Muhammad Yunus

A conversation with a friend earlier today reminded me of Muhammad Yunus's autobiography which I had the chance to read a year and a half ago. In fact, I had gifted a copy of Banker to the Poor to my dad on his 53rd birthday without reading it myself. It was my dad who read the book and shared his excitement with me over a dinner table conversation which lasted till midnight. He presented, in a seasoned raconteur's style, the gist of what Yunus and his colleagues accomplished by establishing a sustainable system of microcredit in Bangladesh. I was thoroughly inspired by what my dad said and I ended up reading the book over the following week.

Today I found myself in my dad's shoes, making a loose attempt at narrating the events that led to Yunus's conception of Grameen bank. I came back to my room to look for some online chapters from the book to refresh my memory as I have forgotten most of the details. It turns out that the online website of the book displays the very chapter that affected me the most (when I first read it) for free reading. It's only a few pages long , the prose is simple and I strongly recommend that you read it. What is perhaps most striking is Yunus's underlying humility behind the things that he did, his earnestness to learn about the problem before attempting a solution and the sense of purpose that motivated him to execute his vision.

I remember a conversation I had with an American office-mate some months ago; he happens to be a registered republican. He was explaining (nothing was argumentative here because I was a mute listener) why he was economically conservative- 'people are poor by their own choice and deserve to be so. I work hard to earn my money and I don't want to part with it to help someone undeserving in the name of taxes or charity'- a simple argument with high rhetoric value more than anything else; but something that people find easy to buy and ideologize. After all, one doesn't have to read Milton Friedman to be Republican. Furthermore, this is probably what many libertarians feel too. Perhaps the reasonable right minded ones among these might change their mind or move to a less extreme ideology if they read Yunus's account of rural Bangladesh and are willing to be affected by what he saw.

People like Sufiya were poor not because they were stupid or lazy. They worked all day long, doing complex physical tasks. They were poor because the financial institutions in the country did not help them widen their economic base. No formal financial structure was available to cater to the credit needs of the poor. This credit market, by default of the formal institutions, had been taken over by the local moneylenders. It was an efficient vehicle; it created a heavy rush of one-way traffic on the road to poverty. But if I could just lend the Jobra villagers the twenty-seven dollars, they could sell their products to anyone. They would then get the highest possible return for their labor and would not be limited by the usurious practices of the traders and moneylenders.