A banker to the poor

This book is both the memoirs of Mohd. Yunus and his struggle to bring Prosperity in Bangladesh through his initiative of ‘Grameen Bank’.

He describes his journey and how coincidently, he was forced into banking due to the rudimentary banking operations which were opposed to poor people and made him to start a new bank with the name of ‘Grameen Bank’ which was ultimately vindicated when he received the Nobel for his efforts in 2006.

Mohd Yunus, focuses on the creativity and the quench of poor for prosperity to show that that by providing them reasonable amount as loan to start their business, we in reality can lift them from BPL to APL ,he also highlights that providing alms to poor is a short term gain and would never bring prosperity to them and also by doing this we are just turning our eyes from their sufferings.

Poor People are Creative people and they know what they are good at doing, what they really need is those resources which can help them to unharness the poverty which can only be provided in form of direct monetary benefits.

On the issue of repayment ,he emphasizes that poor will never default as he knows that this is his last and only source to eradicate this poverty; and he do not want to lose it.

Through this book, he portrayed why providing loans to women is more important than providing it to man as women use to think about the whole family, hygiene, maintenance and well being of family whereas male member think of himself only.

This book also provide numerous examples of the successful incorporation of Grameen like Banks all over the world and the reason of their success he states that is because the desire of poor to eradicate the poverty is same everywhere; he portrays how we Grameen project which was only started to provide ‘money’ to poor has helped to reduce women exploitation both from physical and mental ,the mortality rate has gone down, the people are getting more concerned about hygiene and about the education to their children.

This book also reasons out that the various policies of government that are induced to provide the final products to the poor like subsidized kerosene, rice, wheat through various bureaucratic channel which ultimately don’t provide any benefit to poor except the top bureaucrats and government employees, he in fact goes so far as to suggest government to also provide direct monetary benefits to poor in spite of all these unsuccessful efforts.

The another contrary view he highlights that organizations should not look towards the BPL as Not for profit work but they should realize that they can extract profit out of this business also if their intentions and working is directed towards the betterment of the poor.

For all those who are really want to serve the poor and their country in some way or the other, this book highlights that Yunus never thought about the end result or the Nobel Prize but he was more interested in serving his nation, his motherland in every bit he can do starting from his college days, which somehow led him away from his established profession of a teacher leading him to be a banker winning a Nobel Prize for his efforts in 1996.