WASHINGTON – When you live in a nation rife with corruption and, not coincidentally, poverty, you had better be careful not to discover the cure for either.
That appears to be the lesson for Muhammad Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh more than 35 years ago on the principle of providing loans only to the poorest of poor people, at amounts of a few dollars each, and then teaching them how to start small businesses. Known as microcredit, the principle has spread to many parts of the world. At last count. almost 2 million Bangladeshi households have used this program to move above the poverty threshold over the last 19 years alone.
When you come from a small, struggling nation and you win the Nobel Peace Prize, as Yunus did in 2006, you ought to expect statues in your honor or your bust on a coin. But in modern Bangladesh, you get forcibly removed from your business while state-run media launches smear tactics that would make an American presidential campaign organizer blush.
I have spent the last few days here trying to understand why this is happening. The answers aren't satisfying. The conjecture is that, because Yunus had the audacity to attempt to begin his own political party four years ago, the regime of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has decided to make him pay.
Why should you care about this outrage in a distant land? Because Yunus has ties to Utah, both physically and in principle.
I first met him 14 years ago, only an hour or so after he had cataract surgery at Alta View Hospital. While explaining microcredit, he kept pausing to marvel at how clear his sight was becoming. I have since come to appreciate the symbolism of that visit as he has gradually removed the fog of despair from the eyes of many people earning less than $1.25 a day amid mud and squalor.
Yunus came to us courtesy of Utah surgeon Dr. Scott Leckman, who now is board chairman of Results, a group that lobbies on behalf of programs such as microcredit. (Full disclosure: Results brought me to Washington to give me an award for my writing over the years on Yunus and other issues affecting the poor.)
Yunus resonates with Utahns because his program helps the poor by teaching them how to help themselves. It is a permanent solution, not a handout. Since inventing microfinance, he has branched out by forming at least 20 other companies to help remove impediments to prosperity. These include a health care company with 51 low-cost clinics, a low-cost food business in partnership with Dannon Yogurt and a cell phone concern that, sources here tell me, is the largest company in Bangladesh.
Bringing affordable cell phones to struggling villages has changed life there forever, and not just because people now can text and Tweet. They can communicate over distances.
People here tell me Yunus has asked a major shoe manufacturer to come up with a model that would cost about 1 Euro. They didn't laugh. They're working on it.
Despite all this, last month the Bangladesh Supreme Court's appellate division sided with the government's decision to force Yunus to leave his bank because, at 71, he's too old. The government also has perpetuated the notion, broadcast in an obscure documentary by a Danish filmmaker, that Yunus misused funds from the Norwegian government a dozen years ago. It's a charge long ago dismissed by the Norwegians and Bangladeshis.
Almost as frustrating as trying to understand this crisis is trying to learn what to do about it. The answer seems to lie in urging people with power to apply pressure. That list ranges from companies that do business with Bangladesh or partner with Yunus to the U.S. government, which provides financial aid to the country.
Why should the United States give Bangladesh money to alleviate poverty when it is trying to destroy the man who actually has ideas that work? As the last decade has tragically taught us, extreme poverty leads to despair, and despair can morph into movements that don't confine themselves to far away corners of the world.
Jay Evensen is a Deseret News editorial writer. Email him at even@desnews.com. For more content, visit his web site, www.jayevensen.com.