Based on Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus - Book Report/Review Example

Based on Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus al Affiliation Based on Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus Introduction Thebook Banker to the Poor tells the details of Yunus early life in school and moves into his early years in college and finally as a professor at Chittagong University. While a professor, he began to notice extreme poverty of his fellow villagers. In the year 1976with the assistance of Maimuna Begum, he collected the data of the people who were living in poverty. Most of the poor people used to take loans from money lenders to start a business, and then would repay the loans with some of their profit. This hence made them earn a very little profit. Some of the businesses they did include buying of raw materials to create a product then sell the products. The list Begum brought back to Mohamed named a list of 42 women who had their unpaid loans of 856 taka. This is equivalent to 27 dollars. He was able to set up an organization to assist the poor. The company was named Grameen. Despite challenges of setting up an organization, Yunus was able to make the company run for a very long term. He faced challenges of calamities and critics too especially honor lists. Yunus faced many challenges that include inequalities among local communities, poverty and other social problems (Adas, Stearns & Schwartz, p. 275). Despite the fact that Bangladesh had become independent, it had many problems as Yunus states, “On December 16, 1971, Bangladesh won its war of independence. The war had taken a heavy toll. Three million Bangladeshis had been killed and 10 million had left the country in search of safety in neighboring India. Millions more were the victims of rape and other atrocities committed by the Pakistani army” (Yunus, 29). He became desperate to help the poor people. His first step was lending of his personal money with no interest attached to them. After they had repaid all the money, he continued to research to find out if this occurrence was rare. He thus found out that enslavement was very common to the people in Bangladesh. He then decided that something had to be done to solve this particular problem. He visited his local bank and asked them to lend money to the poor people, but the bank refused. He then went to the bank in Dhaka and finally secured loans to the local borrowers. With this, the Grameen bank was finally born in 1977.The creation of the bank was one of the main ways that helped to reduce poverty in Bangladesh at that time (Yunus, p. 37). Yunus reveals some of the issues that led to the opening of the bank and its policies. He says, “My repeated trips to the villages around the Chittagong University campus led me to discoveries that were essential to establishing the Grameen Bank. The poor taught me an entirely new economics. I learned about the problems that they face from their own perspective” (Yunus, p. ix). The Banks premise was that each of the borrowers had a human right to credit. The borrowers had to arrange themselves in groups of five in order to provide security to the loans; a loan was then given to two of the members of the group. The next two members would be lending the loan after successful payments in six weeks. The last person to get the loan was the chair person. Today, the micro credit program has proved to be fruitful and has been tested throughout Bangladesh. In 1987, the plan was opened in another country other than Bangladesh. This was Malaysia.The micro finance model of Grameen has proved versatile and has been adopted by many states. As Grameen grew, it continued to it continued to bring up more projects in aid of the poor. It acquired 783 ponds to start a fisheries foundation. This was to utilize previously unused resources to provide jobs to the locals and the poor. The second project was the beginning of Grameen Udyog. This means Grameen initiatives and it began in 1993.It created an avenue to the textile weavers in Bangladesh such that they were able to sell their products to the textile manufacturing industry. The next project was opening up for a cell phone business. One Grameen borrower in each rural Bangladesh village was given a cellphone and was asked to sell mobile services to her neighbors. Grameen phone was the name given to the company that is nonprofit and deals directly with villagers. It buys credit from a Grameen Telecom company that is a profit company.Grameen also formed a nonprofit company called Grameen Shakti to provide renewable energy resources. An internet service provider was also introduced and Grameen Communications were later started as well. These were some of the main ways Mohamed used to reduce poverty among his people. In his early years of alleviating poverty, He worked to improve the yields of farmers. He, however, faced challenges though he succeeded in short term goals. One problem was a whole section of Bangladesh had slipped through cracks in programs that aimed at reducing poverty. To solve the problem, he made a research among the poor in the village of Jobra. He later redefined the previously vague poverty and studied the categories of the poor. He used three definitions to describe the situation among the poor in Bangladesh. He then discovered that the many that desperately needed aid were crowded by the many that needed slight support. Among his many other critics were journalists who only sought to deflate the hype that surrounds him.Yunus seemed to be the one inviting these critics by his exaggerated claims about the bank. This was his way of simplifying complicated issues and his hyperbolic language which seems like that of a politician. Ending poverty became Yunus’ life purpose and the vision for his organization. It was compelling enough to provide his employees with motivation and inspire them too. The early years of his organization were, however, rocky, but he faced them in order to make his dream come true. In spite of his impressive results, no bank in the region could assist Yunus to expand his experimental project. This was because they could just not believe his reports or the data he collected. He continued negotiating with bankers until 1983 when Bangladesh government recognized his organization. He had also faced a significant problem of negotiating with reluctant government officials. In the 80s up to 1995, international aid agencies granted Yunus more than 35 million dollars. This made his bank expand and also became more self-sufficient. He faced another challenge of a cultural tradition that proved to be an obstacle but was able to overcome it. His primary goal was to fight poverty and he was ready to fight cultural challenges when they came in his way. He believed that transformative change was possible from living through the 1960 in the USA.While a student; he had participated in the civil rights movement and had also joined against protestation against the war in Vietnam. He had also observed young people make transformation in their society and had succeeded. Having these ideas, he was able to bring both societal and cultural change (Yunus, p. 34). He faced another challenge of facing criticism from personnel who argued that his approaches were not the best to address poverty. For instance, Milford Bateman argued that setting up of microfinance tends to displace tiny businesses without funding. This means that with this, their was no impact on poverty. He also noted that more microenterprises were crowded with the same economic space. This made them fall dramatically as time went by. Bateman also argued that he crowded this important business sector hurted the extremely poor people to devote to Grameens efforts. Grameens efforts, however, contradicted the criticisms by making positive results. Another challenge came following the years of extreme poverty in the 1990s.A large number of bank borrowers began to default. By 2000, it was clear that Grameen model of banking had started becoming a failure and restructuring was needed to make the bank survive.Yunus was able to adopt new circumstances unlike the other founders of the company. He was able to go Grameen 1 that had served him so well and began a new process to set up a new Grameen.Grameen 2 offered many new financial services such as insurance and savings plans and provided more flexibility to the borrower. It became successful just like Grameen 1 (Yunus, p. 64). In conclusion, Yunus made his achievements in Bangladesh and also later won the Nobel Peace Prize for his works of alleviating poverty. He first established an organization called Grameen after a long time of lending money to the poor without interest. The organization developed through aid from international agencies. It became a long term organization that served the poor people. He also began projects that helped to alleviate poverty. After founding Grameen Company, he began by creating a fishpond that was one way of utilizing the unused resources. He later brought communication services to the people as a way to also make the activities of his organization more efficient. He understood that communication was a key to change. He developed many different mechanisms in order to reach the village of Bangladesh. Other projects included lending of loans to groups of five people and asked them to refund in six weeks. He, however, faced challenges like calamities of floods in the 1990s.The floods reduced the number of people who were borrowing money from Grameen Bank. This led to the fall of Grameens though it was later restructured.Other challenges he faced were criticism from the critics. These included honor lists and other personalities who argued that his approaches to poverty were not recommendable. He, however, got through this, and he accomplished his works of assisting the poor. Finally, he became story teller of his organization and also became a global celebrity. He also told people to micro credit because he had succeeded and achieved his ambitions. He also made the Grameen Bank and has become famous in many parts of the world. References Adas, M., Stearns, P. N., & Schwartz, S. B. (2006). Turbulent passage: A global history of the twentieth century. New York: Longman. Yunus, M., (2007). Banker to the poor: Micro-lending and the battle against world poverty. New York: PublicAffairs. Read More