A True Man of Peace

Excepts from:
A true man of peace By Fatima Bhutto
The News, October 15, 2006

Muhammad Yunus's Grameen Bank currently has 6.6 million clients, 97 per cent of whom are women in rural areas in some of the poorest countries in the world. On Friday Yunus and his bank were awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Those women, those dispossessed and hungry, are no longer passive agents in their own misery. They are success stories; proof to the world that economic justice is possible and further proof that the economic fascism meted down by organisations such as the IMF and the World Bank, whose conditions directly disenfranchise those whom they claim to be serving, is no longer sustainable nor welcome among the poor of the developing world.

Allow me a brief comparison: Yunus, a professor of economics, made poverty elimination his business after the 1974 Bangladesh famine. His micro credit initiative was born out of his own pocket -- the Grameen Bank's unofficial first loan of $27 was given from Yunus to women in the Bangladeshi village of Jobra who were struggling to make and sell bamboo furniture. The bamboo makers not only repaid Yunus but also made a profit of five Bangladeshi Taka -- less than 50 American cents. The Grameen Bank was founded two years later and Yunus's work has been emulated through the Bank in over 20 countries around the world.

The Bank has widened its scope from using credit as the most economically viable means of combating poverty, which it gives without taking collateral of any kind, and has branched out to deal in-housing loans, financing for fisheries, giving grant money to support literacy projects and education schemes and has a decidedly South Asian tinge towards the IT industry -- Grameen Telecom is planning to bring cellular phones to 100 million rural Bangladeshis in 68,000 villages and has cyber and software technology drives planned under Grameen Cybernet Ltd and Grameen Communications.