Bangladesh is not necessary the land of frequent natural disasters, abundant poverty and growing fundamentalism alone, but the fertile South Asian country could give birth to a genius like Professor Muhammad Yunus. The densely populated and politically disturbed state found no limits of joys, when their very own Prof Yunus was declared as the winner of Nobel Peace Prize for 2006 jointly with his brainchild Grameen Bank of Bangladesh.

The news that the economist turned banker Prof Yunus and his mission Grameen bank were selected for the Nobel award came as a pleasant surprise for the Grameen family and its admirers around the globe. That the Nobel award goes to the most popular Bangladeshi banker did not make a surprise statement for most of his well-wishers, because his name was enrolled in the nomination of the coveted award for the last few years. But all the time, it was presumed that the former head of the economics department at Chittagong University would be selected for Nobel award in Economics. Surprisingly, the humble banker with a ‘mission possible to make the world poverty-free’ was declared as the winner of Nobel Peace award jointly with his bank.

International news agency from Oslo flashed on October 13 afternoon that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006 was awarded to Dr Muhammad Yunus, the 66-year-old Bangladeshi behind the Grameen Movement with his non-conventional bank that has helped millions of poor   in Bangladesh.   The Nobel Committee categorically observed in the citation that ‘lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty’. The prize, worth 10 million kronor (1.37 million dollars) will be presented on December 10, the anniversary of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel’s death. Nobel’s will says that the prize should be awarded to ‘the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace’.

The Bangladeshi professor of Economics, Dr Yunus started Grameen bank project in 1976 as an experimental project. In 1983 it emerged as a formal bank. Till date, Grameen Bank has disbursed over 290,030 million Taka (1 US dollar = Taka 69) as loans to its 6.6 million borrowers.  Today Grameen bank with more than 2200 branches nurtures around 6 million women borrowers covering 71,000 villages of the thickly inhabited (more than 120 million) country. With his micro lending schemes to the poorest of the poor women, Prof Yunus has authentically proved that poor women are most credit worthy.

The Grameen bank that believes and makes business on trust disburses small loans to the borrowers without asking for any collateral from them. While, the poor people are still not recognized as credit worthy by the usual banks in many parts of the globe, the Bangladeshi professor calmed that the poorest were the most bankable. The conventional bakers try to put argument that if loans are sanctioned to poor, they would simply eat it because of poverty. But the founder of Grameen bank maintained a different opinion, “The poorest of the poor will   repay the loan as early as possible, because they know it might be their last opportunity. Rather the rich will not pay back, because they know how to manage the situation.”

Even the borrowers of Grameen bank need not come to the office, but the bank officials go to the people and proposed for loans. The officials encourage the loan applicants to make groups, where the group members themselves decide how much and whom to offer the loan. The loans are repaid in weekly installments. Every week the borrowers get together for collecting installments and disbursing the loans in front of Grameen bank officials. There is total transparency in this exercise. Grameen Bank charges interest on the loan in the rate of 20% per year. Though the loans are disbursed without any collateral or mortgage, the recovery rate of Grameen remained unbelievably as high as 98%.

In the first phase, the borrower generally apply loan for paddy husking, bamboo works, puffed rice making, cane-works, mat making, fishing net making, weaving garment making, pottery productions, earthen ware container making, clock repairing etc. In the next stage, loans are provided for mobile phone, paddy cultivation, farming, land lease, tube wells, milk cow, poultry farm, bullock- buffalo rising, pond excavation etc.

Then loans are provided for some costly affairs like rickshaws, boat, baby taxi (auto rickshaw) purchasing and then for trading of various products like rice, cloth, fish, timber, chicken, wheat, medicine etc. and shop keeping for grocery and stationary articles, cloths, sweetmeat, shoe, magazine, musical instrument, fruit, tea etc. Lastly housing loans are also provided for the sincere and senior borrowers.

More amazingly 96 % of the Grameen borrowers are women. Prof Yunus considers that hunger and poverty are ‘more women’s issue than of male’ and hence his bank emphasizes more on the women borrowers. “Women experience hunger and poverty in much more intense way than men. If one of the family members has to starve, it is an unwritten law that it has to be the mother. Our experience teach us that poor women adapted quicker and better to the self helps process than men. They have the vision to see further and are willing to work harder to get out of poverty, because they suffer the most. Besides women pay more attention on her family, prepared their children to have better lives and are more consistent in their performance than men. When a mother starts making some income, her dreams invariably centre around her children but in case of man he starts paying attention to himself,” argues Prof Yunus.

Over the years, Grameen has gone from being just a bank to being a series of enterprises which include Grameen Phone for telephones and cellular phones, Grameen Uddyog which finances small scale enterprises, Grameen Housing which provides house loans, Grameen Shakti for electrifying rural homes, Grameen Agri Finances to purchase of modern farming implements etc. Prof Yunus dreams of taking cyber communication to rural areas and provide training to young rural women to get internet-savvy.

“We have now introduced many programmes in the bank- from student loans to pension funds and loans to purchase mobile phones to rural woman to loans to beggars to become door-to-door salesman,” revealed Prof Yunus. The banker with a mission ensures that the children of Grameen women must go to school and who have completed high school education should enter colleges or professional courses. Grameen fund takes care of these students such that their parent do not have to meet the additional economic burden. Prof Yunus is optimistic that once the students are well placed in lives, they will repay the loans and perhaps volunteer to finance the education of another batch of students.

The autobiography of Prof Yunus, ‘Banker to the poor’ is a straight reflection of his ideas about his mission that has received applause from the readers throughout the globe. The book, written in a simple and humorous language narrates Prof Yunus’s enormous struggles to establish himself as a baker with a mission from an university teacher with a background of a middle class family based in rural Bangladesh.

Prof. Yunus takes pride in saying that today the combined savings of Grameen bank’s borrowers is nearly Taka 14,000 million. If they wish, today they could buy the largest enterprises in Bangladesh. “My message is, do not ignore them because they are poor. Together they are rich,” asserted Prof Yunus.

On and often, Bangladesh receives international media headlines for wrong reasons like floods, famines and ever increasing Muslim fundamentalism. The country is also known for its political disturbance that causes human causalities frequently. Even the culturally rich country is frequently termed as a ‘failed state’ in different forums. However, Muhammad ‘Grameen’ Yunus has brought laurels to his countrymen. The achievement of Prof Yunus gives the Bangladeshis, living in home and abroad, a sense of great pride, which they needed desperately for quite a long time.

It was few months back, when this writer met the visionary banker at his office in Dhaka and wanted to know his feeling about the nomination to Nobel prize, the simple and straight answer came form the soft spoken unassuming gentleman that the award was always an inspiration that could help in strengthening the movement to eradicate poverty from the world as early as possible. Soon after he was declared as a Nobel winner, Prof Yunus declared, “Now the war against poverty will be further intensified across the world. It will consolidate the struggle against poverty through micro credit in most of the countries. There should be no poverty, anywhere.” The Ramon Magsaysay Awardee in 1984 argues that the ultimate place for poverty is the museum, because poverty has nothing to do within an enlightened society.