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Rescind decision on Grameen Bank

I wish to join all the friends of Grameen and others to call upon the government to desist from the move to impose "de facto" control over Grameen, which clearly tantamounts to depriving the poor women, who are also its owners, their right to manage their own bank and render them powerless.

S.M Rashed Ahmed
BANGLADESH can justifiably take pride in its uniqueness; the creativity, the innovativeness, the spirit of entrepreneurship, among others, of its people. This found international acceptance for the first time after independence when nine women representatives of Grameen representing 8.3 million poor women borrowers and owners of Grameen Bank, along with their founding father Prof Yunus, were awarded the Noble Prize for Peace in 2006; the nation went rapturous with an outpouring of jubilation from the cities to the remotest corners of Bangladesh; all eyes were glued to the TV to witness the honouring of Bangladesh.
It is hard to achieve independence; it is harder still to preserve and consolidate it. That one of our sons, Yunus, and Grameen were awarded the most prestigious Nobel Prize symbolised the recognition by the international community that Bangladesh had come of age; it is no longer a basket case; it meant to us a giant step forward towards consolidation of our independence and freedom; we the people felt that way. Significantly, this was another historic day when the nation achieved a rare consensus that Yunus and Grameen women are our hero and heroines cutting across all divides and differences; the forging of a unity which we felt would eventually herald the birth of a "New Bangladesh." It is not long ago that the current prime minister attended the microcredit summit and rightly eulogised the contribution of microcredit and its founder to the alleviation of poverty.
What, then, has gone wrong that the hero of yesterday should have become the villain of today, the "blood sucker” to those who eulogised him and his creation Grameen in such glorious terms? What a tragic irony of history!
From the perspective of a diplomat the main objectives of the foreign policy of an LDC country like Bangladesh have to be security with accent on food, water, energy, global warming etc. Diplomacy is geared towards maintenance and preservation of peace. War or conflict is called the "vanishing point of diplomacy.” Significantly, Prof. Yunus and Grameen were awarded the Nobel Prize not for economics but for peace. And by giving Grameen the Nobel Prize for Peace the Norwegian Nobel Committee reinforced the concept that "peace is inextricably linked to poverty; poverty is a threat to peace." Grameen and its founder Yunus thus made outstanding contributions to the realisation of the objectives of our foreign policy and diplomacy.
We have some way to go to graduate from an LDC
to a middle income country. To achieve this objective we will need international support, assistance and technology. The ODA is declining, due to financial crisis in the developed countries, and our emphasis has to be on attracting FDI to supplement our domestic resources and effort. The image and acceptability of Bangladesh to both the governments and the people of the donor countries, agencies, foreign companies and investors, is crucial.
The government’s move to practically rob the Grameen Bank of its independence, politicise it, and vilify Yunus, will erode the support base for Bangladesh in these countries at this crucial time; faced as we are with formidable challenges of poverty
and development. The image of Grameen and Yunus have become inseparable and interwined with the image of Bangladesh; this is a hard reality whether one believes it or not.
The pioneering role and achievements of Grameen's microcredit programme towards the alleviation of poverty, leading to its elimination, have been acknowledged worldwide. Today, microcredit or micro-finance has spread around the world. There are now Grameen-type programmes in almost every country in the world, and many of the poor are able to use the small stake that a micro loan provides as the basis for building a thriving business — a tiny farm, a craft workshop, a little store, etc. that can lift them and their families out of poverty. In fact, since Grameen began lending money to poor people, especially women, millions of families in Bangladesh alone have improved their economic circumstances with the help of microcredit. Financially, Grameen is self-reliant and has not taken donor's money since 1995.
The role of Grameen in poverty alleviation and peace embraces a wider area. It gives, among others,
housing, student and micro-enterprise loans to poor families and offers a host of attractive savings, pension funds, insurance products for its members. Importantly, the legal ownership of these houses belongs to women. One of the major decisions of Grameen was sending children to school, which Grameen encouraged through scholarships for talented students. Many of those children went for higher education and some of them even got PhD.
Another pathbreaking achievement of Grameen has been the bringing of Information Technology (ICT) to the poor by creating a mobile phone company called Grameen Phone to change the lives of the poor. Grameen Bank gave loan to the poor women to buy mobile phones and to sell phone services in the villages; this has become the quickest way for the poor to get out of poverty and earn social respectability. A quite social revolution of historic proportion, its longterm impact towards modernisation of Bangladesh cannot be overestimated.
Some of the achievements include creation of Uddog to help the local weavers bring to the international markets a new line of fabrics named "Grameen Check," and founding of Grameen Shakti (Grameen Energy), one of the world's largest market based suppliers of solar energy, Grammen Kollayan and Grameen Health Care Services to provide affordable health care to Grameen Bank members and other villagers.
I have tried to highlight some of the major achievements of Grameen which account for its popularity and support and to underscore the fact that it is crucial to preserve the independence of Grameen based on its outstanding achievements for the rural poor, particularly women.
I wish to join all the friends of Grameen and others to call upon the government to desist from the move to impose "de facto" control over Grameen, which clearly tantamounts to depriving the poor women, who are also its owners, their right to manage their own bank and render them powerless.
The decision to invest the chairman of Grameen Bank instead of the Board with the power to appoint the managing director is unprecedented and undemocratic. 1 share the apprehension of Prof. Yunus and others that this will eventually destroy Grameen. Public opinion should be mobilised accordingly so that the government has to rescind its decision; the voice of the people is the voice of God.
The writer is a former Bangladesh ambassador and former UN Regional Administrator, Kosovo.
E-mail: rashed_ahmed2001@yahoo.com