For example, we wasted two hours on Decision Number 37, arguing back and forth about whether to give flashlights to bank workers so they could walk between villages at night. One managing director felt that village life in Bangladesh ought not to be “ruined” by the importation of flashlights. He wanted our bank workers to use old-fashioned lanterns and kerosene lamps. Like the social anthropologists who continually accuse Grameen of fundamentally altering rural society in Bangladesh, this banker was not willing to allow the introduction of anything that sounded nontraditional. With wealth
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