Who is Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate set to head Bangladesh's interim govt?
Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen bank and nobel prize winner, is all set to become the head of Bangladesh's interim government
Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate economist, arrived in Dhaka on Thursday afternoon, to be sworn in as the new interim prime minister of Bangladesh.
As the country reels in the aftermath of an unprecedented student-led movement, which led to the resignation of prime minister Sheikh Hasina, the military, opposition and student leaders reached a consensus when it came to asking the 84-year-old known as the ‘banker of the poor’ to lead the first attempt at a new government.
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World leaders watch on to see if the decision to award the top position to Yunus, in this transitional period for Bangladesh, will work out. Fears of military rule, atrocities against minorities and anarchy have been at the forefront of concerns, as Bangladesh seeks to redefine itself after 15 years of Sheikh Hasina's government.
Let us take a look at the economist and leader, who is set to take over a country in crisis.
Early life
Born in the village of Bathua in 1940, in the pre-independence undivided Bengal presidency, Muhammad Yunus was the third of nine children in a merchant family.
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His father, Haji Dulaa Mia Sawdagar, was a jeweller. Though born in a village, he spent his core educational years in the port city of Chittagong, where he was an active Boy Scout and got the opportunity to travel to Pakistan and India in 1952. He later broadened his horizons and visited Europe, the USA, Canada, the Philippines and Japan by 1959.
During these years of exploration, he was also enrolled at Dhaka University since 1957, completing his bachelor's degree in 1960 and master's degree in 1961.
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Soon after, he joined the Bureau of Economics at Dhaka University as a research assistant and in less than a year became a professor at Chittagong College. After receiving a Fulbright scholarship to study in the United States in 1965, he got a PhD in economic development from Vanderbilt University in 1971. Till 1972, he was an assistant professor in Economics at Middle Tennessee State University.
Bangladesh's war of liberation
As Bangladesh's war for liberation began in 1971, Yunus ran a communications centre for Bangladeshi awaiting news outside the country. He also published the Bangladesh Newsletter in Nashville, to raise support for the movement.
After the war, Muhammad Yunus returned to head the economics department in Chittagong University. Witnessing the Bangladesh famine of 1974, one of the worst of the 20th century, Yunus was inspired to work towards poverty reduction.
He came up with the idea of setting up village governments (gram sarkar) to improve rural economies but the idea was soon shot down as illegal and unconstitutional.
Grameen Bank
In 1976, during a visit to a village, he realised that often underprivileged people require small non-traditional loans to survive financially and grow their businesses, which led him to come up with the idea of microcredit. This system of microfinance, first gave him the name - ‘banker to the poor’
After taking loans from larger banks and redistributing them as microcredit to poor people, in 1983, he finally launched Grameen Bank (village bank). By July 2007, Grameen had issued US$ 6.38 billion to 7.4 million borrowers.
As the initiative started to grow, it became a group of several enterprises looking at fishing, agriculture, telecom-related credit and help for those who are underprivileged.
The success of the model inspired similar projects in 100 different countries. In 2006, Muhammad Yunus received a Nobel Prize in economics for Grameen Banks' contribution to social and economic development.
Controversies
In 2011, Grameen Bank came under the scanner of Sheikh Hasina's government for misused funds, a charge they had been cleared from by the Norwegian government. With the bank being investigated, rumours floated that Yunus had been fired as head of the bank.
Muhammad Yunus approached the Bangladeshi High Court to protest the legality of the decision, but the decision was stayed. It was claimed that the move was politically motivated, due to Yunus' increasing influence in the national sphere and his attempt to start a political party in 2007.
Thousand of people protested his ‘judicial harassment’ and the investigation went nowhere. Yunus still has pending charges in a case alleging food adulteration in a Grameen Bank subsidiary and another alleging misuse of power by Yunus in acting as a creditor for private enterprises.
Muhammad Yunus was granted bail in a defamation case levelled against him for saying, “All politicians in Bangladesh work for power,” in 2011.
Under Sheikh Hasina's government, Muhammad Yunus has faced a total of 174 cases filed against him.
Personal life
Muhammad Yunus' has a daughter - Monica Yunus, with his first wife Vera Forostenko. Monica is an opera singer based out of New York City.
Muhammad Yunus later married his second wife Afrozi, a researcher of physics at Manchester university, who later became a professor at Jahangirpur University. Their daughter Deena Afroz Yunus was born in 1986.
One of his elder brothers - Muhammad Jahangir was a social activist and television presenter, before he passed away in 2019. His younger brother Muhammad Ibrahim, is the founder of the Centre for Mass Education in Science which brings science education to young girls in villages.
