Banker to the poor falls foul of Bangladesh politics

Reuters: For millions of Bangladeshis, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus is a hero whose bank helped them escape poverty through small loans. But for a Government apparently furious at his pretensions to power, he is nothing short of a villain.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Government seems to be waging a campaign to discredit the 70-year-old financier, whose crime appears to have been considering setting up a political party to rival Hasina’s Awami League in 2007.

No one has yet determined what may have gone wrong, but analysts say the Government’s reputation, and Grameen Bank’s assistance to the poor, will be the biggest losers from what increasingly looks like a personal vendetta.

Yunus’s troubles started after the Government pounced on a Norwegian television documentary that alleged financial irregularities at his Grameen Bank. Yunus denied any wrongdoing and an investigation by the Norwegian Government later showed the allegations were false.

But Hasina derided Yunus as a “bloodsucker of the poor” and the Bangladesh media vilified one of the country’s most internationally recognised sons.

The Finance Minister demanded Yunus quit the bank that he founded 30 years ago and on Tuesday, Yunus lost his appeal to the Supreme Court against a high court decision backing his removal by the Central Bank from his post as Managing Director of Grameen.

Yunus is no stranger to controversy.

He founded Grameen Bank, which has made more than $10.2 billion in loans to poor Bangladeshis, providing a lifeline for millions and a banking model that has been copied in more than 100 nations from the United States to Uganda.

But critics in Bangladesh and other countries, including neighbouring India, say microlenders charge excessive rates and make money out of the poor.

Yunus’s philosophy from the outset was to help the poor to help themselves, and he has admitted to not giving money to beggars, even when they are blind or crippled.

“I feel bad – sometimes I feel terrible – that I’m denying the person. But I restrain myself. I never give them (anything),” Yunus told Reuters several years ago. “I would rather try to solve the problem than just give them a hand and take care of them for the day.”

Helping the poor help themselves

The economics professor, who along with his bank won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, has been trying to solve the problem of poverty since 1976, when he loaned the equivalent of $27 to 42 women in a village near his home in the southern port of Chittagong.

Yunus’s initial aim was to persuade a local bank manager to offer them credit, but bankers said guarantees were required.

Yunus set out to prove them wrong and has never looked back. Grameen, which means village in Bengali, now disburses tens of millions of dollars a month to 6.6 million borrowers, of which 97 percent are women.

Grameen Bank recovers nearly 99 per cent of its loans though borrowers need put up no collateral and pay a 20 percent interest rate on income-generating loans, always for one year.

With the Nobel Prize came fame, international invitations and awards. Among these was a 2009 meeting with US President Barack Obama, who conferred on him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian award.

But the frequent trips drew criticism from the Government.

Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith said Yunus should have sought prior permission from the Government before going abroad as the Government held 25 per cent of shares in the bank.

Yunus’ removal, officials said, was linked to his staying on illegally as the bank’s Managing Director in violation of laws setting down a retirement age of 60.

Pressure began to build after the broadcast last year of a Norwegian television documentary alleging Grameen had shifted funds from the Norwegian aid agency to dodge taxes.

But it was his short-lived attempt to found a party in 2007 – when Bangladesh was under interim military rule – that appears to have put Yunus on the wrong side of the authorities.

He stepped back from the idea, saying it would not sit well with Bangladesh’s traditional politics and cycles of unrest.

Born in 1940 in Chittagong, the commercial centre of what was then eastern Bengal, Yunus was the son of a goldsmith, one of 14 children, five of whom died in childbirth.

A famine that swept through Bangladesh in 1974, leaving hundreds of thousands dead, changed his life – a university field trip made him question how modern economic theories could deliver social justice to the poor.