Diarist 14

Diarist 14 in 2025:
Status: son, brother, uncle, household manager Household size: 9 (he, parents, brother and sister-in-law and child, sister and children)
Occupation: rickshaw/bicycle repair shop proprietor. Education: less than 2 years at school, but can read numbers
Major assets: house and homestead plot, shop stock, cows
Net income 2025: 282,345 taka (USD 2,333 PPP$ 8,823, or PPP$ 2.69 per day per person): Income in kind: food from their farm approx 110 taka per day, and paddy given by borrowers
End Sep 2025 balances at formal FSPs: Savings 188,072 taka, Loans 0
main worry about his family, May 2025: my father and my brother have TB

Diarist 14 is in his late 30s and in good health. He runs a rickshaw and bicycle repair and parts shop in a rented tin shed on a busy local road. He is unmarried and lives with his parents who farm, though they have no farmland of their own (they lease in or share-crop in land, or take land through the rehan device, as we shall see). The household size has varied a lot over the years and is now at its largest. There is a sister and her two children, and a brother (who has sometimes helped in the shop) and his wife and child. The household is cooperative - everyone helps with the farming as and when necessary. The sister recently lost a job at the local hospital. In the short video clip you can see Diarist 14 giving his daily data to our data collector Asma.

As we see in chart 01, the household has been making a surplus most months. After Covid, which damaged the shop somewhat, Diarist 14 considered giving up the shop and riding a battery-assisted rickshaw (like Diarist 02's) or getting his younger brother to ride it. It didn't work out well. Diarist 14 didn't like it, and the brother went off on adventures of his own, including marrying a girl without telling his family (he's back now, with wife and child). They sold both rickshaws and abandoned the whole idea. They put more energy into cow raising for the Eid festival (they are Muslims). In 2025 they started major repairs on their home.

Diarist 14 lists his stock purchases

Diarist 14, chart 01, primary balance

Gifts

The family doesn't get cash gifts. But they give small gifts of two sorts. They give to close family (outside the household), primarily a nephew - we recorded 21 such gifts totaling 21,000 taka - and they give to religious organisations and events - we recorded 37 such, totaling nearly 6,000 taka. These gifts have no big effect on their overall economic status.

Chart 02 shows these with the vertical scale shrunk to make them visible. They are very small compared to their income and expenditure transactions.

Diarist 14, chart 02, gifts

Loans

Loans and savings, however, play a big part in their money management. They take both MFI and local 'howlat' interest free loans. When we started they were repaying loans from MFI Valuka. Then they switched to the MFI/bank Islami where his mother took four loans, of rising but modest value, the first three used for farming and the last for buying the second rickshaw. These loans were all repaid scrupulously according to the weekly schedule. See chart 03

Diarist 14 himself borrowed howlats from friends for the rickshaws and other needs. But after that they have taken no further loans of any value.

He does however make private loans to others. In February 2023, for example, he gave a 'paddy loan', which the borrower used to grow rice. The borrower was supposed to repay in full after a year (but we haven't seen that**) and also give two large quantities of paddy at each of two harvests (that he did get). He also howlats money to friends: in September 2024 he gave a friend 55,000 to help him buy land - that also hasn't yet been recovered, but is considered safe by our Diarist - sometimes such howlat repayments do take a long time, often after the borrower has started enjoying the fruits of the investment.

** it arrived in mid-January 2026

Diarist 14, chart 03, loans

Savings

Very strikingly, we see in chart 04 that when they stopped taking loans their savings activity increased sharply. This is a trend seen among several Diarists and we have a special page about the phenomenon, which seems to date from the COVID period.

During their MFI loan-taking period (2015-end 2020) they made compulsory weekly savings at the MFIs and withdrew them from time-to-time. At the main MFI partner they were running a 'DPS' cumulative saving scheme and have continued this even after they stopped borrowing, without withdrawing any of it (this accounts for some of their large savings balances in November 2024 of 241,000 taka).

But their day-to-day savings partner has been the Cooperative where there have been multiple transactions.

However, they have also been giving loans and receiving savings themselves. Another pair of charts will attempt to make sense of it.

Diarist 14, chart 04, savings

Diarist 14, chart 05, money lent

Diarist 14, chart 05, money-guarding

Private lending and money-guarding

Lending: Diarist 14 has lent to friends and family (outside the household): the loans given in July and September in 2016 and in August 2017 as shown in chart 05 are of this sort. He gets repaid: all the repayments in chart 05 are of this sort.

But he also lends using the local rehan system. Rehan is discussed on Diarist 10's page where you can also see a video of Diarist 10 explaining his twist on it. In the case of Diarist 14, he gave large loans to local land-owning farmers: they are in chart 05 in May 2017, February 2023 and September 2024. The loans are secured against farmland, and the condition is that the farmer must give over the land to Diarist 14's use until and all the loan has been completely repaid. That's why we don't see any repayment on these loans - Diarist 14 is still enjoying the use of the land, which his father farms. Although some governments have tried to ban such devices, they can in fact be useful to both parties. For example, a borrower may take the money to get a job overseas, and find it profitable, while the lender enjoys rent-free use of land (the loans do not attract interest).

Money-guarding: Diarist 14 acted as a money guard to his sister while she was working and earning but was not a part of Diarist 14's household. That is, he looked after her savings for her. In chart 06 you can see these inflows in 2022 and 2023. Later, when she lost her job, Diarist 14 gave the money back, in February 2024. In 2024 he also gave back savings to another person who had placed the money with him much earlier. Diarist 14 proved to be a reliable money-guard. Such people are admired in their communities.

Spending
As chart 06 shows, Diarist 14's spending on his business (including rent, stock and the purchase of major assets like the two rickshaws) is twice as much as household spending.

Within household expenditure food and snacks accounts for more than half. The array of uses can be compared with a very poor household like Diarist 01's.

Diarist 14, chart 06, breakdowns of spending

on to Diarist 15

back to Diarist 13