Muhammad Yunus :
(From previous issue)
Financial institutions are designed for the rich
We have created a world for the rich by creating the financial institutions for the rich. If we want to get the poor out of poverty we have to create exclusive financial institutions for the poor. Institutions designed for the rich will not do any good to the poor.
Finance is the power. For the bottom half of the world population, banks do not exist. So they remain powerless.
Today, there is concentration of economic power in a few hands because financial institutions are dedicated to help them in accomplishing this. We talk about land reform for overcoming poverty, because land represents power in rural societies. But we don’t talk about credit and equity reform. We don’t ask who gets how much of bank credit and equity? Or what percentage of population gets what percentage of bank credit? This one piece of information will give us the real story on power and powerlessness. Credit and equity disparity is the single most powerful cause of income disparity.
We’ll have to create new financial institutions if we are worried about income disparity and poverty. Grameen Bank has shown how even the poorest women, and even beggars, can do business with a financial institution provided it is designed for them. Don’t ask them to do business with an institution which is designed for the rich. Social business funds can be an answer to the availability of equity to the bottom-most people.
Not job seekers, but job creators
While the idea of labour union is an excellent idea, the basic assumption of ‘once a labour, always a labour’ has to be removed. There should be plenty of opportunity for each and every person to switch from being labour to being an entrepreneur. Social business can make it happen. Every person, at all stages of his life, should have two options, either to work for somebody, or be an entrepreneur. He should be told about these options in school, when he is growing up. He should be given opportunity to prepare himself, both as a job creator, and as a job-seeker. Even if someone takes up a job, it does not have to be a life-long engagement. He should have the opportunity to move about in both worlds. It is essential that we build appropriate financial institutions to make it happen. Financial institutions are key to make these switches possible.
Creating a world without unemployment
Unemployment means throwing a fully capable person into a trash can. It means punishing a human being to remain paralysed. A human being is born to be active, creative, energetic-always exploring ways to unleash his own unlimited potential. Why should we allow anybody to unplug a creative human being, and deny him the opportunity to use his amazing capacity? Who unplugs him? Why do billions of people around the world remain unplugged? Why do we deprive the world from the creativity of almost half the adult population?
This problem of unemployment is not created by the unemployed people themselves. It is created by our grossly flawed conceptual framework which has drilled into our heads that people are born to work for a few privileged people called entrepreneurs. Since entrepreneurs are the drivers of the economy, according to the present theory, all policies and institutions are built for them. If they don’t hire you, you are finished. What a misreading of human destiny. What an insult to a human being who is packed with unlimited creative capacity.
Our education system is an extension of this same economic theory. It is built on the assumption that students should work hard, get good grades so that they can get good jobs. Education is seen as the process of preparing young people to get jobs and live happily after. Top universities in the world pride themselves by letting the public know that their graduates appear in the graduation ceremony with appointment letters in their pockets.
I have been insisting that all human beings are born entrepreneurs, not job-seekers. Education system should be aiming at enhancing their entrepreneurial capacities, not eliminate it by making the students believe that getting a job is the ultimate goal of their lives.
Young people are never told that all they are born with two choices, and continue to have these two choices throughout their lives. They can be job-creators, or they can be job-seekers.
In Grameen Bank, we are inspiring the second generation of borrowers’ families to believe that they are not job seekers, they are job givers. All children in the world should grow up that way. Institutions and policies should be created to make it happen. Job seeking should become a second choice for any young person. In Bangladesh we have created social business fund to provide all the equity he or she needs to become an entrepreneur. We provide him and her all the support to make him and her successful.
Why are half the young people in some European countries unemployed? Why are they talking about a ‘lost generation’ in Europe? Why are they accepting it as an unalterable fate? Are they not insulting human capability by accepting it as a fate? Is putting unemployed people on state charity the only solution? Is this how we uphold human dignity, by putting young creative people on state charity? What about giving them opportunity to explore their own creative power?
We may ask them to start an enterprise of their own. In that case the most important support they would need is initial financing. This is how micro finance idea was born and took institutional shape in Grameen Bank. Micro-finance was aimed at creating self-employment for the unemployed poor women. It worked. I see no reason why similar specialised financing institutions for credit and equity should not work for the unemployed youth. We need to create such intuitions. We can start with social business funds for providing equity to the unemployed youth in Europe and elsewhere.
We must take the initiative. We cannot just sit and watch a whole generation of young people fall through the cracks of theory because we are too timid to question the wisdom of our theoreticians.
We have to redesign our theory by recognising the limitless capacity of a human being, instead of relying on ‘invisible hands’ to solve all our problems. We’ll have to wake up to the fact that ‘invisible hands’ are invisible because they do not exist.
State charity
If we can ensure that nobody needs to remain unemployed, we get a society without poverty and without state charity to support the unemployed. Unemployment is an artificial creation of our faulty conceptual framework. It is not natural to human beings. Human beings are doers; they are go-getters. But our theory has put them in chains. Theory should not be allowed to punish human beings. We should punish the theory by scrapping it.
We should make sure that the word ‘unemployment’ soon gets unemployed. When we build a new world we know for sure in that world the word ‘unemployment’ will not make sense to anybody. Nobody would be able to figure out how a full blooded human being could remain idle. In our conceptual framework we should not allow anything which is derogatory to human spirit.
Theory should reflect us, we should not be subjected to reduce ourselves to fit a theory. Human beings should not be squeezed into narrow moulds of theory. Theory must allow enough room for human beings to grow, rather than limit them. Human beings thrive in this world by constantly making the impossible possible. Theory must keep all its doors open to make it happen easily. People should have the final word on their fate, at each stage of history, not the theory.
Helping people in distress is the prime responsibility of the state. State charity must be applauded for doing an excellent job of taking care of its citizens in distress. But a still higher responsibility of the state will be to enable people to come out of their distress as soon as possible and get out of their dependence on state.
Human beings are all about independence and freedom, and their constant search for their own worth, not about dependence on anyone. Dependence diminishes human beings. Their mission in this planet is to make it a better place for everybody. They should not be put in a situation where they remain dependent on state all their life, then pass it on to their next generation, who in turn, pass this on to the third generation, creating an unending series. State charity has created this situation for many people in Europe. We have the technology and methodology to bring an end to this. All it needs is a determined initiative.
Conclusion
A human being is an enormously creative and entrepreneurial being. Conceptual framework of present capitalist theory is too narrow and undignified for him. It reduces him to a selfish robot. We need to design a theory keeping in mind the true human being, not a distorted and miniaturised version of him. A true human being holds the potential of assuming any of the many diversified possibilities. He is a selfless, caring, sharing, trusting, community-building, friendly human being. He is, at the same time, also the reverse of all these virtues.
How he’ll shape himself will entirely depend on the world around him. We need to give him all the opportunities to bring out the right virtues. Today, we limit him to a very narrow role. We do not introduce him to his limitless possibilities. Theory constrains him to a narrow self-serving path. That’s where the trouble begins. Whereas we should have told him, your possibilities are limitless; you can do anything you want; you have the power to create a world without poverty, without unemployment, without income disparity, without endangering the planet, without wars and weapons, and with equality, friendship and peace.
Now the time is here to tell him that.
(The writer is a Nobel Laureate and founder of Grameen Bank.)
(Concluded)
