Akhtar Hameed Khan Comilla Cooperative Pilot Project what was the goal of the comilla cooperative pilot project? The Comilla Model (1959) was Khan's initiative in response to the failure of a Village Agricultural and Industrial Development (V-AID) programme what were V-AID's failures? V-AID remained a government-level attempt to promote citizen participation in the sphere of rural development. how was the comilla model different? developed a methodology of implementation in the areas of agricultural and rural development on the principle of grassroots-level participation. what were the major aims of the citizens that participated? Initially, the aim was to provide a development model of programmes and institutions that could be replicated across the country. but was the ultimate goal to improve economic conditions for farmers? Advisory support in this respect was provided by experts from Harvard and Michigan State Universities, the Ford Foundation, and USAID. did the comilla project succeed? Comilla Model simultaneously addressed the problems that were caused by the inadequacy of both local infrastructure and institutions through a range of integrated programmes. do you have any examples of what these problems were? The initiatives included the establishment of: a training and development centre; a road-drainage embankment works programme;
were other projects inspired by the success of the comilla project?
Besides the training and development centre, were other projects inspired by the success of the comilla project?
The Comilla Model (1959) was Khan's initiative in response to the failure of a Village Agricultural and Industrial Development (V-AID) programme that was launched in 1953 in East and West Pakistan with technical assistance from the US government. V-AID remained a government-level attempt to promote citizen participation in the sphere of rural development. Khan launched the project in 1959 on his return from Michigan, and developed a methodology of implementation in the areas of agricultural and rural development on the principle of grassroots-level participation. Initially, the aim was to provide a development model of programmes and institutions that could be replicated across the country. Advisory support in this respect was provided by experts from Harvard and Michigan State Universities, the Ford Foundation, and USAID. Practical help was also sought from Japan to improve the local farming techniques.  Comilla Model simultaneously addressed the problems that were caused by the inadequacy of both local infrastructure and institutions through a range of integrated programmes. The initiatives included the establishment of: a training and development centre; a road-drainage embankment works programme; a decentralized, small scale irrigation programme; and, a two-tiered cooperative system with primary cooperatives operating in the villages, and federations operating at sub-district level.  After Khan's departure from Comilla, the cooperative's model failed in independent Bangladesh because only a few occupational groups managed to achieve the desired success. By 1979, only 61 of the 400 cooperatives were functioning. The model actually fell prey to the ineffective internal and external controls, stagnation, and diversion of funds. This prompted the subsequent scholars and practitioners in microfinance, such as Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank and Fazle Hasan Abed of BRAC, to abandon the cooperative approach in favour of more centralised control and service delivery structures. The new strategy targeted the poorest villagers, while excluding the 'less poor'. However, Khan's leadership skills during the course of his association with the project remained a source of inspiration for these leaders, as well as other participatory development initiatives in the country. CANNOTANSWER
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Akhter Hameed Khan (, pronounced ; 15 July 1914 – 9 October 1999) was a Pakistani development practitioner and social scientist. He promoted participatory rural development in Pakistan and other developing countries, and widely advocated community participation in development. His particular contribution was the establishment of a comprehensive project for rural development, the Comilla Model (1959). It earned him the Ramon Magsaysay Award from the Philippines and an honorary Doctorate of law from Michigan State University.

In the 1980s he started a bottom-up community development initiative of Orangi Pilot Project, based in the outskirts of Karachi, which became a model of participatory development initiatives. He also directed many programmes, from microcredit to self-finance and from housing provision to family planning, for rural communities and urban slums. It earned him international recognition and high honours in Pakistan. Khan was fluent in at least seven languages and dialects. Apart from many scholarly books and articles, he also published a collection of poems and travelogues in Urdu.

Early life
Khan was born on 15 July 1914 in Agra. He was among the four sons and three daughters of Khansaahib Ameer Ahmed Khan and Mehmoodah Begum. His father, a police inspector, was inspired by the reformist thinking of Syed Ahmed Khan. In his early age, Khan's mother introduced him to the poetry of Maulana Hali and Muhammad Iqbal, the sermons of Abul Kalam Azad, and the Sufist philosophy of Rumi. This upbringing influenced his interest in historical as well as contemporary social, economic, and political affairs.

Khan attended Government High School at Jalam (Uttar Pradesh), and completed his education in 1930 at Agra College where he studied English literature and history. He read English literature, history, and philosophy for a Bachelor of Arts degree at Meerut College in 1932. At that point, his mother was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She died in the same year at the age of 36. Khan continued his studies and was awarded a Master of Arts in English Literature from Agra University in 1934. He worked as a lecturer at Meerut College before joining the Indian Civil Service (ICS) in 1936. As part of the ICS training, he was sent to read literature and history at Magdalene College, Cambridge, England. During the stay, he developed a friendship with Choudhary Rahmat Ali.

Khan married Hameedah Begum (the eldest daughter of Allama Mashriqi) in 1940. Together, they had three daughters (Mariam, Amina, and Rasheeda) and a son (Akbar). After Hameedah Begum's death in 1966, he married Shafiq Khan and had one daughter, Ayesha. During his ICS career, Khan worked as collector of revenue, a position that brought him into regular contact with living conditions in rural areas of East Bengal. The Bengal famine of 1943 and subsequent handling of the situation by the colonial rulers led him to resign from the Indian Civil Service in 1945. He wrote, "I realised that if I did not escape while I was young and vigorous, I will forever remain in the trap, and terminate as a bureaucratic big wig." During this period, he was influenced by the philosophy of Nietzsche and Mashriqi, and joined the Khaksar Movement. This attachment was brief. He quit the movement and turned to Sufism. According to Khan, "I had a profound personal concern; I wanted to live a life free from fear and anxiety, a calm and serene life, without turmoil and conflict. ... when I followed the advice of old Sufis and sages, and tried to curb my greed, my pride and aggression, fears, anxieties and conflict diminished."

For the next two years, Khan worked in Mamoola village near Aligarh as a labourer and locksmith, an experience that provided him with firsthand knowledge of the problems and issues of rural communities. In 1947, he took up a teaching position at the Jamia Millia, Delhi, where he worked for three years. In 1950, Khan migrated to Pakistan to teach at Islamia College, Karachi. In the same year, he was invited by the Government of Pakistan to take charge as Principal of Comilla Victoria College in East Pakistan, a position he held until 1958. During this time (1950–58) he also served as President of the East Pakistan Non-Government Teachers' Association.

Rural development initiatives
During his tenure as principal of Comilla Victoria College, Khan developed a special interest in grassroots actions. Between 1954 and 1955, he took a break to work as director of the Village Agricultural and Industrial Development (V-AID) Programme. However, he was not satisfied with the development approach adopted in the programme that was limited to the training of villagers. In 1958, he went to Michigan State University to acquire education and training in rural development. Returning in 1959, he established the Pakistan Academy for Rural Development (PARD, eventually renamed as Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development) at Comilla on 27 May 1959 and was appointed as its founding director. Khan became vice-chairman of the board of Governors of PARD in 1964, and in the same year, was awarded an honorary Doctorate of law by Michigan State University. In 1969, he established collaborative links with Arthur Lewis.

Advisory roles
Following his move to Pakistan, Khan was asked to implement the Comilla Model in rural settlements of North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Punjab, and Sindh. He declined the offer on the grounds that the proposals were predominantly motivated by political interests rather than the common well-being. However, he continued to advise the authorities on various aspects of rural development, such as participatory irrigation management. He worked as a research fellow at the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad from 1971 to 1972, and as Director of Rural Economics Research Project at Karachi University from 1972 to 1973. Khan went to Michigan State University as a visiting professor in 1973 and remained there until 1979. During this time, he carried on advising the Rural Development Academy at Bogra in northern Bangladesh, and the Pakistan Academy for Rural Development, Peshawar, on the Daudzai Integrated Rural Development Programme. In 1974, he was appointed as a World Bank consultant to survey rural development situations in Java, Indonesia. He also briefly worked as a visiting professor at Lund University, Harvard University, and the University of Oxford.

In 1980, Khan moved to Karachi and started working on the improvement of sanitary conditions in Karachi suburbs. He laid the foundations of the Orangi Pilot Project for the largest squatter community of Orangi in the city. He remained associated with this project until his death in 1999. Meanwhile, he maintained his support for rural communities around Karachi, and also helped to develop the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme. OPP became a model for participatory bottom-up development initiatives.

Major development programmes

Comilla Cooperative Pilot Project

The Comilla Model (1959) was Khan's initiative in response to the failure of a Village Agricultural and Industrial Development (V-AID) programme that was launched in 1953 in East and West Pakistan with technical assistance from the US government. V-AID remained a government-level attempt to promote citizen participation in the sphere of rural development. Khan launched the project in 1959 on his return from Michigan, and developed a methodology of implementation in the areas of agricultural and rural development on the principle of grassroots-level participation. Initially, the aim was to provide a development model of programmes and institutions that could be replicated across the country. Advisory support in this respect was provided by experts from Harvard and Michigan State Universities, the Ford Foundation, and USAID.

Comilla Model simultaneously addressed the problems that were caused by the inadequacy of both local infrastructure and institutions through a range of integrated programmes. The initiatives included the establishment of: a training and development centre; a road-drainage embankment works programme; a decentralized, small scale irrigation programme; and, a two-tiered cooperative system with primary cooperatives operating in the villages, and federations operating at sub-district level.

After Khan's departure from Comilla, the cooperative's model failed in independent Bangladesh because only a few occupational groups managed to achieve the desired success. By 1979, only 61 of the 400 cooperatives were functioning. The model actually fell prey to the ineffective internal and external controls, stagnation, and diversion of funds. This prompted the subsequent scholars and practitioners in microfinance, such as Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank and Fazle Hasan Abed of BRAC, to abandon the cooperative approach in favour of more centralised control and service delivery structures. The new strategy targeted the poorest villagers, while excluding the 'less poor'. However, Khan's leadership skills during the course of his association with the project remained a source of inspiration for these leaders, as well as other participatory development initiatives in the country.

Orangi Pilot Project

The Orangi poverty alleviation project (known as the Orangi Pilot Project, or OPP) was initiated by Khan as an NGO in 1980. Orangi is located on the northwest periphery of Karachi. At that time, it was the largest of the city's approximately 650 low-income squatter settlements (known as katchi abadi). The locality was first developed in 1963 as a government township of . The influx of migrants after the creation of Bangladesh swelled the settlement to about one million people crowded over an area of more than . The working class multi-ethnic population was predominantly composed of day labourers, skilled workers, artisans, small shopkeepers, peddlers and low-income white collar workers. The project proved an impetus to the socio-economic development of the population of the area. As the project director, Khan proved to be a dynamic and innovative leader. The project initially focused on creating a system of underground sewers, using local materials and labour, and succeeded in laying hundreds of kilometres of drainage pipes along with auxiliary facilities. Within a decade of the initiative, local residents had established schools, health clinics, women's work centres, cooperative stores and a credit organisation to finance enterprise projects. By 1993, OPP had managed to provide low-cost sewers to more than 72,000 houses. The project subsequently diversified into a number of programmes, including a people's financed and managed low-cost sanitation programme; a housing programme; a basic health and family planning programme; a programme of supervised credit for small family enterprise units; an education programme; and a rural development programme in the nearby villages.

Comparing the OPP with Comilla project, Akhter Hameed Khan once commented:

The Orangi Pilot Project was very different from the Comilla Academy. OPP was a private body, dependent for its small fixed budget on another NGO. The vast resources and support of the government, Harvard advisors, MSU, and Ford Foundation was missing. OPP possessed no authority, no sanctions. It may observe and investigate but it could only advise, not enforce.

The successful OPP model became an inspiration for other municipalities around the country. In 1999, Khan helped to create Lodhran Pilot Project (LPP) to collaborate with Lodhran municipal committee. Learning from past experiences, the project extended its scope to the whole town instead of concentrating on low-income settlements only. The municipal partnership was itself a new initiative that ensured wider civic co-operation.

The success of OPP did come at a cost for Dr Khan as his liberal views and self-help initiatives were questioned and criticised by certain interest groups. At two occasions, he was accused of blasphemy. However, all allegations against him were acquitted by the courts of law and cleared by independent religious scholars.

Death
In 1999, Khan was visiting his family in the United States when he suffered from kidney failure. He died of myocardial infarction on 9 October in Indianapolis at the age of 85. His body was flown to Karachi on 15 October, where he was buried on the grounds of the OPP office compound.

Legacy
Khan's ideology and leadership skills were a source of inspiration for his students and colleagues, and continue to serve as guiding principles even after his death. Edgar Owens, who became an admirer of Khan's ideology while working at USAID's Asia Bureau, co-authored a book with Robert Shaw as a result of observations and discussions with Khan at Comilla Academy. A later study of various rural development experiences from South Asia, edited by Uphoff and Cambell (1983) was jointly dedicated to Khan and Owens.

Soon after Khan's death, on 10 April 2000, the Government of Pakistan renamed the National Centre for Rural Development the Akhter Hameed Khan National Centre for Rural Development and Municipal Administration.

Later in 2005, the Council of Social Sciences, Pakistan, in collaboration with the National Rural Support Programme and other institutions, announced the Akhter Hameed Khan Memorial Award. The annual cash award is given on Khan's birthday to a Pakistani author for a book on issues related to rural and urban development, peace, poverty alleviation, or gender discrimination. At the occasion of the award ceremony in 2006, a documentary film about the life and times of Akhter Hameed Khan was premiered. The film includes archival footage and interviews with family members, colleagues, and contributors and beneficiaries of the Comilla and OPP projects.

The Akhter Hameed Khan Resource Centre (AHK Resource Center)was established in Islamabad, under the auspices of the Institute of Rural Management, as a repository of published and digital resources on rural development. The Akhter Hameed Khan Resource Center was initially formed in 2010 as a repository of works and writings by Khan and his mentee Shoaib Sultan Khan; after 2015 the resource center transitioned into an NGO that established an experimental site in urban development in Dhok Hassu, Rawalpindi.

Awards and honours
Khan received the following civil awards:
 Jinnah Award (Posthumous, 2004) for services to people as founder of the Orangi Pilot Project.
 Nishan-e-Imtiaz (Posthumous, 2001) for services to the community.
 Ramon Magsaysay Award (31 August 1963, Manila, Philippines) for services to rural development.
 Sitara-e-Pakistan (1961) for pioneering work in rural development.

Publications
Khan was fluent in Arabic, Bengali, English, Hindi, Pali, Persian, and Urdu. He wrote several reports and monographs, mostly relating to rural development in general or his various successful and model initiatives in particular. He also published collections of poems and travelogues in Urdu.

In English
 1956, Bengal Reminances, vol 1, 2 & 3. Comilla Academy (now the Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development), Comilla, Bangladesh.
 1965, Rural Development in East Pakistan, Speeches By Akhter Hameed Khan. Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University.
 1974, Institutions for rural development in Indonesia, Pakistan Academy for Rural Development. Karachi.
 1985, Rural development in Pakistan. Vanguard Books. Lahore.
 1994, What I learnt in Comilla and Orangi. Paper presented at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) seminar. Islamabad.
 1996, Orangi Pilot Project: Reminiscences and Reflections. The Oxford University Press: Karachi. (editions: 1996, 1999, 2005). 
 1997 The sanitation gap: Development's deadly menace . The Progress of Nations . UNICEF.
 1998, Community-Based Schools and the Orangi Project. In Hoodbhoy, P (ed.), Education and the State: Fifty Years of Pakistan, Chapter 7, Karachi: Oxford University Press. 
 2000, Twenty Weeks in America: A Diary, 3 September 1969 – 21 January 1970. Translated from Urdu by Aqila Ismail. City Press.

In Urdu
 1972, Safar-e-Amrika ki Diary (A Diary of Travels in America). The City Press: Karachi. 2nd Edition: Atlantis Publications, Karachi 2017.
 1988, Chiragh aur Kanwal (Collection of poems in Urdu). Saad Publishers. Karachi.

See also

 Civil society
 Social entrepreneurship
 Social innovation

Notes

References

 Abadi, H. (2006). Dr. Akhter Hameed Khan. Karachi: Oxford University Press.  
 BARD (1983). The Works of Akhter Hameed Khan. Volumes I–III. Comilla: Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development.
 Barmazel, S. (2005). "Orangi Pilot Project: An NGO Helping to Build Community" in O.P. Richmond and H.F. Carey (eds.) Subcontracting Peace: The Challenges of NGO Peacebuilding. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. pp. 191–98. 
 Chowdhury, A.N. (1990). Let Grassroots Speak: People's Participation Self-Help Groups and NGO's in Bangladesh. Dhaka: South Asia Books. 
 Chaudhuri, M.A. (1969). Rural Government in East Pakistan. Dhaka: Puthighar Ltd.
 Dowla, A. and Barua, D. (2006). The Poor Always Pay Back: The Grameen II Story. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press. 
 Hasan, A. (1994). "Replicating the Low-Cost Sanitation Programme Administered by the Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi, Pakistan" in I. Serageldin, M.A. Cohen, and K.C. Sivaramakrishnan (eds.) The Human Face of the Urban Environment, Proceedings of the Second Annual World Bank Conference on Environmentally Sustainable Development. (19–21 September). Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. 
 Hasan, A. (1996). "Introduction" in A.H. Khan Orangi Pilot Project – Reminiscences and Reflections. Karachi: Oxford University Press. pp. xi–xli. 
 Hasan, A. (1999). Akhter Hameed Khan and the Orangi Pilot Project. Karachi: City Press. 
 Hasan, A. (2002). "A model for government-community partnership in building sewage systems for urban areas: The experiences of the OPP-RTI". Water Science and Technology Vol. 45, No. 8, pp. 199–216.
 Khan, A.H. (1996). Orangi Pilot Project: Reminiscences and Reflections. Karachi: Oxford University Press. (editions: 1996, 1999, 2005). 
 Nigam, A. and Rasheed, S. (1998). "Financing of Fresh Water for All: A Rights Based Approach" in UNICEF Staff Working Papers. Evaluation, Policy and Planning Series, No. EPP-EVL-98-003.
 NRSP (2000). In commemoration of The Life and Times of Akhter Hameed Khan: Talks of Akhter Hameed Khan at the National Rural Support Programme. Islamabad: National Rural Support Programme (NRSP).
 Raper, A.F. (1970). Rural Development in Action: The Comprehensive Experiment at Comilla, East Pakistan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 
 Valsan, E.H. (2005). "Leadership in Public Administration for Alleviating Poverty and Development: A Conceptual Approach", in J. Jabes (ed.) The Role of Public Administration in Alleviating Poverty and Improving Governance, NAPSIPAG. Manila: Asian Development Bank. 
 Yousaf, N. (2003). Allama Mashriqi and Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan: Two Legends of Pakistan. New York: Xlibris.

External links
 Akhter Hameed Khan Memorial Award, at Council of Social Sciences (COSS) website
 AHK Resource Centre and Digital Library
 AHK Photo Gallery at Institute of Rural Management (IRM) website
 

1914 births
1999 deaths
Development specialists
Sewerage
Appropriate technology
Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge
People from Karachi
Academics from Karachi
Recipients of Nishan-e-Imtiaz
Pakistani humanitarians
Recipients of Hilal-i-Imtiaz
Cooperative organizers
Microfinance people
Muhajir people
Pakistani scientists
Pakistani economists
Pakistani scholars
Pakistani Sunni Muslims
Ramon Magsaysay Award winners
Michigan State University alumni
People from Agra
Fellows of Pakistan Academy of Sciences
20th-century economists
Comilla Victoria Government College faculty
Recipients of the Sitara-e-Pakistan
Squatter leaders
The Comilla Model was a rural development programme launched in 1959 by the Pakistan Academy for Rural Development (renamed in 1971 the Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development). The academy, which is located on the outskirts of Comilla town, was founded by Akhter Hameed Khan, the cooperative pioneer who was responsible for developing and launching the programme.

While the results of the model ultimately frustrated Khan's ambitions, it has important implications for rural community development, particularly cooperative microfinance and microcredit.

Origins and purpose 

The Comilla Model was Khan's reply to the failure of Village Agricultural and Industrial Development (V-AID) programme, launched in 1953 in East and West Pakistan with technical assistance from the US government. The V-AID was a governmental level attempt to promote citizens participation in the sphere of rural development.

Khan argued that for Comilla to develop rapidly, the farmers in its villages must be able to rapidly expand their production and sales. The main constraint they faced was inadequate local infrastructure, especially roads, drains, embankments and irrigation. However, even if the government had the resources to build this infrastructure, Khan argued, the problem would not be solved. Once constructed, infrastructure must be regularly maintained. The benefits of it must be managed effectively based on rules that users could accept and predict. Khan thought that it was essential to develop 'vigorous local institutions' capable of performing this type of local maintenance and management.

For that reason, the Comilla Model piloted a methodology for stimulating agricultural and rural development, based on the principle of grassroots cooperative participation by the people. Khan found inspiration for the cooperative development aspect of his model from German cooperative pioneer Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, whose rural credit unions had been an early example of institution-building in predominantly illiterate communities.

Implementation 

To simultaneously address problems caused by the inadequacy of both local infrastructure and local institutions, the Model integrated four distinct components in every thana (sub-district) where it was implemented:

 establishment of a training and development centre,
 a road-drainage embankment works program,
 a decentralised, small scale irrigation program, and
 a two-tiered cooperative system, with primary cooperatives operating in the villages, and federations operating at thana level.

Considerable emphasis was placed on distribution of agricultural inputs and extension services, for example by helping farmers to grow potatoes in the sandy Comilla soil, and using cold storage technology.

Another key implementation challenge, Dr. Khan wrote, was to ensure that the four programs grew stronger at the same time in a mutually supporting way.  In particular,

In the villages, the Academy introduced a number of pilot projects beginning in 1959. These pilot projects were guided by two goals: first, to provide a real-life learning situation for its trainees; and second, to devise pilot programmes and institutions which could serve as models capable of replication. In guiding and operating the projects, a set of principles and strategies were formulated as the bases for developing the pilot projects, resulting in a unique rural development approach.

Features 

The main features of the Comilla Model were:

 The promotion of development and of refining of various institutions, both public and private, and establishing a system of interrelationships between them;
 Involvement of both public and private sectors in the process of rural development;
 Development of leadership in every village, including managers, model farmers, women organisers, youth leaders, and village accountants, to manage and sustain the development efforts;
 Development of three basic infrastructures (administrative, physical and organisational);
 Priority on decentralised and coordinated rural administration in co-ordination with officials of various government departments and the representatives of public organisations.
 Integration and co-ordination of the various developing services, institutions and projects;
 Education, organisation and discipline;
 Economic planning and technology;
 Development of a stable and progressive agriculture to improve the conditions of the farmers, and provide employment to rural labour force.

Difficulties 

For various reasons the Comilla Model was unable to achieve its goal.  It had particular troubles with government relations and efforts to build strong cooperative institutions. According to Dr Khan:

Escalating loan defaults became a particularly important concern, undermining the hope that the cooperatives would become self-reliant and develop into strong institutions.  Dr. Khan reported that influential local people had secured management positions in the cooperatives.  "They are powerful and well informed. They know that the old sanctions (certificates, notices, pressure by officers) are now dead, and they can repudiate their obligations with impunity." In addition, the new government annulled loans issued by its pre-independence predecessor.

Chowdhury reports that by 1979 only 61 of the 400 cooperatives were still functioning.  He attributes this result to four factors:  fraud/lack of internal controls, stagnation, diversion of funds, and ineffective external supervision.  The central problem of fraud and weak controls "was possible not only because of individual dishonesty, but because the people were not made aware of their rights, and were not in a position to voice their rights ..."

At the same time, there were difficulties with government relations made more difficult by the departure of Khan for Pakistan.

Lessons from the Comilla experience 

Comilla Model provided an experience to be profited by later practitioners. In the early years of BRAC (NGO) and Grameen Bank in the 1970s, both Dr. Muhammad Yunus and Fazle Hasan Abed tested cooperative approaches to delivering credit to poor people.  They concluded that the cooperative strategy could not work in rural Bangladesh. Instead, both directly targeted the poorest people, while attempting to keep out those who were not poor.

Dowla & Barua recently summarised the thinking at Grameen Bank:

Later cooperative development initiatives in Bangladesh, like RD-12 and the Swanirvar (‘self-reliance’) Movement also adopted a targeting strategy.

Both Yunus and Abed also attempted to catalyse collective enterprises that were locally owned and controlled. However, problems with internal control and elite manipulation continued, and by the 1990s Grameen and BRAC, along with all the main microfinance NGOs in Bangladesh, had abandoned cooperative approaches and developed highly centralised control and service delivery structures.

Continuing debates 

The merits of poverty-targeting continue to stimulate debate in microfinance. While many microcredit institutions have adopted poverty-targeting, most cooperatives reject it.  The 1st principle in the Statement on the Co-operative Identity affirms that cooperatives are open to all persons in a community.  Poverty-targeting is seen as 'reverse discrimination' on the basis of social or economic status.

In this view, the main problem with the Comilla Model was that it neglected the 4th cooperative principle:  independence from government.  This neglect is clearly visible in the Khan's initial design of the Model, since the cooperatives were conceived of as an instrument for maintaining public infrastructure, and were dependent on the delivery of government extension services and credit for their success.  Cooperatives however, have fallen prey to elite capture in many oral communities, and in less densely populated nations than Bangladesh, it still proves challenging to deliver microfinance to them.

See also 
 Akhtar Hameed Khan
 Shoaib Sultan Khan
 Orangi Pilot Project
 Solidarity lending
 Orality

References

External links

Cumilla District
Rural development in Bangladesh
Rural development in Pakistan
Rural community development
Bangladeshi inventions
Microfinance in Asia
Microfinance in Pakistan
Pakistani inventions Army Medical College Comilla (AMCC) is a medical college in Comilla District, Bangladesh.

History 
Army Medical College Comilla was established in Comilla Cantonment by a sanction letter from the Ministry of Health. Total five Army Medical Colleges were inaugurated by the Prime Minister of Bangladesh through on 10 January in 2015 and this college started its academic journey on 11 January in 2015 with 50 students.
Army Medical College Comilla is affiliated to Bangladesh University of professionals (BUP). The aim of Army Medical College Comilla is to train specially selected candidates to be called Army Medical College Comilla cadets for five academic years according to the syllabus laid down by Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council (BMDC) for MBBS degree to be awarded by the Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP).

See also
 List of Educational Institutions in Comilla

References

Medical colleges in Bangladesh
Military education and training in Bangladesh
Educational Institutions affiliated with Bangladesh Army