Yunus and the other revolution
By Antonio Padrino
a.padrino@prodigy.net
Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2006, has been, for the past 30 years, carrying out one of the most effective battles against poverty. What he started in his native Bangladesh today circles the world, not as a ghost but as a silent “flesh-and-blood” revolution.
The dedication for his book, “Creating a World Without Poverty,” says: “To whoever wishes to create a world where not a single person is poor.”
The Grameen Bank (the Peoples’ Bank), his creation, has more than 2,000 agencies and serves more than 8 million people. Approximately 96 percent of its clients are women and its loans are repaid by almost 98 percent of the borrowers. It is the highest rate of recovery of funds in any banking system.
I can’t help asking: Would Yunus have obtained the same results if Bangladesh had been an oil-producing country?
As it happens everywhere, the poor are most likely to be the losers. On one hand, the banks didn’t lend them money; on the other (a consequence of the first), they were trapped by the usurious lenders. Yunus creates microcredits with zero interest on the basis of good faith and honesty. The loans are issued to groups of five people.
It should be noted that the participation of women has been a key to his silent revolution, which has existed for three decades, the product of much discipline, solidarity, social sensitivity, organization, planning, creativity, etc.
Yunus writes: “Before the world surrenders to usury and corruption, we must seriously examine the strength of social conscience as a response.”
As a professor of economics at Chittagong University, he had to decide whether to continue teaching classes or to find a solution to the starvation that beset Bangladesh in the early 1970s. It made no sense to teach complex economic theories when he could see people dying near the classroom.
He then decided to go with his students to the poor neighborhoods to learn from them something that is not taught in the university: poverty, from the perspective of the citizens who suffer from it.
Is it possible to emerge from poverty? Is it created by the poor? Or by erroneous economic policies? Or by bureaucracy in public and/or private institutions? Have the abilities of the human being been underestimated? Can one emerge from poverty only with the aid of government and/or the private sector? Is Yunus a socialist, a capitalist, or neither?
These questions and their answers can be found in his works: “Banker to the Poor,” “Creating a World Without Poverty,” and “Building Social Business.”
In his silent revolution, Prof. Muhammad Yunus – as the poet said – continues to “make a road as he walks.”
Antonio Padrino, a Venezuelan economist, lives in Miami. He was Consul General of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Houston, Texas.
