Mohammad Yunus Research Articles

Global inequities and healthcare disparities: can they be eliminated ethically?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively explore and propose solutions to global economic inequities and disparities, with a particular focus on healthcare. This paper also aims to explore whether drastic reductions of inequality are justified in terms of conventional economic theory, and whether ending inequality can be viewed as ethical through certain lenses. Design/methodology/approach To seek the response to those questions, the paper uses Pareto optimality; Hicks–Kaldor model; Millian utilitarianism; the ethical theories developed by John Rawls in his 1971 work on ethics as well as his 1999 Law of People; and the capability approach developed by Noble Laureate economists Amartya Sen. As demonstrated, those equalizing works cannot support a policy that would advocate an end to global inequities. Those theories also propose no practical solutions for the end of those extreme inequities. Thus, the paper attempts to present other solutions. Findings This paper discusses two theories that are very helpful in supporting those without much wealth. Mohammad Yunus’ Grameen Bank and its provision of small free-interest loans to poor businesses (in particular women) in Bangladesh has been very successful. Another alternative advocating interest-free banking that was proposed by the proponents of binary economics is discussed. Originality/value The author believes the arguments used to support the theses of this paper be unique and novel.

First person – Mohammad Yunus Ansari

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Mohammad Yunus Ansari is first author on ‘Mitochondrial dysfunction triggers a catabolic response in chondrocytes via ROS-mediated activation of the JNK/AP1 pathway’, published in JCS. Mohammad Yunus is a Research Assistant Professor in the lab of Tariq M Haqqi, at the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Northeast Ohio Medical University, USA, investigating the mechanism of regulation of mitochondrial function in articular cartilage and its role in cartilage homeostasis in health and disease.

Review of Building Social Business by Mohammad Yunus

Nobel Laureate Mohammad Yunus, professor emeritus of Economics at Dhaka University in Bangladesh is the founder and managing director of Grameen Bank. Before this, he was the chairman of the economic department at Chittagong University. The dire poverty situation in Bangladesh coupled with the 1974 famine compelled him to become a social activist (Yunus & Weber, 2010). Due to frustration with local banks that refused to give loans to the poor, he decided to boldly act as a “guarantor” for several poor people so that banks would give them loans. Despite this, there still existed a lot of red tape in the banking sector that slowed down his noble intentions. To overcome them, rather than turn his bank on the poor, he decided to give up his academic work and started a bank. “Grameen Bank” which means “village bank” was founded in 1976 and through its various businesses aimed at poverty alleviation became the first micro finance bank. To simplify the repayment process his “clients” would receive loans using no collateral and pay back interest free in weekly increments in line with set rules. The bank taught the borrowers how to effectively manage and use their loans so as to create small successful businesses (Yunus, 1940). In its initial stages, it loaned money to both men and women but soon realized that due to cultural practices, children of borrowers benefited much more when the borrower was the mother and not father. This is due to the fact that, whereas men would in most cases spend the borrowed money on themselves, the women on the other hand would spend this money on children for food and education. Empowerment of the “Grameen ladies” has had a positive impact on their social status within their families and communities (Yunus, 2010).

Performance Evaluation and Impact of Grameen Bank on Social Development and Women Empowerment in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is one of the fastest growing economies in Asia. However, it is still a developing country which is trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty. Nobel Laureater Professor Mohammad Yunus introduced the concept of Grameen Bank which focuses on providing small loans to poor people especially women in the rural areas of Bangladesh. Due to the huge success of Grameen Bank more micro finance institutions are replicating this model and hence more poor people are relying on this kind of projects. Therefore, it is important to know how sustainable Grameen Bank is and its true impact on social development and women empowerment. We have tried to assess the performance of Grameen Bank through different variables such as number of members, total deposits, loan to deposit ratio, capital adequacy ratio, scholarship schemes, beggars’ loan, house loan, micro enterprise loan, net income etc. For evaluating the performance of Grameen Bank 26 different trend equations and square of correlation coefficients have been tested with its different types of activities. The square of the correlation coefficient has also been calculated for all trend equations, out of which 21 shows r square is closer or more than 0.5 meaning well fitted trend lines. With the positive trend equations in most of the aspects this study proves that Grameen Bank has a better scope to grow in the future which will support the social and economic status of rural poor, particularly women.

Microcredit and Social Business Movement as Catalyst for Poverty Eradication: The Grameen Experience

Being a country of developing world, Bangladesh has a long-standing history of fighting poverty by means of microcredit. Thanks to the development of group lending approach of Grameen Bank established by Nobel laureate Professor Mohammad Yunus, which has later been widely accepted as an alternative to the traditional collateral based lending in extending credit facilities to the door of hard core poor at affordable terms, Bangladesh has been able to register tremendous success in alleviating poverty. Apart from Bangladesh, Grameen type microcredit programmes are now being replicated in more than 100 countries both in the developing and developed world. At the same time, Grameen has constantly been devising new entrepreneurial solutions to the problems of the poor in the name of social business- a social cause driven, non-loss, non-dividend, self-reliant business dedicated to serve the most pressing needs of the disadvantaged. Muhammad Yunus has been successful to create a global infrastructure for social business which is working as a catalyst for encouraging social business experimentations around the world. The paper will critically examine the Grameen solidarity lending mechanism and social business framework and their efficiency in approaching poverty with their cross border experiences.

Empowering People through Social Innovation: Policy Suggestions

Social innovation is an idea that works for the public good. It recognises the challenges but looks at the opportunity for that are sustainable. Social innovation focuses on solutions. India is a diverse country with various problems and challenges. We need social innovation to face such challenges. Social innovations come from three levels-individual, organisation or group and government levels. Consider, for example, the idea of Grameen Model by Mohammad Yunus, which created the tremendous impact on women. It provided both social and economic protection on a larger scale. At the same time, some social innovation initiatives started by the students at the university level to provide solar power to remote village and initiated income generation programmes for Dalit villages in Visakhapatnam district created sustainable solutions for major social challenges. On the other side, there are social innovations for environmental protections. Hence, the results of social innovations are all around us.

Iran and Afghanistan: The Urgent Need for Inclusive Regional Diplomacy

Iran wants a stable Afghanistan and has meticulously worked to protect its interests before and after 2001 to this end. Prior to 2001, Iran was the primary backer of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, and after September 2011 it was one of the earliest supporters of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to rout the Taliban. Since then, the country has established considerable political and economic presence in its eastern neighbor-both overt and covert-through generous cash payments to the Afghan government and essential development aid delivered through religious and charitable organizations. Tehran also seeks long-term political stability in Afghanistan, though it is no stickler for liberal democracy. In the short term, Iran appears to be fairly satisfied with the status quo as long as Afghanistan is not used as a base for attacks against it.Tehran would like its vision for a stable Afghanistan to be realized within a context of zero U.S. troops on the ground after 2014. Consequently, it is keeping a very close eye on developments in the country, specifically the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). This essay examines Iran's enduring interests in Afghanistan and their implications for relations with the United States and other regional players beyond 2014.Iran's Interests in AfghanistanAfghanistan has always been strategically significant to Iran. The landlocked country shares a 582-mile border with Iran to its west, and the two neighbors have no unsettled territorial disputes, which is a rarity in the region. They also share linguistic, cultural, and religious links-one-fifth of Afghanistan's population is Shia-owing to their common history under consecutive Persian empires.Iran has four long-standing strategic objectives vis-a-vis Afghanistan. First, Tehran wants an administration in Kabul that will not only distance itself from the United States but also remain wary of the Taliban and its state sponsors, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Such being the case today, Iran will continue its policy of supporting the Afghan presidency. It will not object to the 2014 elections producing a Pashtun majority as long as ethnic minorities, such as the Tajiks and Hazaras, obtain fair representation in the new government. Iran has previously demonstrated such tolerance in the Bonn conference of 2001 and in the 2004 and 2009 elections. This willingness ties into Iran's second non-negotiable interest: leveraging the Shiite Dari/Persian-speaking non-Pashtun population. The country has protected the interests of its traditional Afghan allies-the Farsiwan Heratis, the Shia Hazara, and Tajiks-and cultivated relations with as many factions as possible, including those supporting the incumbent president Hamid Karzai. Iran has also built and maintained close ties with key players in the Afghan political landscape, including Abdullah Abdullah, presidential candidate and leading opposition figure; Ismail Khan, vice presidential candidate and former governor of Herat; and Mohammad Yunus Qanooni, the lower house speaker and political and military heir of Ahmad Shah Massoud. This political clout will help Tehran advance its goals in Afghanistan after 2014. In addition, Iran has preserved relationships with the militias it helped train during the Soviet invasion.Iran's third priority is safeguarding on-the-ground investments and personnel, particularly in western Afghanistan. The killings of Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998 serve as a stark reminder of the threats that Iranians engaged in commerce can face from a resurgent Taliban. Such personnel are at the forefront of Iran's strategic vision of playing a powerful role in Afghanistan beyond the political and security realms. Preserving an economic sphere of influence in Afghanistan is Iran's fourth strategic objective. The country pledged a total of $900 million in aid for reconstruction projects during 2002-13, with about $500 million disbursed at the time of writing. …

Microfinance: A comparative Study Of Bangladesh and India

is being practiced as a tool to attack poverty the world over. The term Microfinance can be defined as provision of thrift, credit and other financial services and products of very small amounts to the poor in rural, semi- urban or urban areas, enabling them to raise their income levels and improve living standards. The aim of the paper is to understand whether the institutions are serving their purpose of existence or are these rather becoming profit-making centers. This paper conducts a comparative study between India and Bangladesh, in terms of loan lent by institutes to the customers, clientele, financial sustainability of MFI's Institutions, in order to understand how MFI's in India are performing as against those MFI's in Bangladesh as it is considered to be the originator of Microfinance. The paper discovers that no doubt Indian MFI's are more profitable and operating more efficient than those in Bangladesh. I. Evolution of Micro finance as an industry evolved in all the third world countries almost at the same time span. The world over, it was getting widely recognized that improving income levels of low-income community is essential to improve their well-being - besides the state sponsored welfare programmers. During the 1970s and 1980s, the microenterprise movement led to the emergence of Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that provided small loans the poor. In 1990s, across the world, a number of these institutions transformed themselves into formal financial institutions in order to access and on-lend funds, thus enhancing their outreach. One of the significant events that helped it gain prominence in the 1970s was through the efforts of Mohammad Yunus, a microfinance pioneer and founder of the Grameena Bank of Bangladesh. In 2006, Prof. Yunus was awarded Nobel Peace prize for his efforts to create economic and social development from below. In India, many formal financial institutional structures were experimented with - Regional Rural Banks (RRBs), District Central Credit Cooperative Banks (DCCBs), Local Area Banks (LABs), Self-Help Group (SHG) Bank linkage program. All these received mixed success and paralelly, the civil society organizations started feeling the need to offer financial services to the poor. Credit was getting increasingly recognized as an essential tool to break the vicious cycle of poverty. Gradually, Institutions emerged in 1990s and 2000s. MFIs today differ in size and reach; some serve a few thousand clients in their immediate geographical area, while others serve hundreds of thousands, even millions, in a large geographical region, through numerous branches.

A Study on Micro-Credit in Eastern Uttar-Pradesh Region (With Special Reference to CASHPOR Micro Credit)

Micro-credit is something which is not going to disappear...because this is a need of the people, whatever name you give it, you have to have those financial facilities coming to them because it is totally unfair...to deny half the population of the world financial services. - Mohammad Yunus (Founder, Bangladesh Grameen Bank)CASHPOR Micro-Credit (CMC) is providing micro-credit on a large scale exclusively to poor in the poverty-incapacitated areas of eastern region of Uttar-Pradesh. CASHPOR was started in 1996 and as on 31st march, 2009 it has provided credit worth INR 1.82 billion to 319,000 poor women. The current paper attempts to review the business policy (plans), financial performance and efficiency, productivity and profitability ratios of CMC in last 10 years of operation. It also discusses the monitoring system of business and their special traits to maximize the outreach. The current paper based on secondary data. In the analysis it was observed that in very short span of time CMC achieved a remarkable outreach in the region and its pro-poor policies made big impact on the client's life.

An Exploration of Social Entrepreneurship in the Entrepreneurship Era

Entrepreneurship has been the engine propelling much of the growth of the business sector as well as a driving force behind the rapid expansion of the social sector. Additionally, the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 to Mohammad Yunus for founding the Grameen Bank thrust social entrepreneurship into the global spotlight. The Grameen Bank is the world's largest micro-finance organization; it is a profitable business that has helped thousands of people, mostly women, out of poverty. Social entrepreneurship, the simultaneous pursuit of economic, social, and environmental goals by enterprising ventures, has gradually found a place on the world's stage as a human response to social and environmental problems (Haugh, 2007). This paper aims to review and study the recent developments in social entrepreneurship as an important phenomenon in today's entrepreneurship era.

Ethics in International Value Chain Networks: The Case of Telenor in Bangladesh

What is the responsibility of multinational enterprises in international value chain networks in countries with inadequate institutions? In this article, we present an ethical framework that allows for evaluation of institutions at the macro, mezzo, and micro levels. This framework is used to analyze the case of Telenor in Bangladesh. Telenor is a telecommunications company based in Norway. It is the majority owner (62%) in Grameenphone in Bangladesh. The minority owner is Grameen Telecom, which is part of the Grameen group created by the pioneer of micro finance, Nobel Prize winner Dr. Mohammad Yunus. The case of Telenor in Bangladesh is one of many examples of international value chain networks that span different jurisdictions. The case focuses on relevant issues in the value chain networks: the institutions in Norway and Bangladesh, the owners, suppliers, and customers. We highlight the responses made by the major actors in the value chain, and conclude the article by analyzing the responsibility, or “ability to respond” of these major actors.

Community development: Freire and Grameen in the Barrowfield Project, Glasgow, Scotland

This article is an attempt to examine one of the better-known failures in UK community development – the Barrowfield Project in Glasgow (1986–1996) – and to compare and contrast it with other attempts at community development, especially some associated with the work of Mohammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, and the legacy of Paulo Freire. We conclude that both Freire and Yunus make assumptions about the pre-existence of community which limit the potential impact of their ideas in an area such as Barrowfield, where anomie and apathy were rife. We further find that just as actions intended to be liberating may reinforce the dominant hegemony, the converse may on occasion also be true. In recent years the Barrowfield Project has risen from the ashes of its previous demise, and so the present work needs to be seen in that context.

New Strategies for a Sustainable Society: The Growing Contribution of Social Entrepreneurship

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 to Mohammad Yunus for founding the Grameen Bank thrust social e trepreneurship into the global spotlight. The Grameen Bank is the world's largest micro-finance organization: it is a profitable business that has helped thousands of people, mostly women, out of poverty. Social entrepreneurship. the simultaneous pursuit of economic, social, and environmental goals by enterprising ventures, has gradually found a place on the world's stage as a human response to social and environmental problems. The capacity of indi viduals and communities to self-organize into groups and associations in order to provide the goods and services they need has been around for a very long time, but the emergence of more enterprising social ventures which aim to achieve financial sustainability has only recently attracted the attention of scholars. Social entrepre neurship combines the economic benefits of entrepreneurship with the delivery of social and environmental outcomes, and has the potential to assist the economic and social development of individuals and societies around the world. Social entrepreneurship is first and foremost a practical response to unmet individual and societal needs. The natural inclination for people to contribute to the common good, and to help others less well off. has led to innovative responses to human deprivation and environmental degradation. Responses that include an entrepreneurial dimension are creating the new institutional field of social entre

Planners versus Searchers in Foreign Aid

Only for the recipients of foreign aid is something akin to central planning seen as a way to achieve prosperity. The end of poverty is achieved with free markets and democracy—where decentralized “searchers” look for ways to meet individual needs—not Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The PRSPs and MDGs create lots of bureaucracy but hold no one specific agency in foreign aid accountable for any one specific task. Planners in foreign aid use the old failed models of the past—the “Financing Gap”, the “poverty trap”, the government-to-government aid model; and the “expenditures = outcomes” mentality. Searchers in foreign aid would imitate the feedback and accountability of markets and democracy to provide goods and services to individuals until homegrown markets and democracy end poverty in the society as a whole. An example of the more promising “searchers” approach in foreign aid is 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate Mohammad Yunus and Grameen Bank.

Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Plant Response to Air Pollution. Ed. by MOHAMMAD YUNUS and MUHAMMAD IQBAL. Conserving Peatlands. Ed. by L. PARKYN, R. E. STONEMAN and H. A. P. INGRAM. Biodiversity and Sustainability of Tropical Peatlands. Ed. by J. O. RIELEY and S. E. PAGE. The Nature of Disease in Plants. By R. P. SCHEFFER. Ecological Communities and Processes in a Mojave Desert Ecosystem. By P. W. RUNDEL and A. C. GIBSON.