Why Bangladesh chose Yunus to steady the ship Premium

Muhammad Yunus leads Bangladesh towards democracy, empowering women and challenging autocratic rule, with global support and social entrepreneurship.

In Muhammad Yunus Bangladesh has the opportunity to shake off 15 years of autocratic rule with a new leader who gave opportunities to women to participate more fully in society.

One cannot think of a more qualified person to lead Bangladesh at the moment. Mr. Yunus, a former university professor of economics, is the founder of the Grameen Bank. Dubbed the “Banker to the Poor”, he is better known now as a social entrepreneur and civil society leader than an academic. He assumes charge as head of the interim government of Bangladesh at a time when there is general disgust in the country with political parties.

Consequently, civil society groups have come to the fore. Mr. Yunus is undoubtedly the most prominent face of Bangladesh civil society groups. He clearly has the support of the students who shed much blood overthrowing the Sheikh Hasina regime through the mass uprising they led.

His name was proposed by the leaders of the student protest with others accepting it enthusiastically. No government, neither its police nor its military, is happy when they kill their own citizens, for reasons that seem not so convincing. It is not surprising then that the Bangladesh Army refused to fire on its own people, asking Ms. Hasina to quit in view of the popular uprising.

Theglobally acknowledged initiative of Mr. Yunus, the Grameen Bank, owes its existence to the inability of the banking system to lend to the poor.

Mr. Yunus rebelled against his training in economics, when he found that the poor in Bangladesh work hard but cannot escape poverty because of their debt burden. Paradoxically, it is the poor who need credit, but no bank will lend to them.

At first, he borrowed money in his name and lent it to the poor. He found that the poor were indeed credit worthy. Then he experimented with a state-owned agricultural bank with similar results. Finally, when he found that the state was unwilling to scale-up microcredit to the poor, he founded his own social business – the Grameen Bank.