Nobel Laureate Dr. Yunus : Let charity begin at home

In a recent interview with a young group of representatives of the Hong Kong Bridge Society, Professor Yunus identified the weak political system as the root cause of corruption and held the political parties responsible for nourishing the same. In his typical style, especially after wearing the current crown of the debated Nobel Peace Prize, he prescribed yet again a poor and wilfully “distracting from the root cause” solution, by asking the children to revolt against their parents by showing strong hatred to them in such cases. Although I do not endorse his ideas or solutions, I would expect him to let charity begin at home in testing his own prescription. Professor Yunus must be aware that an official request has already been made on 10.12.06, in response to an appeal by the Durniti Daman Commission (a new and supposed to be independent version of the former Anticorruption Bureau) to enquire on the allegation of illegally smuggling out of Bangladesh, thousands of crores of taka (worth a few thousand Nobel prize money and the highest-scale corruption in a single sector which evidently made Bangladesh much poorer and the drainage of huge amount of money is still continued) by the Grameen Phone and the Grameen Bank. The complaint also includes illegally snatching sky-high interests by bluffing the 70 lac simple women folk borrowers. The matter was published on 04.12.06 in the Daily Ittefaq too. According to a report published in the daily Ittefaq on 18.12.06, Professor Yunus confessed that a share holder of Grameen Phone is responsible for illegally snatching crores of taka from the poor people of Bangladesh. Grameen Phone was enjoying the monopoly of mobile phone business since 1996. Recently, in the competitive market, they had to drastically reduce the price of their sim cards to Tk. 500/- from Tk.1,50,000/- (!) , call charge per minute to Tk.0.80 from Tk. 7.00, recharge system to monthly/biyearly/yearly basis from only 21 days, which obviously makes the allegation of illegally smuggling out of Bangladesh, thousands of crores of taka justifiable, on the basis of their more than 1-crore subscribers. It is not unknown anymore to anybody that because of the friendship with Mr. Clinton (since his studentship) and Ms. Hillary and the service of President Clinton as the “Chief Publicist” of Professor Yunus and “many other reasons ” which pleased (!) the western world, Professor Yunus was a top favorite person to the West. Therefore, the people certainly has the right to ask Professor Yunus, how effective was his influence (backed by the interested powerful western countries) in getting the right of monopoly mobile phone business in the country for Grameen Phone and which government(s) and govt. servant(s) were responsible for giving that gift of monopoly, and why he is admitting all these now after thousands of crores of taka have already been looted out illegally from the poor people of Bangladesh and why didn’t he unveil the conspiracy beforehand. Regarding Grameen Bank, let a research oriented write-up styled as “Grameen Bank : Poverty alleviation or elevation” (1994), published in 1995 in largely circulated dailies and periodicals be referred to. The research work was sent to many places both at home and abroad including Grameen Bank, Ministry of Finance and Bangladesh Bank for their comments and necessary action. Later, many similar write-ups and letters on Grameen Bank and NGO’s have also been published, each in the largely circulated dailies and periodicals in the last more than one decade. But no reply has yet been received from any authority including Grameen Bank. Although, there were many allegations against Grameen Bank in those write-ups and letters, only 4(four) of them are placed today. (1) Effective minimum rate of interest on general loans of Grameen Bank is 36% (correctly 43.63%). (2) It is better to take loans from the blood-sucking money lenders offering loans @ 219% interest than from Grameen Bank, because of the additional hard conditions of Grameen Bank, besides interests. (3) The propaganda that “Grameen Bank gives loan without any security” is nothing but a complete bluff. (4) The Western countries become very happy if a portion of their uncountable and surplus wealth from the sale of arms is reinvested in the exorbitantly high interest oriented poverty business, since they get hardly any place to invest such a huge wealth with guaranteed return. Elaborate discussions have been made in the above mentioned write-ups. In a recent interview with the TV channel-I, Professor Yunus, on the question of money lending at exorbitantly high rate of interest replied “various comments are normal in new kinds of ventures”. No, Dr. Yunus, your such answers or even hundreds of foreign Nobel certificates aren’t acceptable answers to the very serious type of allegations against Grameen Bank. Therefore, I would expect the family members of Professor Yunus to revolt and pressurize him either to accept the serious allegations like making the motherland poorer to a great extent and illegally snatching sky-high interests by bluffing 70 lacs of simple women folk borrowers or to face the long over due challenges with courage and honesty, by arranging a seminar in the presence of a patriotic media.

On the question of root causes of corruption, well-planned poverty sustainability and moral degradation programs, discussions have been made in the above mentioned write-ups and also in a recent world wide widely publicized (more than 6090 international sites including Wikipedia and Guardian Unlimited, many commercial CDs have also been brought) article titled “100-Dollar Laptop: UN Secretary General’s Office shouldn’t be used for exploiting the poor”.

Nazmul Huda
38/10 Siddheswari Road, Dhaka-1217 nazinvbd@yahoo.com