Indian Finance, Planning and Forests Minister Sudhir Mugantiwar has urged Nobel Laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus to help the Maharashtra state government design programmes for rural development and inclusive financing.
He made the call during a meeting recently held with Prof Yunus during his visit to Mumbai, said a Yunus Centre Press Release on Tuesday.
An intensive discussion was held for four hours, which was participated by secretaries of ministries and heads of all government agencies involved in development issues, academics, and representatives of national rural finance organisation NABARD.
State Minister for Finance and Rural Development Deepak Kesarkar also attended the meeting.
Sudhir Mugantiwar laid out the questions he had for discussion in order to prepare a strategy document to present as part of his next budget statement and include relevant actions in the budget.
Particularly, he wanted to know about the social business, and programmes for turning unemployed rural and urban youth out of unemployment.
He also express his interest to know why microcredit programmes and lending for small and medium scale enterprises in his state were not performing satisfactorily, and how to revitalise these programmes in line with Grameen Bank experience in Bangladesh.
Explaining the social business concept introduced by him, Prof Yunus said making money was happiness but making other people happy was a super happiness.
During the meeting, the Indian Finance Minister said that he would like to visit Bangladesh together with experts and state officials to accompany him (between Oct 23 and Nov 9) so that decisions about basic concept may be formulated while in Bangladesh.
