Diarist 33

Diarist 33 in 2025:
Status: wife, mother, household manager Household size: 4 (she, husband, son and daughter: 2 grandchildren join at year end)
Occupation: mill worker, casual labour, domestic service. Education: none (husband also illiterate)
Major assets: homestead land in original village, 0.12 acres
Net income 2025: 160,690 taka (USD 1,328 PPP$ 5,022, or PPP$ 3.44 per day per person): Income in kind: lunches provided by her employer
End Sep 2025 balances at formal FSPs: Savings 0 taka, Loans 0
main worry about her family, May 2025: my eldest son's marital problems

When we met Diarist 33 she was working alongside her husband at a rice mill: he was the gang leader of the group of which she was a member busy boiling drying and preparing rice. They are both illiterate and from poor backgrounds in another District. They had 3 children at home (another 2 were married and elsewhere) and his mother lived with them (she died in 2023). The oldest of the 3 children drove a rickshaw, the other 2 were still in school. They were trying to buy a small piece of land back in her village but didn't succeed: they have a small patch of land in his ancestral village.

But the rice mill was in long-term decline and in the winter of 2015/16 laid off all its female workers. Diarist 33 started as a housemaid on a small wage but with daytime meals provided. Something over a year later her husband was sacked from the mill for overstaying his holiday. They had to move out of the accommodation they had at the mill, and he started doing casual labouring jobs. In late 2018, following the sudden death of another worker (who was one of our youngest Diarists) the mill owner took her husband back but 6 months later the mill closed down and he went back to odd jobs. In early 2019 the son married and brought his wife home, and for a few months in later 2019 they tried running a small shop. Then the mill re-opened on a new site and her husband got a job there, but he is not well physically. By 2023 he is very weak, stops working other than occasional work on a building site, and Diarist 33 sells her jewelry to pay for treatment for him.

Meanwhile, various of their 5 children, and their spouses and children, live in the household for varied periods, further complicating the pattern of income and expenditure. Most recently, most income has come from the younger son, sometimes from rickshaw driving, sometimes from construction labour, though Diarist 33 still works as a housemaid and gets around 5,000 or 6,000 a month. At that time the household consisted of 4 people - the couple, and their younger son and younger daughter. Just recently the son has been in poor health and off work for two months. Then in 2025 the elder son's wife divorces him and leaves, and our Diarists take the 2 grandchildren in.

As chart 01 shows, though they had many deficit months in which income was less than spending, there were more months when, somehow or other, they managed a surplus.

Diarist 33, chart 01, balance

Gifts

Diarist 33 received a dowry , plus gifts from the community, when her son married in early 2019, and she received festival gifts from the household where she works as a maidservant. Beside that, there were about 50 much smaller gifts , mainly from her married daughter's household.

She reciprocated with small pocket-money gifts for her grandchildren.

Diarist 33, chart 02, gifts

Loans

In the time we have been tracking her Diarist 33 has taken 8 loans from 5 MFIS - ASA, CSS, Pidim, SFDF and Shakti Foundation. The biggest was 40,000 taka and the last one very small one was taken at the end of 2023. So she was never a consistent long-term 'member' of these MFIs, but turned to them when she badly needed money, for example for the house repairs, and several times to pay down other loans. Her repayment record at these MFIs was less than perfect and at least one of them - SDSF - refused her a second loan after she finally paid off her first one. At two other MFIs, Pidim and Shakti, she herself closed her accounts, realizing that repayment stress was too hard for her.

She often borrowed informally. When we first met them they were struggling with a big interest-bearing private loan. In mid 2016 they paid 15,000 taka to pay off the principal but still owed more than 2,000 in interest. They finally cleared the debt in May 2017. They fended off problems by taking howlats (informal interest-free loans) but because they were not originally from this area they had less access to this facility than other Diarists. A few neighbours were willing to give small howlats but the bigger ones (such as 10,000 taka in May 2017) came from their own family members. The smaller howlats were often used to make MFI loan repayments.

In common with many Diarists* this household has taken fewer MFI loans since the Covid outbreak. In July 2024 she closed her last MFI account, at ASA: at the time her husband was very sick.

*See our page on that here.

Diarist 33, chart 03, loans

Savings

Diarist 33 never kept her MFI accounts open for long, so never built up really large savings with them. In all, she saved just under 40,000 with them and has zero balances now. The biggest single withdrawal was when she left MFI CSS in 2020.

There were also two savings amounts which were formed in informal clubs by her husband. One, a 'ghoreya samity' is a form of accumulating savings-and-credit club common in the area, and there he lasted for one round but came away with 7,200. The other was a ROSCA (a rotating savings-and-credit club) which is not common in our area. There he saved 10,000, again participating for just one round.

Their struggles with loan repayments is probably the main reason why they were never robust savers.

Diarist 33, chart 04, savings

Food spending pattern

To provide some sense of the food intake priorities for the four of them during calendar 2024. here is a table showing the totals for the items we recorded.

They ate fish most days, usually spending around 200. They usually bought the cheaper rice, around 60 or 70 taka a kilo, but spent a bit more occasionally on better rice for pulao. Vegetable spending was heavy on dal, potatoes, and spinach. Meat was rarely eaten. They spent very little, compared to many other Diarist households, on treats like snacks and cups of tea and tobacco. Occasionally they would buy supari (the betel nut and leaf soporific).

Diarist 33, table 01, food spending 2024

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