Reading Banker to the Poor by Dr. Yunus
Field work’s been delayed for a day, so I spent my much-needed rest day reading: Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus.
I remember clearly one specific sentence from Dr. Yunus’ talk at UBC when I was in undergrad.
“We took everything from a conventional bank and turned it all upside down.”
This book detailed his start with Grameen Bank and future hopes for a world full of social-consciousness-driven entreprises.
Despite all the criticism that has been leveled at the Grameen Bank (and it’s related entreprises) in recent years, I find their drive and pragmaticism very admirable. I think they represent the type of experiments we need to have in a much larger scale in the development field. Ruthlessly focused on servicing the “real” poor, strong independent spirit, and willingness to maintain a start-up mentality even once established. And trust in young people unpolluted by corporate or public institutional culture to chisel out a new route to organize. (Ha, I don’t fit in this category anymore!)
Allow me, however, to quote:
Where should one place Grameen philosophy in the spectrum of political ideologies? Right? Left? Center?
Grameen supports less government – even advocating the least government feasible – is committed to the free market, and promotes entrepreneurial institutions. So it must be far right.
Grameen is committed to social objectives: eliminating poverty; providing education, health care, and employment opportunities to the poor; achieving gender equality through the empowerment of women; ensuring the wellbeing of the elderly. Grameen dreams about a poverty-free, welfare-free world.
Grameen is against the existing insitutional framework. It opposes an economy grounded solely on greed-based entrepreises. It wants to create social-consciousness-driven entreprises to compete with greed-based entreprises.
Grameen does not believe in laissez-faire. Grrameen believes in social interventions without government getting involved in running businesses or in providing services. Social intervention should come through policy packages encouraging businesses to move in directions desired by society. it should provide incentives to social-consciousness-driven entreprises to encourage the competitive spirit and strength of the social-consciousness-driven sector.
All these features place Grameen on the political left.
I’m a firm believer of “It doesn’t matter if it’s a black cat or a white cat, as long as it catches mice.”
I do not, however, agree that social-consciousness-driven entreprises (SCDE) should be the sole providers and ensurers of social welfare in society. To do away with government except in the sectors of defense and justice etc, is a recipe for an unequal society. Unless we abolish the institutions of inheritance, society will always remain unequal until we systematically (and radically) redistribute wealth. To trust that independently run SCDEs will do an adequate job of redistributing health (and to believe that these organizations will have enough power to actually take wealth from the wealthy) is beyond naive, in my humble opinion. Poverty and inequality is due to unequalness of power. Apolitical pushes to unleash the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit in the poor will never fundamentally challenge power structures, unless we actually deal with the politics.
The problem with the world is not that we don’t have enough wealth for everyone to live with dignity, it is that we refuse to distribute it evenly.
