Back in 1993 while attending a course of selected officers in Staff College Mirpur, Dr Muhammad Yunus appeared as a guest speaker before an audience of young military officers from a blend of countries.
We heard with awe the experience of this acclaimed scholar where he described his journey towards eradicating poverty as a professor in Chittagong University.
He highlighted how poverty compels people to lead life of indignity, how that destroys all creativity and robs all enterprise of a human being, and ultimately converts life into an endless journey of mere survival. By now, the Jobra village close to Chittagong University is in everybody’s memory, where the “banker to the poor” took his very first steps in his fight against poverty.
The audience was spellbound; we tried to comprehend his model of economy which was designed beyond the textbook idea of banking and entrepreneurship. There was a lively interaction with young minds where we were deeply touched by his novel philosophy of inherent human entrepreneurship and the necessary support it needs to bloom into success and lead a life of dignity -- breaking the bonds of an unending and treacherous cycle of poverty.
In my long arduous journey in the military, I didn’t get much scope to delve into Yunus’s economic thinking, where he urged to bring it down to the commoners who were usually termed as non-bankable. But whenever his books were published, I tried to grab one. I read his Banker to the Poor and Social Business. His idea of lending people money to nurture their creativity, life skill, and entrepreneurship made sense to many.
Yunus wrote in very simple language to be understandable to the common readers. I feel tempted to share an interesting experience as narrated in one of his books. He was out on a tour in Tangail to see some of his projects and one late afternoon was having a leisurely walk in the premises of the Circuit House where he was putting up for this short trip. During his stroll he noticed a villager seemingly trying to grab his attention. He slowed down, looked back, and stopped for a while thus allowing him to come yet closer and talk to him.
“Are you Grameen Bank? I want to tell you something.” Dr Yunus was touched by the simplicity of the villager and nodded that he in fact was the Grameen Bank and assured the villager that he was welcome. The villager said that he was very grateful to his bank. He went on saying that he, being a poor man, found it difficult to earn a living with his meagre income as a day labourer and could never dream of sending their children to school.
It was because his wife got a loan from Grameen Bank that they had become a little solvent. They had a small decent house, purchased a cow and had sent their two children to school. This was all because of the Grameen Bank loan. His face beaming with joy showed he was grateful.
It was in 2010 when I was on a UN Mission in Sudan which was then the largest UN peacekeeping undertaking. My boss was a three star general from Rwanda. A tall man who stood more than six feet in his muscular stature and was educated in the US -- a very impressive and well-informed person.
After I had finished my routine job with him in his office one day, I requested him to accept a small token from me, a book written by a Bangladeshi scholar. As I was handing him over the book, he remarked “Aha! you are introducing Dr Yunus to me? Who wouldn’t know him?”
I was fortunate to have visited Sweden where I availed a chance to go round the Nobel Foundation and see for myself Yunus on the display among other Nobel laureates. The fact that his revolutionary concept is being studied in several universities across the globe having established so many “Yunus Centres” does only make us proud as his countrymen.
We were deeply saddened by the suffering this noble scholar had been undergoing till he was relieved following the recent student-led popular uprising. We found crooked politicians propagating that he had done nothing for his country. We are happy that now he is the one steering the nation through this tumultuous journey.
Brigadier General Qazi Abidus Samad, ndc, psc (Retd) is a freelance contributor.
