Why Bangladesh slams Nobel laureate Yunus

SAVIOUR OR SUCKER? Nobel laureate Mohammed Yunus' credit policies have failed to eraducate poverty in Bangladesh.

      

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New Delhi: Bangladesh’s Nobel laureate Mohammed Yunus is considered to have uplifted the poor in his country. But the genius the world considers him to be is seen as just another businessman by his own people.

"I can send poverty back to the museum,” claims Md Yunus regularly in such overcrowded press conferences—the man gave the concept of micro credit to eradicate poverty in Bangladesh. But shockingly Yunus and his Grameen bank are called ‘blood sucking money lenders’ in his own country.

"He made money by sucking people's blood. He is a good businessman who knows how to make profits," says Sheikh Hasina, Former Prime Minister, Bangladesh

Yunus had started his journey to become the ‘banker to the poor’ in 1976 in Jobra village of Chittagong. He gave his first loan of nearly Rs 1000 to a village local. Ten years down the line, Halima and Noornahar who took the loan still live in abject poverty. They beg for a living and are yet to repay the 30-year-old debt that was taken by their mother.

“We are in no position to pay back the loan,” says Halima.

Grameen Bank usually takes loan from the Bangladesh government and foreign institutions at a mere 3 to 5 per cent, but doles out the same amount at rates between 20 and 30 per cent to the poor rural debtors.

“Yunus’ programmes are such that do not reduce but reproduce poverty. What he showed as solutions to eradicate poverty was actually a myth of poverty alleviation mechanism,” says Economist Anu Mohammed.

Yunus’ failure is possibly the reason why his dream of a political party never got support from the people. "I think his ideas were a bubble that burst out too soon,” says Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, Indian High Commissioner in Bangladesh.

The micro credit guru is a darling of the West. But in his own country even though he won the Nobel prize his popularity graph was never so high to make him cut out the political battlefield.

Many people also question why he was given the Nobel peace prize. “Never at any instance that the piece issue is raised in Bangladesh, have we seen Younis address a single human rights issue,” Human Rights activist Shariyar Kabir says.

Allegations like throwing away poor defaulters from their own house are now being labeled frequently against Grameen Bank. An image that the world famous nobel laureate would like to get rid of, sooner than later.