Photo: AFP

FOR THE POOR: Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus arrives for a meeting with bankers in Mumbai on Friday. Reserve Bank Governor Y. V. Reddy is at left.

Mumbai: Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, founder of the micro-credit pioneer Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, on Friday hit out at banks for not providing loans to the poor and disadvantaged.

"Only one-third of the population has access to credit while the rest are not creditworthy for the system. We have left two-thirds of the world poor, disadvantageous and without a starting point."

Prof. Yunus said credit, an important tool to eradicate poverty, was a human right.

RBI's promise

Supporting his views, Reserve Bank of India Governor Y.V. Reddy said the apex bank would frame a charter to make credit a human right.

Prof. Yunus said the seeds of poverty arose from institutions, policies and concepts made by people.

"Micro-credit is a little tool to help unleash the part of energy which is there in every human being," he said.

"Poor people are like bonsai. They have all the capabilities to rise up like big trees but the problem is they are planted in flower pots."

Reaching out to the poorest strata of society, including beggars and the physically challenged, the Grameen Bank disbursed about half a billion dollars annually to seven million people through 21,000 staff members.

"Today 80 per cent of the poor in Bangladesh have access to micro-credit and we will cover 100 per cent of the poor before 2010," he said.

Social empowerment

On the Grameen Bank's initiative, he said the concept was successfully replicated in hundreds of villages and among thousands of extremely poor. With social empowerment, today 100 per cent children of the Grameen Bank families went to school and the bank, apart from scholarships, provided loans to 15,000 students for pursuing medical, engineering, masters degree and Ph.Ds.

Calling capitalism a half-told story, Prof. Yunus said that apart from the excitement of profit maximisation, business could provide other "returns" like doing good to people.

Unveiling the concept of social business enterprise, the Nobel laureate shared the analogy of "no loss and no dividend" for social businesses.

He suggested an alternative stock exchange where companies pursuing social businesses could enlist and the investors contribute for social endeavours. — PTI

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