YUNUS’S SOCIAL BANKING IS A GOOD BENCHCMARK FOR THIRD WORLD ENTREPRENEURS Alexander K Opicho (Eldoret, Kenya; aopicho@yahoo) Reading Muhammad Yunus’s Bank of the poor is inspiringly enjoyful.Published by Public affairs of new York in a realm of seven years ago, the Banker of the poor is an informative autobiography, philosophical thesis, ethical cornerstone and an economics dissertation that befit extensive adoption and application as a model of corporate leadership in the third world economies. In this work, Yunus carries the reader through different scenarios of man’s fight against poverty. As an experienced economist and social banker Yunus finely points out how the world economies ; both developed and un-developed can adopt social banking as operationalised through micro lending, as a worth-wile social, economic as well as moral weapon for fighting world poverty. As an autobiographical work, Yunus discusses his childhood experience in a lucid and a picturesque style of any versed writer of prose. Just as it is characteristic with all great people that make significant policies, Yunus is a product of child hood poverty, inner-city upbringing and material inadeguacy.Yunus’s twist of fate got sharper when his mother who was his close friend went mentally berserk for thirty years down to her death .Inspite of poverty related challenges that plighted his early years, Yunus points out that avid readership of school text books and freelance reading of European classics, are key pillars of his mental alertness and scholastic focus. This is evident when Yunus later reveals that his earning of a Fulbright scholarship to Vanderbilt University was pure result of duty but not solicited favour. In guest to present personal philosophy and personal moral disposition, Yunus argues that credit is a natural human right that each and every human creature must be entitled to. It is on this basis that Yunus establishes micro-lending as both a social and development practice that gives the poor of the earth an opportunity to see light of self reliance. In a similar stance, Yunus further, narrates that the poor people in all economic civilsations, are not able to retain capital, which is usually earned as part of their meager wages, in this situation therefore capital formation through profit accumulation is more attracted towards owners of invested capital. On this foundation Yunus encourages the industrial capitalist who have idle capital in their custody, to make it available to the poor through micro-lending. The book gets to the climax by Yunus showing how some-times selfish political leadership can suffocate brilliant entrepreneurial ideas. This often happens when political leaders to contravene in corporate governance only to make economically insensitive policies. This is open condemnation of regular cases of third world government officials arrogating to themselves powers to board membership of corporations that are policy sensitive, even if some government officials don’t have information, knack, commitment and experience to run a profit oriented enterprise in an economic environment of lean capital resources. Under this context, Yunus brings in a very controversial argument that, even also hiring of highly qualified personnel into corporate leadership is not a guarantee that these superb qualifications will translate into optimum corporate policies. As a solution Yunus becomes suggestive that manpower management must appreciate the idea of internal sourcing and executive development. In order to survive negative government infringement on corporate leadership, Yunus brings forward a picture that political and sovereign risks to corporation structure can be mitigated through political and parliamentary lobbying in addition to very good social net working. On the of unfair government interference in corporate leadership, Yunus conclusively remarks that most of third world poverty cases is ascribable to in- consistent government policies. Lack of synergy between the universities and the community practice of small scale agri-business enterprise is a bane of third world academics. Yunus brings out this point by showing that universities in the poor world are insensitive to poverty. They only make research that ends up as a paper publication on the shelves of university libraries. Yunus challenges universities to solve the problem of rural and urban poverty directly without necessarily bringing in confusing models of mathematics and development economics. In conclusion ,Yunus points out that; it is a serious shame for the current human society to tolerate poverty, when it has enough machinery to remove it from the face of the earth.Yunus, points out that if the world leaders can borrow the Grameen bank idea of corporate leadership that focuses on poverty alleviation, human dignity, fundamental human right of accessibility to loanable funds or credit, and social obligations that human comfort is a center-piece of modern corporate objectives other than selfish profit making, then poverty can be sent to a backyard of the world museums when by the time the world celebrates the next jubilee. References; Muhamed Yunus; The Bank of the Poor Alexander K Opicho is a social researcher with Sanctuary Researchers ltd in Eldoret, Kenya he is also a lecturer in Research Methods in governance and Leadership.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 16:40:54 +0000
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