Muhammad Yunus's mission in Italy

by Adriano Autino

Muhammad Yunus has been in Italy for a week, in September. He has been received by the Government, he explained his MicroCredit methodology, he presented his book "Vers un monde sans pauvreté"⁽¹⁾ he talked about Grameen Bank, about Grameen Foundation and also about the great success that Grameen has all over the world.

Few broadcasting stations gave the news, while television broadcasting station, either governmental or private, gave the news about the event only compared with Kossovo, like if MicroCredit is a useful tool only for emergencies, than, not for us. Sylvie Coyaud, of Radio Popolare, had her merit and the pleasure to interview Prof. Yunus and to transmit his exceptional experience.

As fair as we of TdF are concerned, we regret because we couldn't devote to the event all the attention that it would deserve. We are going to talk again soon about Yunus and Grameen Bank, either by one or more review of his excellent book, or to give references that, in the meantime, we got.

In few words, for people who don't know Prof. Yunus's work yet. Muhammad Yunus was born and grown up in Bangladesh, one of the poorest and most unlucky countries in the world, where the nature gave not a tropical paradise, but lands exhausted by continual floods, dryspells, earthquakes. Yunus bet on poor people, but not only, he bet on the poorest people in his land, winning the bet. During twenty years, he showed that:

1. poor people is solvent and creditworthy, we can borrow them money and get benefit;
2. alms are not only useless, but really detrimental, because they erase human self-respect;
3. corporates leaded by social commitment may be in full competition against corporates based on cupidity and, playing well theirs own cards, they could place them-selves very well in the market.

What we said before gives the lie definitively, with the trial of facts on all the bank policy based on warranty and on credit given only that has capitals yet.

Grameen method is very simple and, is possible to say, scientific: the minimum loan is given, necessary and sufficient for one person to go independently into business. If the person redeems the loan, he can receive another one, otherwise, there isn't any duty to redeem it, but the person cannot receive new loans.

With this easy methodology, Grameen gets the 98% of credits back, per cent from which the conventional banks are really far!

During last years, moreover, Yunus has proved another very important principle, that we of TdF are supporting since some time: electronics and space technologies can be of great assistance for the underdeveloped Countries, and, if come on to a way of emancipation, the people of those countries can be of great assistance for the opening of the space frontier.

Thanks to satellite technologies, Grameen has made a movable telephony network in the villages that before had developed an economy thanks to MicroCredit, enormously quickening their development! Utilising solar power, most poor regions are providing themselves with technological in the van instruments. Imagine what it would be, if those regions can use solar power collected by satellite power plants and, from space, sent to Earth as sheaves of microwaves (about Solar Power from Space, see also the excellent reportage by Patrick Collins on Amsterdam IAF 50^th Congress, in this number of TdF).

So it is showed another of our assertions: people living in the underdeveloped Countries will not need to go over again the steps of industrial development, they can go into electronic age directly, and soon became masters of many advanced disciplines.

But yet more important, for us, is the Yunus’s and Grameen’s global philosophy: it is a philosophy aiming at micro-firm as tool of people emancipation and of economic growth. It is a philosophy finalized to give tools, credit first of all, to people, seen as ever and quite able to undertake and to will.

Reading Yunus’s book we learn, for example, that Bill Clinton and his wife are present to presentations of Grameen in Washington, and they support such Initiative. But so, we begin to wonder: why, if even the planet’s emperor and master and his wife deign to do it, Yunus is not on all newspapers and television news, CNN, BBC, and so on? Why the information about MicroCredit’s revolution succeed in getting through few broadcasting stations, and it spread only thanks to tam tam of few fans, as the dear Sylvie Coyaud or yours truly?

When MicroCredit will have the recognition that deserves by society, the traditional bankers will have but to change trade or to go and learn humbly… in Bangladesh! So it is really right to suspect that most powerful interests are trying to maintain public opinion in the dark about that as long as is possible.

As for us we will do that is possible to dispel this darkness, so that MicroCredit may have the recognition that deserves and can teach in all countries, either post-industrial countries or pre- industrial countries.

(1) "Vers un monde sans pauvreté" - Editions Jean-Claude Lattes, 1997

[English translation by Massimiliano Autino]