[Lapg] The world champ of poverty fighters Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank

Thu Jul 7 20:00:34 PDT 2005

The world champ of poverty fighters     

http://www.odemagazine.com/article.php?aID=4126 

Marco Visscher  
This article appeared in Ode issue: 25  

For more information: Muhammad Yunus: Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and 
the Battle Against World Poverty (PublicAffairs, ISBN 1891620118), 
www.grameen-info.org.

Poverty can be solved, declares Muhammad Yunus. But as long as politicians 
and starry-eyed idealists are blinded by good intentions, poor people will 
remain poor. Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, which pioneered the idea 
of microcredit, knows how poverty can be effectively tackled. Marco 
Visscher looked him up in Bangladesh and they sat down for a long talk.

This spring, poverty was suddenly way up on the political agenda again. 
European leaders were elbowing each other aside to present their plans to 
combat poverty. France’s Jacques Chirac called for cancelling developing 
countries’ debt. Britain’s Tony Blair set up the African Commission, which 
proposed eliminating trade barriers and combating corruption. The United 
Nations presented a report, written by American economist Jeffrey Sachs, 
which optimistically envisioned that more development aid would create a 
world without poverty.

If there’s one spot where this flow of news reports should be welcomed with 
open arms, it’s poverty-stricken Bangladesh. But the man in this country 
who has done the most to liberate people from the grip of poverty, can only 
shake his head. In his simple office-in the capital city of Dhaka on a busy 
street where traffic inches along and rickshaw drivers stand along the side 
of the street waiting for customers-Muhammad Yunus is not impressed. The 
intentions are good, he believes, but out of touch with the reality of poor 
people’s everyday lives.

"It’s the usual approach: charity," Yunus begins. "But charity is not the 
way to help people in need; it is not a healthy basis for a relationship 
between people. If you want to solve poverty, you have to put people in a 
position to build their own life. Unfortunately, this is not how the aid 
industry works. Western governments and development organizations think 
they need to offer permanent charity. As a result, they keep entire 
economies in poverty and families in an inhuman situation."

Well that’s something! Over the past 30 plus years, Bangladesh has received 
more than 23 billion euros ($30 billion U.S.) in aid and loans-and now an 
ungrateful Bangladeshi banker is criticizing the West for its generosity?

But beware. It’s unfair to judge Muhammad Yunus as a man spreading 
rebellious ideas about development aid. Yunus is the undisputed leader of a 
radical new counteroffensive in the battle against poverty. As founder of 
the Grameen Bank, he is the creator of a concept that now represents an 
emerging force in the financial world: microcredit, small loans for poor 
people (see box). Grameen has become a model for banks in nearly 100 
countries, both in the West and the developing world.

A former economics professor, who holds honorary doctorates from 22 
universities in 11 countries, Yunus has seen for himself what works and 
what doesn’t work in Bangladesh, just about the poorest country in the 
world. He has witnessed how billions of dollars in foreign aid have created 
colossal projects (dams, bridges, huge industrial plants) but not created a 
situation in which the local population had to organize itself to solve its 
own problems. And that, according to Yunus, holds the key to a world 
without poverty. He outlined these ideas quite boldly and eloquently during 
our interview, quoted below:

"Poor people are not the authors of their poverty. Poverty is a creation of 
a complex system of conceptions, rules and attitudes we have thought up 
ourselves. Therefore, if you want to eradicate poverty you have to go back 
to the drawing board, discover where we have planted the seeds of poverty 
and make changes there."

"This is how I figured out that our financial institutions have 
incorporated an enormously high threshold-collateral-which means that poor 
people, who so desperately need credit to escape their poverty, never set 
foot in a bank. They’d be laughed at. We believe that poor people will 
never repay their loans. We consider it normal that banks-like other 
companies-must turn a profit and that they exclude some 70, 80 percent of 
the world population. Those assumptions are not up for discussion; this is 
simply the way it is. In reality, no one has ever tested those ideas. After 
all, what bank lends money to poor people?"

"The approach to poverty is thwarted by our fixed convictions. Poor people 
are helpless, unhealthy, illiterate and thus stupid, they have nothing, 
they know nothing, we must take care of them, we must give them food
 It is 
completely wrong to think like this. I am convinced that poor people are 
just as human as anyone else. They have just as much potential as anyone. 
They are simply shoved into a box marked POOR! And it’s written in giant 
letters so that everyone simply treats them the way poor people are 
treated, because we think this is the way we should treat them. This means 
it isn’t easy to get out of the box."

"This applies to individuals just as it does to countries. Governments in 
developing countries receive money from wealthy governments that are kind 
enough to contribute a portion of their national income to what is referred 
to as "development aid." This required charity towards poorer countries has 
become a credential that is not questioned nearly enough. Even our 
religions tell us to give money and food to the poor; they don’t say we 
should create certain conditions and rights so the people can help 
themselves. But this type of development aid is very damaging: the position 
of the government is strengthened, the money doesn’t get to the people who 
need it."

"I’m not just referring to poor countries. I’m also talking about the 
wealthy, western countries where you have designed a great big box called 
"social welfare." You say: oh, he is ill, he is handicapped, he can’t take 
care of himself, it is society’s responsibility to keep him alive. I think 
that’s completely wrong. That way of thinking creates a divide between 
those who work and can take care of themselves and those who cannot."

"And what happens? If you’re one of the unlucky few, you’ll get a benefit 
payment every month. The message is clear: you can’t do anything, the 
government has to take care of you. So you become dependent. You get used 
to having society give you money. You get it, you don’t have to do anything 
for it, you don’t have to justify it. That is deadly to your initiative and 
you start waiting for more aid. That’s when they’ve broken your creativity. 
They’ve taken away a fundamental human element."

"This social welfare system creates a human zoo. The animals in the zoo are 
given their meals on time and a doctor comes by when they’re sick, but they 
are living in captivity. They still have a vague instinct that tells them 
they should hunt, but they aren’t challenged to go hungry for days on end 
and hunt prey. The animals aren’t as sharp and inventive as they would be 
in nature. What about them is actually still animalistic? They have become 
a poor imitation of themselves. By the same token, people who are swallowed 
up in the western social welfare system are also no longer themselves. They 
aren’t stimulated to discover their possibilities, talents and creativity. 
They are robbed of every challenge. They are curbed in their development."

"Poor people don’t need to think of themselves as poor and sit and wait for 
charity that won’t ultimately save them. We can dispel poverty. And we were 
making good progress. The United Nations had established the Millennium 
Development Goals: poverty was to be cut in half by 2015 and completely 
eradicated by 2050. Never before had mankind set such a courageous goal for 
itself. We had a joint goal we were excited about, with which we ushered in 
a new millennium."

"And then came "9/11." That day plunged the entire world into confusion. It 
gave the U.S. president an excuse to send the world in a different 
direction, which created a global divide. Now everyone has become 
distrustful, anyone could be a terrorist. It will take a long time to get 
the world back on the track of optimism and on the track of a battle that I 
consider more important than that of exacting democracy in all corners of 
the world: the battle to grant very ordinary rights to people who are shut 
out and, as a result, live in inhuman poverty."

"And yet I still think we can cut poverty in half within 10 years and can 
eradicate it within a human lifetime. And I’m not just saying that because 
it sounds positive. I really mean it. Every country, every city, every 
village can halve the number of poor people. Come on, 10 years is a long
time!"

"To solve the problem of poverty, you have to start thinking differently. 
You have to treat poor people the way you want to be treated. You have to 
offer them the same facilities you have access to. Indeed, like everyone 
else they should be able to go to the bank for a loan because with a loan 
you can create your own work, you can support yourself and generate income. 
Credit is one of the barriers we must eliminate so that the poor can 
clamber out of poverty. But it is not enough."

"For example, they must also have access to information technology because 
knowledge is power-and they haven’t had power. For centuries, the supply of 
news has been dominated by journalists: an elite, in fact, that decided 
which information was appropriate to pass on and which was not. You always 
had to rely on journalists to find out what had happened in the country and 
the world. But thanks to the internet, a whole range of news sources has 
emerged that I can look to for information-from independent organizations 
to private weblogs around the world. I can weigh opinions against one 
another, I can form my own opinion based on various sources. That’s a 
tremendous liberation because it ultimately means you can’t cheat poor 
people any longer
 Or at least you have to make more of an effort to cheat 
them."

"Thanks to the mobile telephone, farmers in Bangladesh can negotiate 
directly with their customers about the price (see the story on 
GrameenPhone in Ode, April 2005, ed.). Via internet, farmers find out the 
actual market value of their goods, enabling them to strengthen their 
negotiating position. This means that poor farmers are no longer limited to 
the village economy. They are no longer forced to rely on the clever 
middleman who kept the farmers in ignorance and took off with their money. 
They are now plugged in to the rest of the world."

"It is a good development that farmers are involved in the world economy, 
but it is not a panacea. Our textbooks have greatly simplified the world 
economy: it’s an open market, it’s a free world. But just try and launch a 
medicine on the Japanese market; they’ll tell you all about the rules. In 
the real world, the market is only open to other parties insofar as it has 
been made accessible by those who write the laws and the supervisory 
authorities."

"But take the corner grocer on your street where you’ve been shopping for 
years. A big supermarket is being built nearby that is much cheaper and 
offers freebies. Before you know it, you’re standing in that supermarket 
with your cart and that nice grocer has lost all his customers. Where are 
the regulations protecting the grocer? Where are the regulations governing 
the supermarket? Aha! So it’s only a free market when you’re big and have a 
lot of money."

"The economics textbooks are ripe for revision. Then we can also rectify 
the misconception that a company is not always just a way to make money and 
a businessperson is not always someone who wants to maximize profits. 
Companies can also have another goal: to serve a societal purpose. The 
Grameen Bank is one such example, there are more and we need many more. We 
need companies whose first priority is striving towards a good aim. We need 
businesspeople who are not driven by money but by their desire to 
contribute to society."

"They’re out there you say? Of course, you mean those with a sense of 
corporate social responsibility. But tell me, how can you focus on 
corporate social responsibility if your primary aim is to turn a profit? 
The two don’t mix. I can understand that a businessperson would want to 
make a donation to the tsunami victims. You give some money to a fund that 
helps sick children and you hang nice, framed documents in your office so 
that everyone can see the good things you do. But let me ask this question: 
why isn’t your company as a whole aimed at furthering a good cause?"

"Mind you, I’m not talking about charitable institutions, social or 
non-governmental organisations-they cannot, for instance, go to the bank 
for a loan and are dependent on subsidies and donations. I’m talking about 
a new sector: companies that don’t want to make a loss, so they can 
continue to do business that contributes to the community as a whole. There 
aren’t many like that because the private sector has been wrongly labelled 
as a group of merciless profit-makers."

"So if you wanted to do something good for the world, you didn’t think of 
starting a company; after all, you weren’t interested in money. You signed 
up to work at a social service institution or became a researcher so you 
could develop medicines to cure people’s ills-and which, by the way, would 
lavishly line the pockets of others. But there is another, more 
challenging, way: via the business community. Because I believe there is no 
better way to combine your desire for a better world with effectiveness 
than through a company."

Effectiveness. That’s the key word coming from Muhammad Yunus. 
Effectiveness is an idea remarkably absent from many discussions about 
combating global poverty. All too often, efforts to bring prosperity to 
developing countries stall in good intentions, bureaucracy, pricey 
consultants and results that make too little difference in the actual lives 
of poor people. Muhammad Yunus refuses to accept this as the best we can 
do. Yunus has demonstrated that combating poverty starts with action. And 
that these actions can sometimes even make a profit.

"Sometimes I dream of an international stock exchange where ‘social 
companies’ are listed," Yunus continues. "If you want to help poor women in 
Latin America, you can invest in a Bolivian internet company that sells 
clothing made by local women. If you have more affinity with new 
technology, you can invest in a Vietnamese company that brings computers 
with speech technology to villages. Universities should set up business 
schools for young social entrepreneurs who don’t learn how to make as much 
money as possible but the best way to realize a social goal. And there 
should be a Wall Street Journal that reports on this new group of 
companies. A whole new counterbalance should be created that will greatly 
enrich society."

For more information: Muhammad Yunus: Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and 
the Battle Against World Poverty (PublicAffairs, ISBN 1891620118), 
www.grameen-info.org.

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