In just four days, two groups in Bangladesh – student protesters and the army – have pulled off something remarkable in the South Asian nation. They forced a longtime autocrat to flee and ushered in a broadly accepted transitional government. What happens now depends in part on a man chosen to restore democracy: Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.
He got off to a good start by pleading for an end to all violence and putting together a diverse interim Cabinet. If he can provide a quick path to credible elections, he will have laid the stonework for an inclusive, secular rule in a region lacking models of healthy democracy.
An innovator in antipoverty approaches, Dr. Yunus argued that a stable democracy depends on creating grassroots entrepreneurs. Fifty years ago, as a young professor of economics, Dr. Yunus launched a bank to lift people out of deep poverty through small loans given on patient terms. Since 1974, the Grameen (meaning “Village”) Bank project has disbursed close to $40 billion in loans, often as small as $100, to nearly 11 million borrowers. The bank operates in almost every village of Bangladesh. Borrowers become co-owners of the bank. Nearly all are women. Their default rate is negligible.
In his Nobel acceptance speech in 2006, Dr. Yunus said societies should be structured to “make room for the blossoming” of the “limitless … qualities and capabilities” inherent in each individual.
“A human being is born into this world fully equipped not only to take care of him or herself, but also to contribute to enlarging the well-being of the world as a whole,” he said. Too many antipoverty programs “[underestimate] human capacity,” he said. They fail “at the conceptual level, rather than any lack of capability on the part of people.”
Little wonder he was the consensus choice as interim leader. Politics, he said, must now stop being backward-looking and score-settling. It must rely on a new generation focused on the future.
After 15 years of corrupt and autocratic rule, Bangladeshis are ready to take a cue from someone who knows how to build the kind of trust predicated on the inherent dignity and capacity of each individual.