Professor Muhammad Yunus

Founder and director,
the Grameen Bank

Yunus is the author of "Jorimon and Others: Faces of Poverty" (1991). He received his Ph.D. in economics in 1969 from Vanderbilt University, where he was a Fulbright scholar. Yunus was appointed by the secretary-general of the United Nations as a member of the International Advisory Group for the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China (1993-1995). He is the recipient of several humanitarian awards for his work helping the poor in the developing world.

On the origins of the Grameen Bank:

The Grameen bank started off experimenting with giving loans to poor people, because at that time the idea was that the bank cannot lend money to poor people because they are not credit worthy. So we tried [it] out in one village back in 1976 and it worked, and with that experience we expanded to the second village and the third village. Still it worked.

So we kept on expanding ourselves and then we became a formal bank in 1983. Today we work in 40,000 villages. We lend money to 2.4 million borrowers; 95 percent of them are women. All very poor women.

When they join, come in [the] bank, [they] take [out] small loans, industry loans, to start, somewhere around $35 or so, and gradually improve their ability to use the money, and they get bigger and bigger loans to make bigger business[es]. Today [the] average loan size ... would be somewhere under $200.

On the introduction of information technology to places it had not existed:

We [had] been feeling that technology [could] play a very important role in changing the [lives] of poor people, but the way technologies are, it's in the control of better equipped people, rich people, big businesses and so on. So they are designed to serve the purpose of the rich and big business.

Information technology should be directed, and we wanted to try out one particular technology, the telephone. We set up a company called Grameen Phone with the purpose [to put] telephone[s] in the hands of poor women in the villages of Bangladesh. And the woman will take that phone [and using a] Grameen Bank loan [will] start a business selling the telephone service to the people in the village and making money. So that was our thought. ...

We didn't know exactly how it would work, [but] when ... we started taking the phone[s] to the villages, people responded very warmly. Women who never saw a telephone in [their lives] saw the potential of making business. Initially people said: Well, she's a poor woman. She never saw a telephone. She's illiterate woman. She [doesn't] even know how to push those buttons there to dial people, to call people.

And my argument [was] that there are only 10 numbers in the world. If she finds out that it brings money to her, it will take 10 minutes to learn all those 10 numbers. Or maybe 10 hours at the worst. But she will learn very quickly, and then she will master the whole thing.

People said: No, she will be afraid of telephone. She will think a ghost [is] talking to her ears. All kinds of crazy things. So they thought we are crazy. We thought they are crazy, but when we brought it up, people responded very humanly ... and they picked up the gadget. They picked up the technology quickly and became very good businesswomen, selling the service and making a lot of money.

A typical Grameen telephone lady will be earning twice the per capita income of the country within a month. So it's [an] amazing response, and the kind of service that she provides, and the confidence she comes up with, gives us the confidence, so we are expanding it.

Today we have more than 1,300 villages where we have telephone ladies, and they are calling back and forth in many countries around the world. The United States, Japan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, or anywhere in the world. Wherever Bangladeshis are calling their homes in the villages or they are calling their folks in other countries.

On how Bangladeshi villagers have been using the new telephone technology:

People [finding out where there is a good market for] their eggs ... or baskets they want to sell. Or even calling up services, like health services. Calling up doctors. ... Or police, if you have a difficulty in the village.

I heard one particular case where [a woman called up the] city [to find the] exchange rate, because she got paid [with] a check in dollars. She wanted to find out who would give her the best rate on the dollars to be converted into Bangladeshi currency.

So once it is there, they pick it up as a part of their life, because they would have to do it anyway by going there, finding out, spending days and hours to find this information. Today they have the telephone. They don't have to go any place. They can just pick up the phone and call up and find out find it out.

On making rural Bangladeshis aware of the potential of information technology:

My work has convinced me that all people are basically very smart. You don't have to spend a minute when they see something is useful. They pick it up very quickly. All kinds of superstitions, all kinds of ignorance, melt away the moment they see this is something useful.

So you call it telephone. You call it computer. You call it anything that you want. All you have to demonstrate that something they want is there. If it is education, if it is money, if it is convenience, if it is comfort, if it is health, they see it right away.

[We have ignored the rural villages for so long that] when you [bring something] to them they look suspicious ..., because they have been cheated before. So ... they are very suspicious [of] what you are going to sell. They take you as a con man.

But the moment they see that this is in their interest, they forget all about it. Then you come back the following day, [and] they have mastered the technology. They are on top of it. They can tell you what they have already learned, and very quickly you will see the young people are learning things which [the] older generation never thought will ever happen.

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