Rahul plans ‘learning’ trip to Bangladesh

Congress MP Rahul Gandhi will pay a five-day “private” visit to Bangladesh from August 1 to see rural development projects and poverty alleviation programmes run by two prominent non-governmental organisations — Bangladesh Rural Advancement Centre (BRAC) and Grameen Bank.

The AICC general secretary had met Nobel Laureate and Grameen Bank founder Mohammed Yunus in January last year in New Delhi. The Nobel laureate had then held discussions with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and had also invited them to Bangladesh to show them how micro-credit institutions function in his country. Rahul was said to have accepted the invite then.

Both Sonia and Rahul had evinced keen interest in micro-credit institutions run by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.

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The Nehru-Gandhi family has been involved in various micro-credit programmes in their Lok Sabha constituencies of Amethi and Rae Bareli — one of them being the Mahila Yojana Rae Bareli Amethi (MYRA). Priyanka Vadhera has also been promoting Self-Help Groups for women in Amethi.

Sources said Rahul was keen to get a first-hand account of the initiatives launched by Mohammad Yunus in his country so as to replicate them in Amethi and other parts of the country.