Caught between two states and served by neither, exclave residents have spent nearly seven decades beyond the reach of basic financial services, being denied the opportunity even to open a simple bank account.
Almost entirely dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods, exclave residents have nevertheless never been able to get farm loans from either Bangladeshi or Indian financial institutions.
“We have zero access to banks and financial institutions. Even NGOs cannot help us because they require proof of national identity to serve their clients,” said Abdul Hamid, a resident of Kothajini, an Indian exclave in Bangladesh’s Panchagarh district.
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He said exclave dwellers had effectively been barred from credit for the last 68 years.
“As a result, nobody seriously considers starting a business. We have few alternatives to labouring in the fields. Many young people are out of work but because they are exclave inhabitants, they cannot raise the capital to start a business,” said Hamid, 35, who too is unemployed.
Mokbul Hossen, 36, did manage to start a poultry farm a year ago with Tk1 lakh of his own money. But he could not keep the farm running without credit support.
The cost of doing business is higher in the exclaves due to a lack of communication and power infrastructure.
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For Hossen, the risk of putting his own money up to start a business did not pay off because he had no access to credit to see his venture through lean times.
“I have no bank account. Banks do not allow us to open accounts,” Hossen said.
Although it is possible to open bank accounts using fake addresses in Bangladesh, even this is of little benefit because assets in the exclave are not given value.
“We do not have paperwork proving ownership of our land in the exclaves so we cannot use it as assets or as collateral for mortgages and loans,” said Hossen.
Tojammel Hossen, 58, a resident of the nearby Dahala Khagrabari exclave, complained that exclave residents were not even able to deposit their income in a savings account to earn a little interest.
Tojammel, who is also the vice president of the Exclave Citizen Committee, said the rules governing loan approvals effectively barred exclave residents from agricultural credit. “Even NGOs do not dare provide financial support to us because we cannot show deeds and titles to our land in the exclaves.”
Bangladeshi mobile financial service, bKash, does operate in the Indian exclaves but all of the accounts were opened using fake Bangladeshi addresses.
“I opened a bKash account using a fake address,” said Hamidar Rahman Sarkar, a resident of Kothajini. “There is no other way to open an account.”
He said many Indian exclave residents had acquired Bangladeshi national identity cards using fake addresses in order to get access to various amenities and services, including mobile banking.
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