Mohammed Yunus, First Nobel Laureate of Bangladesh

 Muhammad Yunus is an economist and founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. He is world known for his efforts to help the poor people reshape their lives. He was awarded Noble Peace Prize in 2006, 13th October, Friday. The prize was given jointly to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank for the efforts of creating social and economic development. He wanted to start from the below, help the poorest of the poor. So, he came up with the idea of Micro Credit, where very small amount of money are given to poor people for a long term period. The average amount given is $100. All the commercial banks out there are not willing to help the poor people as they lack the security and guaranty of returning it. But Muhammad’s thinking was, if we do not start helping from the very base we won’t be able to remove poverty completely. The prize was announced and presented by Professor Ole Nanbolt, who is the chairman of the Norwegian Noble Committee.


Muhammad Yunus was born in 1940 in Chittagong city, one of the major cities of Bangladesh. He was in Bangladesh most of his life. After finishing undergraduate degree in Dhaka University he was accepted by Vanderbilt University with full bright scholarship. In 1969 he did his PhD in Economics from Vanderbilt. After spending some time as an assistant professor in Tennessee State University he came back to Bangladesh. he was a professor in Chittagong University when he started to think about how to help the helpless people. The poor people of villages especially women were stuck in poverty and did not get the help to get out of that situation. Whenever they got some help it was through middle man and it left them with no profit. It was then when the first time Muhammad lend $20 to a group of women to repay their loans. And gradually he got determined to take the initial and make a permanent change. Grameen Bank was founded in 1976 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He finally establish it in 1983. The goal was to help the poor by giving them loans on easy terms. The loans were named as ‘Micro Credit”, and especially helping those who can not get loans from other institutions for the lack of security. The idea here was even the poorest of people can change their condition and make a contribution if they are given the chance and help. Now this idea of Micro Credit is institutionalize in over 100 countries. As this bank is still going with it’s goal to help poor especially women, it’s 95% of the borrowers are women.  They use the money to buy cows, chickens and then sell milk, eggs to make profit. They use it to rebuilt their houses, built small businesses.

After the news of getting the Noble prize spread there were no boundaries of joys across the country, especially all the village people who are the borrowers of the bank. As he is the first Noble Laureate from Bangladesh both Muhammad and Bangladesh were showered with pride. Along with the joy also came some criticism. As many people of Bangladesh questioned his way of doing business. S.M Akash an economies professor of Dhaka University argued that the bank has high interest rate of 20% where any other commercial bank has 10 to 15%. ‘Is it a social justice?’- he asked. But according to world bank the per capita or earning of has increased from $200 to $440 from 1985 to 2006. There still leaves a question whether Grameen Bank is responsible for this growth or not?

By the mean time against all the criticism Muhammad was working on his plan ahead. He would like to use his share of the money, 1.4 million to give low cost-nutrition food to the poor and establish an eye hospital. Also in 2006 in order to spread his work more ‘Yunus Secretariat’ was created with the focus on Social Business. In 2008 it was named ‘Yunus Center’ and till today it has been working on social business issues both globally and in Bangladesh.