Poverty free world within reach - Prof. Yunus

The Grameen Bank methodology is doing the opposite of what conventional banks do said, Nobel Peace Prize winner Prof. Muhammad Yunus delivering a lecture in Colombo.

He said, "I know nothing about banking but I am a banker of a different kind. If I was an expert on banking I would not have done the same things I did and in that sense I consider myself lucky. He said that the banking system not only rejects the poor but also women. It is not that they don't have bad debts in their books and are quite used to it, but rules stand in the way.

Prof. Yunus said, "I believe that we can create a poverty free world because poverty is not created by poor people.

It has been created and sustained by the economic and social system that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue."

Poverty is created because we built our theoretical framework on assumptions which underestimates human capacity, by designing concepts which are too narrow (Such as concept of business, concept of credit worthiness, concept of entrepreneurship, concept of employment) or developing institutions which remain half-done (such as financial institutions where the poor are left out).

Poverty is caused by the failure at the conceptual level, rather than any lack of capability on the part of people. I firmly believe that we can create a poverty free world if we collectively believe in it. In a poverty free world the only place you would be able to see poverty is in the poverty museums.

The future generation would be horrified to see the misery and indignity that some human beings had to go through. They would blame their forefathers for tolerating the inhuman conditions which existed for so long, for so many people.

Grameen has given me an unshakeable faith in the creativity of human beings and it has led me to believe that human beings are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty.

To me poor people are like Bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a flower pot you get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted only the soil base is inadequate. The same theory applies to poor people. There is nothing wrong in their seeds, but society never gave them a base to grow.

Therefore all it needs to be done to get the poor people out of poverty is to create an enabling environment for them. Once the poor can unleash his or her energy and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly, Prof. Yunus said.

He said that many of the problems in the world today including poverty persist because of a too narrow interpretation of capitalism. In my view capitalism is a half told story and by defining entrepreneur ship in a broader way we can change the character of capitalism radically and solve many of the unresolved social and economic problems within the scope of the free market.

Prof. Yunus said that he supports globalisation and believes that it can bring more benefits to the poor than any alternative. But it must be the right kind of globalisation.

"To me globalisation is like a hundred-lane highway, its lanes will be taken over by the giant trucks from powerful economies. Bangaladeshi rickshaws will be thrown off the highway.

To have a win-win globalisation there must be traffic rules, traffic police and a traffic authority.

The rule of the strongest takes it all must be replaced by rules that ensure that the poorest have a place and a piece of the action without being elbowed out by the strong. Globalisation must not become financial imperialism.

Prof. Yunus said that in 1974 he became involved in the poverty issue not as a policy maker or a researcher but because he could not turn away from it.

He said "in the backdrop of the terrible famine spreading across Bangladesh I found it difficult to teach elegant theories of economics in the University Classroom.

Suddenly I felt the emptiness of those theories in the face of crushing hunger and poverty and I wanted to help even one person to get through another day with a little more ease.

That brought me face to face with the poor people's struggle to find the tiniest amounts of money to support their efforts to eke out a living. This led me to create a separate bank for the poor named Grameen Bank. Today the bank gives loans to nearly 7.2 mln poor people of whom 97% are women.

SG