Banker to the Poor (25 page)

Each month branches are coming closer to achieving new stars. Grameen staff members look forward to transforming all the branches of Grameen Bank into Five Star branches. Each staff member can earn stars, even when the branch has yet to receive any stars, by simply fulfilling the same conditions for the centers for which he is responsible.

Grameen staff members proudly display their stars on formal occasions. It has generated a burst of energy all around. They are not doing it for any monetary benefit. They are doing it in the spirit of competition—to be ahead of their peers; to create a record for their branches, areas, or zones; to make a personal contribution in changing the economic and social conditions of the poor families they are working for and, above all, to prove their worth to themselves. Observing this phenomenon, one cannot but wonder how an environment can make people despair and sit idle and then, by changing the conditions, one can transform the same people into matchless performers.

Grameen Bank II has defined micro-credit in very simple terms. It has provided a powerful methodology to achieve its mission. Coming years will show what impact it makes in the lives of the poor in Bangladesh and globally. It has already proven to be a wonderful and exciting experience for Grameen staff members and the borrowers. It has raised our work to a new level of efficiency and effectiveness.

We often refer to the "next century" as if we were talking about the next twenty-four hours. But the next century means the next 100 years—and we are already on our way. I don't think anybody has the knowledge or wisdom to predict what will happen to the world and its inhabitants during the next 100 years. The world is changing in such unpredictable ways and will continue to become more and more unpredictable as we move through this century. All we can say with a fair amount of certainty is that the speed of change will become faster and faster—it is very unlikely to slow down. Take all the accumulated knowledge, discoveries, and inventions up until the end of the twentieth century, and in the next fifty years alone, this will grow perhaps several times. That is the kind of incredible speed of change that we are approaching.

If somehow we could come back to today's world 100 years from now, we would definitely feel as if we were visitors from some prehistoric age. If we try to imagine what the world will be like twenty-five years from today, we would have to create science fiction.

The momentum for change is clearly in place. The insatiable quest for knowing the unknown, the eagerness of business to put technology at the service of consumers, and the military arms race between nations have all helped create this momentum. The real question is whether these changes will bring the human race closer to or farther away from desirable social and economic conditions.

The answer is obvious. If we consider ourselves passengers on "Spaceship Earth," we will find ourselves on a pilotless journey with no discernable route to follow. If we can convince ourselves that we are actually the crew of this spaceship, and that we must reach a specific socioeconomic destination, then we will continue to approach that destination—even if we make mistakes or take detours along the way.

We need to know the destination—if not in a precise way, then at least a generalized way. Before we actually translate something into reality, we must be able to dream about it. Any socioeconomic dream is nothing but the first step in the process of mapping the course to our destination. If we do a good job in identifying our destination, more innovations and changes will take place to help us reach it.

So the real question is not so much where
we
will be in the year 2050, but where we would like
the world
to be in 2050.

By that time, I want to see a world free from poverty. This means that there will not be a single human being on this planet that may be described as a poor person or who is unable to meet his or her basic needs. By then, the word "poverty" will no longer have relevance. It will be understood only with reference to the past.

Poverty does not belong in civilized human society. Its proper place is in a museum. That's where it will be. When schoolchildren go with their teachers and tour the poverty museums, they will be horrified to see the misery and indignity of human beings. They will blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhumane condition and for allowing it to continue in such a large segment of the population until the early part of the twenty-first century.

I have always believed that the elimination of poverty from the world is a matter of will. Even today we don't pay serious attention to the issue of poverty, because the powerful remain relatively untouched by it. Most people distance themselves from the issue by saying that if the poor worked harder, they wouldn't be poor.

When we want to help the poor, we usually offer them charity. Most often we use charity to avoid recognizing the problem and finding a solution for it. Charity becomes a way to shrug off our responsibility. But charity is no solution to poverty. Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about the lives of the poor. Charity appeases our consciences.

The real issue is creating a level playing field for everybody—rich and poor countries, powerful and small enterprises—giving every human being a fair chance. As globalization continues to encroach on our socioeconomic realities, the creation of this level playing field can become seriously endangered unless we initiate a global debate and generally agree on the features of a "right" architecture of globalization, rather than drift into something terribly wrong in the absence of a framework for action. This framework will no doubt have many features, but we can keep in mind the following: The rule of "strongest takes it all" must be replaced by a rule that ensures everybody a place and a piece of the action. "Free trade" must mean freedom for the weakest. The poor must be made active players, rather than passive victims, in the process of globalization. Globalization must promote harmony and partnership between the big and the small economies, rather than become a vehicle for unhindered takeovers by the rich economies. Globalization must ensure the easiest movement of people across borders. Each nation, especially poor ones, must make serious and continuous efforts to bring information technology to the poor people to enable them to take maximum advantage of globalization. Social entrepreneurs must be supported and encouraged to get involved in the process of globalization to make it friendly to the poor. Special privileges should be offered to them to let them scale up and multiply.

Human society has tried in many ways to ensure equality of opportunity, but poverty remains. We expect the state to take care of the poor and have wound up with massive bureaucracies to look after the poor. A large amount of taxpayers' money is set aside to finance the programs administered by these bureaucracies. But whatever governmental programs have achieved, they certainly have not created equality of opportunity. Poverty is very often handed down from one generation to the next.

As we proceed through the early days of this new millenium, it would serve us well to strive toward the daring Millennium Development Goals set by the Millennium Summit of world leaders at the United Nations in June 2000. The most daring of these goals is an entirely achievable one: halving poverty by 2015. I am totally convinced from my experience of working with poor people that they can get themselves out of poverty if we give them the same or similar opportunities as we give to others. The poor themselves can create a poverty-free world. All we have to do is to free them from the chains that we have put around them.

In order to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, poverty, we must go back to the drawing board. Concepts, institutions, and analytical frames—the conditions that created poverty—cannot end poverty. If we can intelligently rework the frame conditions, then poverty will be gone, never to come back again. We must widen our concept of employment, ensure financial services even to the poorest person, and recognize every single human being as a potential entrepreneur.

Changes are products of intensive effort. The intensity of effort depends on the felt need for change and the resources that are mobilized to bring about the changes desired. In a greed-based economy, obviously, changes will be greed-driven. These changes may not always be socially desirable. Socially desired changes may not be attractive from the greed perspective.

That is why socially conscious organizations are needed, and the state and civil society should provide financial and other resources to them. Such organizations will continually devote their attention and research and development money to those areas of innovation, adaptation, and development in technology that will facilitate the achievement of beneficial social goals. They will also monitor the greed-driven developments in technology to ensure that such technologies do not lead societies in undesirable directions.

I believe that one of the best ways forward is to encourage social entrepreneurs. The behavior patterns of a social-objective–driven entrepreneur, i.e., a social entrepreneur, are as follows:

 

• He (or she) competes in the marketplace with all other competitors but is inspired by a set of social objectives. This is the basic reason for being in the business.
  
 

• He may earn personal profit as well. This personal profit may range from zero to a significantly large amount, even larger than his personal-gain–driven competitor. But in his case, personal profit is a secondary consideration, rather than the prime consideration. On the other hand a personal-profit–driven entrepreneur may contribute in achieving some social objectives. But this will be a by-product of his business, or a secondary consideration. This will not make him a social entrepreneur.
  
 

• The higher the social impact per dollar invested, the higher the market rating of the social entrepreneur. Here, the "market" will consist of potential investors who are looking for opportunities to invest their money in social-objective–driven enterprises. Social-investment dollars will move from low social impact enterprises to higher impact enterprises, from general impact enterprises to specific and visible impact enterprises, from traditional social enterprises to highly innovative and efficient enterprises.
  

Social-objective–driven investors will need a separate (i.e., social) stock market, as well as separate rating agencies, financial institutions, mutual funds, venture capital, and so on. Almost everything that we have for profit-driven enterprises will be needed for social-objective–driven enterprises—such as audit firms, due diligence and impact assessment methodologies, regulatory framework, standardization, and the like—only in a different context and with different methodologies.

Because of the way in which the orthodoxy of economics has given shape to the existing world, all the investment money now is locked up in only one category of investment: investment for making personal profit. This has happened because people have not been offered any choice. There is only one type of competition: competition to amass more personal wealth. The moment we open the door to making a social impact through investments, investors will start putting their investment dollars through this door as well. Initially, some investors will divert only a part, and maybe a small part, of their investment money to social enterprises. But if social entrepreneurs show concrete impact, then this flow will become larger and larger. Soon, a new type of investor will begin appearing on the scene—those who will put all or almost all their investment money into social investments.

Some of the existing profit-driven entrepreneurs may start revealing another dimension of their entrepreneurial ability. They may successfully operate in both the worlds: as conventional profit-seekers in one, as dedicated social entrepreneurs in another.

If the social enterprises can demonstrate high impact and creative enterprise designs, a day may come when personal profit–driven enterprises will find themselves hard-pressed to protect their market share. They'll be forced to imitate the language and style of social enterprises to stay in business.

If socially motivated people can dedicate their lives in politics to bring change in their communities, nations, and to the world, I see no reason why some socially motivated people will not dedicate their lives to building and operating social-objective–driven enterprises. So far they have not done so, because neither the opportunity nor the supportive framework exist. We must change this situation.

A completely new world can be created by making space for the social entrepreneurs and the social investors in the business world. This is a very important agenda for all of us. Eliminating poverty will become so much easier if social entrepreneurs can take up the challenge of ending poverty and if social investors can use their investment money to support the work of social entrepreneurs.

As recent developments show, there is one particular technology that is going to change the world in the immediate future far more rapidly and fundamentally than any other technology in human history. This may be broadly described as
information and communication technology
. Already, its rate of expansion is phenomenal.

Take the Internet, for example. It is spreading at an exponential rate. At its present rate of expansion, Internet use worldwide is doubling every year. The most attractive aspect of this spread of information and communications technology is that it is not under anyone's control. Neither government, nor big business, nor anyone of any authority can restrict the flow of information through the Internet. And it is becoming cheaper every day.

Information and communication technology gives us reason to hope that we are approaching a world free of power brokers and knowledge brokers. Individuals will be in command. There will be no screening authority on center stage. This is particularly exciting for all disadvantaged groups, voiceless groups, and minority groups. Any power built on exclusive access to information will disintegrate. Every common citizen will have almost as much access to information as the head of a government. Leadership will have to be based on vision and integrity, rather than on the manipulation of information.

What direction would I like to see this information and communication technology take? I would like to see that all information be available to all people (including the poorest, the most ignorant, and the most powerless) at all times, almost cost-free, irrespective of distance. Communication between any two persons anywhere in the world should be as easy as talking to your best friend while sitting together on a park bench. All academic and social institutions should be turned into nodal points for the dissemination of information.

Access to information is empowering: GrameenPhone brings Internet–enabled mobile phones to the Grameen borrowers and makes them "telephone ladies" of the villages. By March 2003, there were more than 25,000 telephone ladies selling telephone services in half the villages of Bangladesh. Many of these phones are solar-powered, because electricity does not exist in those villages. Soon these women can become "Internet ladies" if we can design the appropriate services for them. The technology is already in their hands: Families in remote villages of Bangladesh are able to communicate with relatives in distant parts of the world, conduct business, and lead more informed lives. While extending telecommunications services to the poor, GrameenPhone has also done very well as a business. It has expanded its services to become the largest mobile-phone company in South Asia in its five years of operation.