Everything about Muhammad Yunus totally explained
Muhammad Yunus (pronounced ) (born
Jun 28 1940) is a
Bangladeshi
banker and
economist. He previously was a
professor of
economics and is famous for his successful application of
microcredit - the extension of small
loans. These loans are given to
entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional
bank loans. Yunus is also the founder of
Grameen Bank. In 2006, Yunus and the bank were jointly awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize, "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below." Yunus himself has received several other national and international honors. He is the author of
Banker to the Poor and a founding board member of
Grameen Foundation. In early 2007 Yunus showed interest in launching a political party in Bangladesh named Nagorik Shakti (Citizen Power), but later discarded the plan. He is one of the founding members of
Global Elders. Yunus also serves on the board of directors of the
United Nations Foundation, a public charity created in 1998 with
entrepreneur and
philanthropist Ted Turner’s historic $1 billion gift to support
UN causes. The UN Foundation builds and implements public-private partnerships to address the world’s most pressing problems, and broadens support for the UN.
Early years
The third oldest of nine children, Yunus was born in
June 28 1940 to a
Muslim family in the village of Bathua, by the Boxirhat Road in
Hathazari,
Chittagong, then in
British India (now in Bangladesh). His father was Hazi Dula Mia Shoudagar, a jeweler, and his mother was Sofia Khatun. His early childhood years were spent in the village. In 1944, his family moved to the city of
Chittagong, and he was shifted to Lamabazar Primary School from his village school. By 1949, his mother was afflicted with psychological illness. From 1969 to 1972, Yunus was an assistant professor of economics at
Middle Tennessee State University in
Murfreesboro,
TN.
During the
Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971, Yunus founded a citizen's committee and ran the Bangladesh Information Center, with other Bangladeshis living in the
United States, to raise support for liberation. He became involved with
poverty reduction after observing the
famine of 1974, and established a rural economic program as a research project. In 1975, he developed a Nabajug (New Era) Tebhaga Khamar (three share farm) which the government adopted as the Packaged Input Programme.
Introduced by then president
Ziaur Rahman in late 1970s, the Government formed 40,392 village governments (gram sarkar) as a fourth layer of government in 2003. On 2 August 2005, in response to a petition filed by Bangladesh Legal Aids and Services Trust (BLAST) the High Court had declared Gram Sarkar illegal and unconstitutional.
Grameen Bank
In 1976, during visits to the poorest households in the village of Jobra near
Chittagong University, Yunus discovered that very small loans could make a disproportionate difference to a poor person. Jobra women who made
bamboo furniture had to take out
usurious loans for buying bamboo, to pay their profits to the moneylenders. His first loan, consisting of
USD 27.00 from his own pocket, was made to 42 women in the village, who made a net profit of
BDT 0.50 (USD 0.02) each on the loan From his experience at Jobra, Yunus, an admirer of Dr. Hameed While traditional
banks were not interested in making tiny loans at reasonable interest rates to the poor due to high repayment risks, Yunus believed that given the chance the poor will repay the borrowed money and hence
microcredit could be a viable
business model.
Yunus finally succeeded in securing a loan from the government
Janata Bank to lend it to the poor in Jobra in December 1976. The institution continued to operate by securing loans from other banks for its projects. By 1982, the bank had 28,000 members. On
October 1 1983, the pilot project began operations as a full-fledged bank and was renamed the
Grameen Bank (
Village Bank) to make loans to poor Bangladeshis. Yunus and his colleagues encountered everything from violent radical leftists to the conservative clergy who told women that they'd be denied a Muslim burial if they borrowed money from the Grameen Bank. To ensure repayment, the bank uses a system of "solidarity groups". These small informal groups apply together for loans and its members act as co-guarantors of repayment and support one another's efforts at economic self-advancement. In 1989, these diversified interests started growing into separate organizations, as the fisheries project became
Grameen Motsho (Grameen Fisheries Foundation) and the irrigation project became
Grameen Krishi (Grameen Agriculture Foundation). as well as
Grameen Telecom, which has a stake in
Grameenphone (GP), biggest private sector phone company in Bangladesh.. The
Village Phone (Polli Phone) project of GP has brought cell-phone ownership to 260,000 rural poor in over 50,000 villages since the beginning of the project in March 1997.
The success of the Grameen model of microfinancing has inspired similar efforts in a hundred countries throughout the
developing world and even in
industrialized nations, including the
United States. Many, but not all, microcredit projects also retain its emphasis on lending specifically to women. More than 94% of Grameen loans have gone to women, who suffer disproportionately from poverty and who are more likely than men to devote their earnings to their families. For his work with the Grameen Bank, Yunus was named an Global Academy Member in 2001.
Recognitions
Muhammad Yunus was awarded the 2006
Nobel Peace Prize, along with Grameen Bank, for their efforts to create economic and social development. In the prize announcement The
Norwegian Nobel Committee mentioned:
Former
U.S. president
Bill Clinton was a vocal advocate for the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Muhammed Yunus. He expressed this in
Rolling Stone magazine as well as in his autobiography
My Life. In a speech given at
University of California, Berkeley in 2002, President Clinton described Dr. Yunus as "a man who long ago should have won the Nobel Prize [and] I’ll keep saying that until they finally give it to him."
He has won a number of other awards, including the
Ramon Magsaysay Award, the
World Food Prize the
Sydney Peace Prize, and in December 2007 the Ecuadorian Peace Prize . Additionally, Dr. Yunus has been awarded 26
honorary doctorate degrees, and 15 special awards. Bangladesh government brought out a commemorative stamp to honor his Nobel Award. In January 2008,
Houston,
Texas declared January 14 as "Muhammad Yunus Day".
Political activity
In early 2006 he, along with other members of the civil society including Prof
Rehman Sobhan, Justice
Muhammad Habibur Rahman, Dr
Kamal Hossain,
Matiur Rahman,
Mahfuz Anam and
Debapriya Bhattchariya, participated in a campaign for honest and clean candidates in national elections. He considered entering politics in the later part of that year. On
February 11,
2007, Yunus wrote an open letter, published in the Bangladeshi newspaper
Daily Star, where he asked citizens for views on his plan to float a political party to establish political goodwill, proper leadership and good governance. In the letter, he called on everyone to briefly outline how he should go about the task and how they can contribute to it. Yunus finally announced the foundation of a new party tentatively called
Citizens' Power (
Nagorik Shakti) on
February 18,
2007. There was speculation that the army supported a move by Yunus into politics. On
May 3, however, Yunus declared that he'd decided to abandon his political plans following a meeting with the head of the interim government,
Fakhruddin Ahmed.
On
July 18 2007 in
Johannesburg,
South Africa,
Nelson Mandela,
Graça Machel, and
Desmond Tutu convened a group of world leaders to contribute their wisdom, independent leadership and integrity together to the world. Nelson Mandela announced the formation of this new group, The
Global Elders, in a speech he delivered on the occasion of his 89th birthday. Archbishop Tutu is to serve as the Chair of The Elders. The founding members of this group include Machel, Yunus,
Kofi Annan,
Ela Bhatt,
Gro Harlem Brundtland,
Jimmy Carter,
Li Zhaoxing, and
Mary Robinson. The Elders are to be independently funded by a group of Founders, including
Richard Branson,
Peter Gabriel, Ray Chambers; Michael Chambers; Bridgeway Foundation; Pam Omidyar, Humanity United; Amy Robbins; Shashi Ruia, Dick Tarlow; and The
United Nations Foundation.
Family
In 1967 while Yunus attended
Vanderbilt University, he met Vera Forostenko, a student of
Russian literature at Vanderbilt University and daughter of
Russian immigrants to
Trenton,
New Jersey,
U.S. They were married in 1970. His younger brother Muhammad Jahangir is a popular television presenter. Monica, the eldest daughter of Yunus, is a
Bangladeshi-
Russian American soprano singer, working in New York City.
Books
By Muhammad Yunus
- Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism (Co-author: Karl Weber); Public Affairs; 2008; ISBN 1586484931
- Banker to the Poor: The Autobiography of Muhammad Yunus, Founder of Grameen (Co-author: Alan Jolis); Oxford University Press; 2001; ISBN 0195795377
- Grameen Bank, as I See it; Grameen Bank; 1994
- Jorimon and Others: Faces of Poverty (co-authors: Saiyada Manajurula Isalama, Arifa Rahman); Grameen Bank; 1991
- Planning in Bangladesh: Format, Technique, and Priority, and Other Essays; Rural Studies Project, Department of Economics, Chittagong University; 1976
- Three Farmers of Jobra; Department of Economics, Chittagong University; 1974
On Muhammad Yunus
David Bornstein; The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank and the Idea That Is; Simon & Schuster; 1996; ISBN 068481191X
References
