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Anyway, here you go, I am pasting the speech by Nobel Award Winner Muhammad Yunus.
Muhammad Yunus held his Nobel Lecture December 10, 2006
Oslo City Hall, Norway. He was presented by Professor Ole Danbolt
Mjøs, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable Members of the
Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Grameen Bank and I are deeply honoured to receive this most
prestigious of awards. We are thrilled and overwhelmed by this honour.
Since the Nobel Peace Prize was announced, I have received endless
messages from around the world, but what moves me most are the calls I
get almost daily, from the borrowers of Grameen Bank in remote
Bangladeshi villages, who just want to say how proud they are to have
received this recognition.
Nine elected representatives of the 7 million borrowers-cum-owners of
Grameen Bank have accompanied me all the way to Oslo to receive the
prize. I express thanks on their behalf to the Norwegian Nobel
Committee for choosing Grameen Bank for this year's Nobel Peace Prize.
By giving their institution the most prestigious prize in the world,
you give them unparalleled honour. Thanks to your prize, nine proud
women from the villages of Bangladesh are at the ceremony today as
Nobel laureates, giving an altogether new meaning to the Nobel Peace
Prize.
All borrowers of Grameen Bank are celebrating this day as the greatest
day of their lives. They are gathering around the nearest television
set in their villages all over Bangladesh, along with other villagers,
to watch the proceedings of this ceremony.
This years' prize gives highest honour and dignity to the hundreds of
millions of women all around the world who struggle every day to make
a living and bring hope for a better life for their children. This is
a historic moment for them.
Poverty is a Threat to Peace
Ladies and Gentlemen:
By giving us this prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has given
important support to the proposition that peace is inextricably linked
to poverty. Poverty is a threat to peace.
World's income distribution gives a very telling story. Ninety four
percent of the world income goes to 40 percent of the population while
sixty percent of people live on only 6 per cent of world income. Half
of the world population lives on two dollars a day. Over one billion
people live on less than a dollar a day. This is no formula for peace.
The new millennium began with a great global dream. World leaders
gathered at the United Nations in 2000 and adopted, among others, a
historic goal to reduce poverty by half by 2015. Never in human
history had such a bold goal been adopted by the entire world in one
voice, one that specified time and size. But then came September 11
and the Iraq war, and suddenly the world became derailed from the
pursuit of this dream, with the attention of world leaders shifting
from the war on poverty to the war on terrorism. Till now over $ 530
billion has been spent on the war in Iraq by the USA alone.
I believe terrorism cannot be won over by military action. Terrorism
must be condemned in the strongest language. We must stand solidly
against it, and find all the means to end it. We must address the root
causes of terrorism to end it for all time to come. I believe that
putting resources into improving the lives of the poor people is a
better strategy than spending it on guns.
Poverty is Denial of All Human Rights
Peace should be understood in a human way 3/4 in a broad social,
political and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic,
social and political order, absence of democracy, environmental
degradation and absence of human rights.
Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations,
hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace
in any society. For building stable peace we must find ways to provide
opportunities for people to live decent lives.
The creation of opportunities for the majority of people − the poor −
is at the heart of the work that we have dedicated ourselves to during
the past 30 years.
Grameen Bank
I became involved in the poverty issue not as a policymaker or a
researcher. I became involved because poverty was all around me, and I
could not turn away from it. In 1974, I found it difficult to teach
elegant theories of economics in the university classroom, in the
backdrop of a terrible famine in Bangladesh.
Suddenly, I felt the emptiness of those theories in the face of
crushing hunger and poverty. I wanted to do something immediate to
help people around me, even if it was just one human being, to get
through another day with a little more ease. That brought me face to
face with poor people's struggle to find the tiniest amounts of money
to support their efforts to eke out a living. I was shocked to
discover a woman in the village, borrowing less than a dollar from the
money-lender, on the condition that he would have the exclusive right
to buy all she produces at the price he decides. This, to me, was a
way of recruiting slave labor.
I decided to make a list of the victims of this money-lending
"business" in the village next door to our campus.
When my list was done, it had the names of 42 victims who borrowed a
total amount of US $27. I offered US $27 from my own pocket to get
these victims out of the clutches of those money-lenders. The
excitement that was created among the people by this small action got
me further involved in it. If I could make so many people so happy
with such a tiny amount of money, why not do more of it?
That is what I have been trying to do ever since. The first thing I
did was to try to persuade the bank located in the campus to lend
money to the poor. But that did not work. The bank said that the poor
were not creditworthy. After all my efforts, over several months,
failed I offered to become a guarantor for the loans to the poor. I
was stunned by the result. The poor paid back their loans, on time,
every time! But still I kept confronting difficulties in expanding the
program through the existing banks. That was when I decided to create
a separate bank for the poor, and in 1983, I finally succeeded in
doing that. I named it Grameen Bank or Village bank.
Today, Grameen Bank gives loans to nearly 7.0 million poor people, 97
per cent of whom are women, in 73,000 villages in Bangladesh. Grameen
Bank gives collateral-free income generating, housing, student and
micro-enterprise loans to the poor families and offers a host of
attractive savings, pension funds and insurance products for its
members. Since it introduced them in 1984, housing loans have been
used to construct 640,000 houses. The legal ownership of these houses
belongs to the women themselves. We focused on women because we found
giving loans to women always brought more benefits to the family.
In a cumulative way the bank has given out loans totaling about US
$6.0 billion. The repayment rate is 99%. Grameen Bank routinely makes
profit. Financially, it is self-reliant and has not taken donor money
since 1995. Deposits and own resources of Grameen Bank today amount to
143 per cent of all outstanding loans. According to Grameen Bank's
internal survey, 58 per cent of our borrowers have crossed the poverty
line.
Grameen Bank was born as a tiny homegrown project run with the help of
several of my students, all local girls and boys. Three of these
students are still with me in Grameen Bank, after all these years, as
its topmost executives. They are here today to receive this honour you
give us.
This idea, which began in Jobra, a small village in Bangladesh, has
spread around the world and there are now Grameen type programs in
almost every country.
Second Generation
It is 30 years now since we began. We keep looking at the children of
our borrowers to see what has been the impact of our work on their
lives. The women who are our borrowers always gave topmost priority to
the children. One of the Sixteen Decisions developed and followed by
them was to send children to school. Grameen Bank encouraged them, and
before long all the children were going to school. Many of these
children made it to the top of their class. We wanted to celebrate
that, so we introduced scholarships for talented students. Grameen
Bank now gives 30,000 scholarships every year.
Many of the children went on to higher education to become doctors,
engineers, college teachers and other professionals. We introduced
student loans to make it easy for Grameen students to complete higher
education. Now some of them have PhD's. There are 13,000 students on
student loans. Over 7,000 students are now added to this number
annually.
We are creating a completely new generation that will be well equipped
to take their families way out of the reach of poverty. We want to
make a break in the historical continuation of poverty.
Beggars Can Turn to Business
In Bangladesh 80 percent of the poor families have already been
reached with microcredit. We are hoping that by 2010, 100 per cent of
the poor families will be reached.
Three years ago we started an exclusive programme focusing on the
beggars. None of Grameen Bank's rules apply to them. Loans are
interest-free; they can pay whatever amount they wish, whenever they
wish. We gave them the idea to carry small merchandise such as snacks,
toys or household items, when they went from house to house for
begging. The idea worked. There are now 85,000 beggars in the program.
About 5,000 of them have already stopped begging completely. Typical
loan to a beggar is $12.
We encourage and support every conceivable intervention to help the
poor fight out of poverty. We always advocate microcredit in addition
to all other interventions, arguing that microcredit makes those
interventions work better.
Information Technology for the Poor
Information and communication technology (ICT) is quickly changing the
world, creating distanceless, borderless world of instantaneous
communications. Increasingly, it is becoming less and less costly. I
saw an opportunity for the poor people to change their lives if this
technology could be brought to them to meet their needs.
As a first step to bring ICT to the poor we created a mobile phone
company, Grameen Phone. We gave loans from Grameen Bank to the poor
women to buy mobile phones to sell phone services in the villages. We
saw the synergy between microcredit and ICT.
The phone business was a success and became a coveted enterprise for
Grameen borrowers. Telephone-ladies quickly learned and innovated the
ropes of the telephone business, and it has become the quickest way to
get out of poverty and to earn social respectability. Today there are
nearly 300,000 telephone ladies providing telephone service in all the
villages of Bangladesh. Grameen Phone has more than 10 million
subscribers, and is the largest mobile phone company in the country.
Although the number of telephone-ladies is only a small fraction of
the total number of subscribers, they generate 19 per cent of the
revenue of the company. Out of the nine board members who are
attending this grand ceremony today 4 are telephone-ladies.
Grameen Phone is a joint-venture company owned by Telenor of Norway
and Grameen Telecom of Bangladesh. Telenor owns 62 per cent share of
the company, Grameen Telecom owns 38 per cent. Our vision was to
ultimately convert this company into a social business by giving
majority ownership to the poor women of Grameen Bank. We are working
towards that goal. Someday Grameen Phone will become another example
of a big enterprise owned by the poor.
Free Market Economy
Capitalism centers on the free market. It is claimed that the freer
the market, the better is the result of capitalism in solving the
questions of what, how, and for whom. It is also claimed that the
individual search for personal gains brings collective optimal result.
I am in favor of strengthening the freedom of the market. At the same
time, I am very unhappy about the conceptual restrictions imposed on
the players in the market. This originates from the assumption that
entrepreneurs are one-dimensional human beings, who are dedicated to
one mission in their business lives 3/4 to maximize profit. This
interpretation of capitalism insulates the entrepreneurs from all
political, emotional, social, spiritual, environmental dimensions of
their lives. This was done perhaps as a reasonable simplification, but
it stripped away the very essentials of human life.
Human beings are a wonderful creation embodied with limitless human
qualities and capabilities. Our theoretical constructs should make
room for the blossoming of those qualities, not assume them away.
Many of the world's problems exist because of this restriction on the
players of free-market. The world has not resolved the problem of
crushing poverty that half of its population suffers. Healthcare
remains out of the reach of the majority of the world population. The
country with the richest and freest market fails to provide healthcare
for one-fifth of its population.
We have remained so impressed by the success of the free-market that
we never dared to express any doubt about our basic assumption. To
make it worse, we worked extra hard to transform ourselves, as closely
as possible, into the one-dimensional human beings as conceptualized
in the theory, to allow smooth functioning of free market mechanism.
By defining "entrepreneur" in a broader way we can change the
character of capitalism radically, and solve many of the unresolved
social and economic problems within the scope of the free market. Let
us suppose an entrepreneur, instead of having a single source of
motivation (such as, maximizing profit), now has two sources of
motivation, which are mutually exclusive, but equally compelling 3/4
a) maximization of profit and b) doing good to people and the world.
Each type of motivation will lead to a separate kind of business. Let
us call the first type of business a profit-maximizing business, and
the second type of business as social business.
Social business will be a new kind of business introduced in the
market place with the objective of making a difference in the world.
Investors in the social business could get back their investment, but
will not take any dividend from the company. Profit would be ploughed
back into the company to expand its outreach and improve the quality
of its product or service. A social business will be a non-loss,
non-dividend company.
Once social business is recognized in law, many existing companies
will come forward to create social businesses in addition to their
foundation activities. Many activists from the non-profit sector will
also find this an attractive option. Unlike the non-profit sector
where one needs to collect donations to keep activities going, a
social business will be self-sustaining and create surplus for
expansion since it is a non-loss enterprise. Social business will go
into a new type of capital market of its own, to raise capital.
Young people all around the world, particularly in rich countries,
will find the concept of social business very appealing since it will
give them a challenge to make a difference by using their creative
talent. Many young people today feel frustrated because they cannot
see any worthy challenge, which excites them, within the present
capitalist world. Socialism gave them a dream to fight for. Young
people dream about creating a perfect world of their own.
Almost all social and economic problems of the world will be addressed
through social businesses. The challenge is to innovate business
models and apply them to produce desired social results
cost-effectively and efficiently. Healthcare for the poor, financial
services for the poor, information technology for the poor, education
and training for the poor, marketing for the poor, renewable energy −
these are all exciting areas for social businesses.
Social business is important because it addresses very vital concerns
of mankind. It can change the lives of the bottom 60 per cent of world
population and help them to get out of poverty.
Grameen's Social Business
Even profit maximizing companies can be designed as social businesses
by giving full or majority ownership to the poor. This constitutes a
second type of social business. Grameen Bank falls under this category
of social business.
The poor could get the shares of these companies as gifts by donors,
or they could buy the shares with their own money. The borrowers with
their own money buy Grameen Bank shares, which cannot be transferred
to non-borrowers. A committed professional team does the day-to-day
running of the bank.
Bilateral and multi-lateral donors could easily create this type of
social business. When a donor gives a loan or a grant to build a
bridge in the recipient country, it could create a "bridge company"
owned by the local poor. A committed management company could be given
the responsibility of running the company. Profit of the company will
go to the local poor as dividend, and towards building more bridges.
Many infrastructure projects, like roads, highways, airports,
seaports, utility companies could all be built in this manner.
Grameen has created two social businesses of the first type. One is a
yogurt factory, to produce fortified yogurt to bring nutrition to
malnourished children, in a joint venture with Danone. It will
continue to expand until all malnourished children of Bangladesh are
reached with this yogurt. Another is a chain of eye-care hospitals.
Each hospital will undertake 10,000 cataract surgeries per year at
differentiated prices to the rich and the poor.
Social Stock Market
To connect investors with social businesses, we need to create social
stock market where only the shares of social businesses will be
traded. An investor will come to this stock-exchange with a clear
intention of finding a social business, which has a mission of his
liking. Anyone who wants to make money will go to the existing
stock-market.
To enable a social stock-exchange to perform properly, we will need to
create rating agencies, standardization of terminology, definitions,
impact measurement tools, reporting formats, and new financial
publications, such as, The Social Wall Street Journal. Business
schools will offer courses and business management degrees on social
businesses to train young managers how to manage social business
enterprises in the most efficient manner, and, most of all, to inspire
them to become social business entrepreneurs themselves.
Role of Social Businesses in Globalization
I support globalization and believe it can bring more benefits to the
poor than its alternative. But it must be the right kind of
globalization. To me, globalization is like a hundred-lane highway
criss-crossing the world. If it is a free-for-all highway, its lanes
will be taken over by the giant trucks from powerful economies.
Bangladeshi rickshaw will be thrown off the highway. In order to have
a win-win globalization we must have traffic rules, traffic police,
and traffic authority for this global highway. Rule of "strongest
takes it all" must be replaced by rules that ensure that the poorest
have a place and piece of the action, without being elbowed out by the
strong. Globalization must not become financial imperialism.
Powerful multi-national social businesses can be created to retain the
benefit of globalization for the poor people and poor countries.
Social businesses will either bring ownership to the poor people, or
keep the profit within the poor countries, since taking dividends will
not be their objective. Direct foreign investment by foreign social
businesses will be exciting news for recipient countries. Building
strong economies in the poor countries by protecting their national
interest from plundering companies will be a major area of interest
for the social businesses.
We Create What We Want
We get what we want, or what we don't refuse. We accept the fact that
we will always have poor people around us, and that poverty is part of
human destiny. This is precisely why we continue to have poor people
around us. If we firmly believe that poverty is unacceptable to us,
and that it should not belong to a civilized society, we would have
built appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free
world.
We wanted to go to the moon, so we went there. We achieve what we want
to achieve. If we are not achieving something, it is because we have
not put our minds to it. We create what we want.
What we want and how we get to it depends on our mindsets. It is
extremely difficult to change mindsets once they are formed. We create
the world in accordance with our mindset. We need to invent ways to
change our perspective continually and reconfigure our mindset quickly
as new knowledge emerges. We can reconfigure our world if we can
reconfigure our mindset.
We Can Put Poverty in the Museums
I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is
not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the
economic and social system that we have designed for ourselves; the
institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that
we pursue.
Poverty is created because we built our theoretical framework on
assumptions which under-estimates human capacity, by designing
concepts, which are too narrow (such as concept of business, credit-
worthiness, entrepreneurship, employment) or developing institutions,
which remain half-done (such as financial institutions, where poor are
left out). Poverty is caused by the failure at the conceptual level,
rather than any lack of capability on the part of people.
I firmly believe that we can create a poverty-free world if we
collectively believe in it. In a poverty-free world, the only place
you would be able to see poverty is in the poverty museums. When
school children take a tour of the poverty museums, they would be
horrified to see the misery and indignity that some human beings had
to go through. They would blame their forefathers for tolerating this
inhuman condition, which existed for so long, for so many people.
A human being is born into this world fully equipped not only to take
care of him or herself, but also to contribute to enlarging the well
being of the world as a whole. Some get the chance to explore their
potential to some degree, but many others never get any opportunity,
during their lifetime, to unwrap the wonderful gift they were born
with. They die unexplored and the world remains deprived of their
creativity, and their contribution.
Grameen has given me an unshakeable faith in the creativity of human
beings. This has led me to believe that human beings are not born to
suffer the misery of hunger and poverty.
To me poor people are like bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed
of the tallest tree in a flower-pot, you get a replica of the tallest
tree, only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you
planted, only the soil-base that is too inadequate. Poor people are
bonsai people. There is nothing wrong in their seeds. Simply, society
never gave them the base to grow on. All it needs to get the poor
people out of poverty for us to create an enabling environment for
them. Once the poor can unleash their energy and creativity, poverty
will disappear very quickly.
Let us join hands to give every human being a fair chance to unleash
their energy and creativity.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let me conclude by expressing my deep gratitude to the Norwegian Nobel
Committee for recognizing that poor people, and especially poor women,
have both the potential and the right to live a decent life, and that
microcredit helps to unleash that potential.
I believe this honor that you give us will inspire many more bold
initiatives around the world to make a historical breakthrough in
ending global poverty.
Thank you very much.
MOHAMMAD YUNUS
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