Diarist 13

Diarist 13 in the year to September 2026:
Status: husband, father, grandfather, household manager Household size: 5 (he, wife, married daughter and her 2 children)
Occupation: tea-stall helper, (also gets remittances from son-in-law). Education: can read and write
Major assets: house and homestead plot
Net income year to September 2026: 263,600 taka (USD 2,160 PPP$ 8,210, or PPP$ 4.50 per day per person): Income in kind: none
End September 2026 balances at formal FSPs: Savings 85,144 taka, Loans 1,404 taka
main worry about his family, May 2025: the rising costs of my house repair work

Diarist 13 is a somewhat timid man now in his 60's. Both he and his wife completed primary school but that hasn't helped him get good jobs. When we started tracking his transactions in 2015 he was a labourer in a small local bakery, pounding dough and tending the ovens, for a low monthly wage against which he took weekly advances. But the bakery closed in 2017. He could find no alternative better than a casual job in a snack-and-tea stall but that job he lost because of poor attendance. Then he started at another tea-shop and that is where he still is. In recent months as inflation has bitten, his day rate has improved somewhat, and now stands at 550 taka plus a daily food allowance of 50.

There is a married daughter living with them. Her husband is in Malaysia and remitting to his wife as well as to his own parents, and that extra income has greatly improved the household's stability. This son-in-law has helped in another big way, by paying most of the costs of getting Diarist 13's son to Malaysia in 2023. As we see in chart 01, Diarist 13 paid for a passport and some migration-agency fees, but the son-in-law paid for the flight and all the costs of setting up in Malaysia. Initially, all the son's earnings went to repay the son-in-law. The son had failed his high-school graduation and had tried a few jobs, not very successfully, before he got this break. However, in April 2026, he lost his job in Malaysia and Diarist 13 was obliged to send money to him, reversing the usual flow. The job loss was connected to the USA/Iran war.

They own their home and the land it stands on but have no other assets of note. They have improved the home a few times: they installed a water pump and built a latrine, and then in 2025 embarked on a major home rebuilding after remittances from the son started coming. Their experience of rebuilding is described in greater detail in the book Taking Shelter, edited by Patrick McCallister and Daniel Rozas (Practical Action, Rugby, 2020) where they are described using the name Nikhil (see pages 46 - 49). Another two of our Diarists, Diarists 35 and 39, also feature in the book.

Diarists 13, 35 and 39 all feature in this book.

Diarist 14, chart 01, balance

Gifts

The family is Hindu, and Diarist 13 has over the years given many gifts to the temple or to religious functions, as we see in chart 02. His married daughter, even before she came to live with them again, frequently gave her parents gifts. These were later superseded by the remittances. Just once did Diarist 13 give his daughter a sizeable gift, when she became pregnant in 2024. Both parties knew that the gift wasn't needed, but that it seemed proper for the father to support his living-in daughter in this way. In late 2024 the son-in-law gifted money mainly used in home rebuilding.

Diarist 13, chart 02, gifts

Loans

Diarist 13 has used plentiful loans and has been a good re-payer. His wife is a long-time Grameen Bank client and generally takes at least one Grameen loan a year. Sometimes Grameen presses her to borrow even when they don't need the loan: loan officers have quotas to fill, and the unspoken threat of refusing a future loan plus some flattery about the repayment behaviour of the client makes it easy for them to sell unwanted loans. The January 2022 and the September 2023 loans, for example, were taken because of such loan officer pressure. The loans help satisfy their household needs - they are not 'microenterprise loans'.

They also take many interest-free informal loans, howlats - as many as 40. The two types of loan can interact: the unwanted September 2023 Grameen loan was used to pay off several howlat debts. The biggest howlats have come recently - one of 300,000 taka in April 2025, for the home rebuilding.

Other loans come, less often, and of smaller value, from the local Cooperative.

Diarist 13, chart 03, loans

Savings

They are active savers, and are among those Diarists who frequently withdraw and use their savings (as opposed to keeping them for the long term).

His main savings account is at the Cooperative, where he has made more than 2,000 transactions (deposits and withdrawals) in the time we have been tracking him. The Coop offers a daily collection service and is close to his home. He uses bigger withdrawals like he uses loans - for household purposes like the water pump motor and the passport and recently for the home rebuilding.

At Grameen Bank his wife is obliged to make regular weekly compulsory savings but she is free to withdraw them, and she usually does, often transferring the money to the Coop. They have no other savings partners: they don't use moneyguards nor do they join local savings groups.

Diarist 13, chart 04, savings

Inflation

The values in our charts in these pages are in nominal taka: they are the actual amounts reported to us by the Diarists. This has the advantage of being reliable, but the disadvantage of not reflecting inflation. But rural Bangladesh has suffered from inflation and therefore the numbers we show, such as income and savings, do not reflect how their 'real' value has declined over the years.

For example, Diarist 13's gross income as seen in chart 01 seems to have grown noticeably over the years. We have therefore produced chart 05. which shows his monthly net income (all income less business costs) in both nominal and inflation-adjusted terms.

We have added trend lines to even out the ups and downs, from which it is apparent that Diarist 13's monthly net income has indeed grown over the years, but by much less than the nominal figures suggest. From a base of around 7,000 taka a month in autumn 2015 nominal net income has climbed to over 20,000 taka by autumn 2024, but its real value has grown to around 13,000 taka (at 2025 prices).

Those pay rises he had had recently for his work at the tea stall were sorely needed.

The inflation data come from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics and Bangladesh Bank. Their reliability is debated, especially after the recent change of government. Reportedly, interference in the reporting of such numbers has been detected.

Diarist 13, chart 05, nominal and adjusted net income

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