshaw owner/driver; musician. Education: almost none.
Major assets: very small house, homestead plot, rickshaw, drum.
Net income in year to June 2026: 218,287 taka (USD 1,804, PPP$ 6,821, or PPP$ 4.67 per day per person): Income in kind: none of note
End Oct 2025 balances at formal FSPs: Savings 25,048 taka, Loans 29,200 taka
main worry about his family, May 2025: that his two unmarried daughters will be influenced by 'bad' boys via social media on their phones

Diarist 02 lives not far from Diarist 01 in a low-income lower-caste Hindu settlement. He is a rickshaw driver, and we told his story before, in late 2021 - see the thumbnail to find out many details about his life and livelihood. This new posting updates and adds new observations to what we said then.

He has a wife and three daughters, the oldest of whom got married in the autumn of 2023. She had had learning difficulties and had dropped out of school, and her marraige was a priority for her father.

The image in the thumbnail alongside is of his original pedal-driven rickshaw, but he moved up to a battery-assisted rickshaw in 2019. This has improved his income but given him additional running costs in daily recharging and frequently replacing the battery.

His great hobby is drumming, and by playing in the village band at religious festivals he makes some additional income. His wife has worked as a labourer repairing dirt roads, has made sweet-packaging at home, and more recently has worked as a maidservant.

Low Incomes, rickshaw driver.pdf

Diarist 02, chart 01: showing ten years of income and expenditure

We start with the monthly 'primary balance' chart, showing income (in pale green) and spending (in pale blue for household expenditure and darker blue for business costs ), month by month, from May 2025 to July 2025. The black-bordered stacks show the resultant balance.

Gross income rose over the years, especially after they bought the battery-rickshaw, since when it has sometimes reached over 20,000 a month. In 2025 his gross and net incomes were the highest he has experienced. Towards the end of the year he even took his family on holiday to the seaside!

In most months spending was kept within the income for the month. But in some months the imbalance was large.

Over the past few years battery-assisted rickshaws have steadliy replaced the old pedal-powered ones in much of Bangladesh. Diarist 02 was not keen on the change, fearing unknown complications and costs. But local passengers began to prefer the faster battery-powered rickshaws. It was his wife who persuaded him to make the change, going so far as to take a loan from an MFI without her husband's prior knowledge, in order to buy a second-hand machine. She thinks of him as a bit lacking in ambition, and she has also saved money that she has hidden from him in order to manage important or sudden expenditure. By 2025 the new rickshaw was in poor shape and they replaced it in May, at a much higher cost.

He is the more cautious of the two, and the more religious. Since we got to know him he has grown yet more religious, going on pilgrimages and volunteering for odd jobs in the temple and in the funeral ghats. Like Diarist 01, Diarist 02's household income is mostly daily, and again like 01 they tend to keep spending within the limits of periodic income even at low-frequency intervals such as weekly or daily. We see that in the following pair of charts.

They own the small piece of land on which their tiny home stands - so tiny that until recently there was no room for a bathroom or latrine and they had to use a neighbour's. Their only other assets of any worth are the rickshaw and his drum.

Diarist 02, chart 2: zooming in on weekly data

Keeping spending in line with income

We saw that Diarist 01 nearly always keeps her monthly, weekly and daily spending within the limits of that month, week or day.

It is similar for Diarist 02, though less pronounced. He has a more complex set of transactions than she has.

Nevertheless, as chart 2 shows, on a weekly basis over the last year, in only 7 out of 52 weeks did spending exceed income by more than a very trivial amount.

Diarist 02, chart 3: zooming in on daily data

Gifts, loans, and savings

With a fairly large number of big expenditures which exceeded the gross income for the months in which they were made (see chart 1) we would expect to see Diarist 01 using gifts, loans or savings to dissipate these spending shocks.

Charts 3, 4 and 5 show to what extent they did that. The three charts are to the same vertical and horizontal scales, to make it easy to compare them.

Diarist 02, chart 4, gifts

Diarist 02, chart 5: the role of loans

Diarist 02, chart 6: the role of savings

Distinct but overlapping roles

Charts 4, 5 and 6 show that Diarist 02 uses gift, loans and savings withdrawals in distinct though overlapping ways.

Gifts

Chart 4 shows that gifts are strongly associated with religious and ceremonial spending. He was first motivated to become more religious by an influential local Hindu priest in early 2016. Two years later he cemented his adherence to his religious work by going on a pilgrimage. This was funded by gifts from local religious people. Then in 2019, 2021 and 2022 he arranges 'pujas' (Hindu prayer ceremonies), again funded by co-religionists from his area. In late 2023 he receives many cash and in-kind gifts from friends and neighbours to help pay for his first daughter's marriage.

Loans

Though they have always taken small interest-free loans from neighbours and friends (known as howlats) their use of of bigger loans from formal providers has changed while we have known them. In early 2016 during the time he was being 'instructed' by a Hindu priest, he borrowed from the local Cooperative to pay for a religious function that the priest thought necessary. Later that year they borrowed from the Cooperative again to pay for funeral rituals for his mother, and his wife joined a major MFI (ASA) and took a loan that Diarist 02 tells us 'what not for any particular use: I just like to feel that I have liquidity on hand if anything happens to us'. A little later his wife abruptly cancelled her account at ASA believing that they had not recorded her savings properly. Then came change. Determined to get her husband to convert to a battery-powered rickshaw his wife secretly re-opened her ASA account and in mid 2019 took a loan to finance one. After that they twice borrowed again from ASA to buy replacement rickshaw batteries. And on one other occasion they took one loan from ASA (in early 2023) simply because ASA pressed them to do so - the Loan Officer needed to increase his portfolio: this is, regrettably, common in Bangladesh. In 2025 he borrowed again for a new rickshaw, 'rolling over' an existing MFI loan. They also used savings for this.

In May 2026 he borrows through his wife again from ASA, this time to lend it on howlat terms to a neighbour who had helped him with the marriage of his daughter: he is returning an obligation and he also thinks this man may be helpful to him in the future, he says (as it happens, a possible suitor for the 2nd daughter had been identified in April).

Savings

The 02 household have been consistent savers, both at the MFI ASA and at the local Cooperative. In October 2024 they had almost 20,000 deposited at ASA and another 20,000 at the Coop: their total loan outstanding balance was 37,000. They would save regularly (small amounts daily, often) and take modest withdrawals to deal with household expenses. Later, with the coming of the battery-assisted rickshaw, they also withdrew to buy replacement batteries. After the elder daughter married they have withdrawn savings to gift money to her and her husband.

on to Diarist 03

back to Diarist 01

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