Half the children in Bangladesh are malnourished and good nutrition is in very, very short supply among the children here.

This is designed to solve the problem of malnutrition among the children of Bangladesh. So this is a social business, as apart from the other part of Danone which is money-making. We have created Garmeen-Danone in Bangladesh – Danone is a yoghurt company. One example is the joint venture with multi-national company Danone. We have created a lot of social businesses in Bangladesh. And I call this a social business and that is the subject of my book. So, I say why don’t you create that part of economics and then we can do both things? We can create business for selfish purposes, which we do today, and we can create business for selfless purposes too, meaning solving the problems that we have around us. But that door was never open to them because economics never put that aspect of people into the theory. They want to make money and they want to change the world. Foreign Policy & International RelationsĪre you saying that people are less predictable than economics allows?.He just believes we've forgotten that people are selfless too, that they enjoy doing good by other people as much as they enjoy making money. Indeed, he wants as many people as possible to work for themselves. He doesn't want to do away with capitalism. Yunus acknowledges that people are selfish, eager to enrich themselves. In businesses not directed towards profit but social impact, businesses that are financially self-sustaining but plow the profits back into the business rather than the pockets of shareholders. We all want to express our creative power.' Instead, he believes in socially conscious entrepreneurship. 'Human beings,' Yunus sniffs, 'are not to be kept in charity. So Universal Basic Income, an increasingly popular idea, gets short shrift. With jobs for vast numbers threatened by technology, Yunus argues that solutions founded in 'old-fashioned economic thinking' just won't cut it. There is no 'moral justification', he says, contrasting Prime Minister Narendra Modi's attitude towards granting Bangladeshi Hindus citizenship to his reluctance to even acknowledge Rohingya Muslims as legitimate refugees fleeing a crisis.Ī World of Three Zeros decries inequality, stresses the iniquity of just eight people (eight!) owning more wealth than 3.6 billion people (3.6 billion!). Yunus is 'very disappointed' too with India's response, with how a country 'with great influence on Suu Kyi is walking away from a situation of horror'. She has, he said, 'deviated from her path' and encouraged her to 'visit the Rohingya people in Bangladesh and tell them that Burma is as much their country as it is hers'. Still, Yunus roused himself for one more passionate denunciation of fellow Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, 'a symbol of violence and atrocity'. He was taking time out from the UN General Assembly session, where he'd been speaking at events on the sidelines and lunching with the likes of French president Emmanuel Macron. Indeed, speaking on the phone from New York last month, he sounded tired, scratchy, a 77-year-old man saddled with too arduous a responsibility. In the 40 or so years since the founding of Grameen Bank, Yunus has won a Nobel Peace and been recognised as one of the world's top 'global thinkers' but refuses to be put out to gilded pasture.

'Microcredit has since unleashed,' he writes, 'the entrepreneurial capabilities of over 300 million poor people around the world, helping to break the chains of poverty and exploitation that have enslaved them.' A professor in Chittagong, Yunus founded the Grameen Bank in 1976, he reminds us in the opening chapter of his new book A World of Three Zeros. By Shougat Dasgupta: Muhammad Yunus is most famous for his successful experiments in microcredit, in loaning out small sums at low interest rates to poor people seeking opportunities, not handouts.

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