Taslima Begum's achievement can fairly be termed as a textbook success.
Her husband suffered a fatal brain stroke and left the world in 2021 at the age of only 55. But the stewardship of her maiden cattle rearing farm continues as smoothly as ever thanks to her ability and Islami Bank's financial support.
In the year 2000 she became a member of Islami Bank's microfinance program RDS under Narayanganj Branch.
The same year she availed first investment of Tk. 10 thousand to buy a cow. This was the beginning of her "empire," and the end of her miserable poverty.
Today her cattle farm proudly owns 35 robust cows, 12 calves, 40 goats, 20 rams, 2 horses, a den of local chicken and a pond full of cultured fishes. But until 2016-2017 she had 80 cows of various species including Australian Friesian and cross-bred varieties, says a press release.
She has been able to buy a land which had cost her one lac Taka and now values more than one crore. Her well-built house, shops at Sabdi Bazar, two cow sheds and two horse-driven carts speak of her affluence. From the launch terminal to entire Bandar Thana, each CNG or battery powered three-wheeler knows the farm by name.
Taslima and her husband Sagir Ahmed named the farm after their only son as 'Irfan Dairy.' An average daily collection of 200 liters of fresh milk has made it widely known in and around Shabdi Bazar under Bandar Thana in Narayanganj District.
But the scenario was completely opposite before she took the RDS investment which has grown through an annually enhanced investment slab or ceiling which now runs at Tk.2 lakh.
But the rolling of investment over the last 22 years has helped build this home-based cattle farming business, providing them with all the above mentioned achievements.
She also bred some rare species of Dumba and another species of Garols. She collects huge cash before the Eid-ul-Azha occasion when her raised oxen fetch a good price. She calls them by name after the persons or places they are bought from.
She adequately pays the veterinary doctors for regular visits. The cow feeds have become dearer these days and to get more milk and keep them healthy she has to spend lavishly for providing them wheat and rice husks, oil cakes, fresh nutritious Napier grass, corn plants, other outcrops and vegetable wastes collected from the market.
Her success is not only measured by wealth and business turnover. She has properly raised her two daughters, both of whom are gracefully married off, and the only son Irfan is now studying at college. The second daughter has been married off to an engineer and now lives in their own home in Gulshan, Dhaka.
As many as 15 workers, mostly neighborly women, have been employed in her business. If Islami Bank RDS investment ceiling increases, she dreams of enlarging the farm to at least a 100-cow farm.
Like Taslima, RDS microfinance by Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited has been transforming million of rural poor to successful entrepreneurs since its establishment in 1995. The Bank is a global pioneer and world's largest operator of Islamic microfinance currently enrolling 17 lac members across 31 thousand villages in Bangladesh.
