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It is not often that you get an opportunity to meet Nobel laureates and people celebrated and respected for their contribution to society. Back in 2002, in Mumbai, GulfWeekly reporter Anasuya Kesavan, right, can recollect attending lectures and organising press meetings for Nobel Laureate Sir Paul Nurse, a British biochemist who resembles Hollywood actor Robin Williams in looks and sense of humour. What makes these geniuses tick and are they just like one of us?
Indeed, her curiosity and excitement was in full swing as she drove to a dinner party organised in honour of Professor Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 and developer of the micro-credit concept and founder of the Grameen Bank, which has enabled the poorest-of-the-poor to prosper in a commercial world.
DOES everyone know him? To find that out I asked my building security guard whether he knew of this famous personality from his country.
The answer was affirmative and without hesitation he spoke about how this one man had changed the lives of so many widows and women of his nation. And, my enthusiasm increased multi-fold as I was about to meet the banker for the poor whose economic experiment, which began in 1976 in a poor Bangladeshi village called Jorba, is replicated today in several parts of the world, including Bahrain.
Professor Yunus turned out to be an approachable and friendly person. Dressed comfortably in his trademark cotton kurta and vest, he had an ear for everybody. I was left with renewed admiration for this man who stands out for his actions and service to humanity.
The world crisis has resulted from a combination of institutional and conceptual failures, he said as we spoke about the various issues - food, energy, climate and the economy - which the world is grappling with. An optimist with an eye on the opportunity that the moment offers, he said: "This is a good time to sit down and find a way to fix these problems. Many institutions, like financial institutions, are totally biased and only work for the powerful and the rich. They have to be made inclusive institutions so that nobody is left out.
"Conceptually there is only one kind of business and that is the business of making money. But we have to use the concept of business to change things - to uplift people and to solve social problems.
"A system which creates poor people cannot end poverty. It is a continuous way of pushing people out of the system."
He is concerned that the huge sums of money put into the system to try and prevent a global depression may result in countries continuing on the same path which caused the economic crisis in the first place.
A modest and simple person, Professor Yunus confessed that while it feels good to be recognised he had no idea that the world would pay attention to his work. He added: "Gradually I have found out that it is not a problem of one village in Bangladesh, it is a problem all over the world. Rich or poor country - it does not matter because the financial institutions we have are wrong everywhere.
"What happens in Bangladesh also happens in the US. There are millions of people who cannot even open a bank account there. We need to solve the problems and we have to look forward."
One such change in the right direction may be the formation of The Family Bank, a BD20 million micro-finance programme initiated by Bahrain's Social Development Ministry and Bangladesh's Grameen Bank that will offer Bahraini entrepreneurs loans of between BD150 and BD7,000 to set up a business without the need for collateral or guarantees.
It will include an added emphasis on women and will be based on the belief that people from low income groups have the skills that can be applied to self-employment ventures if they are given access to capital in the form of credit.
More than 4,000 needy families are set to benefit from the project within the next three years.
Similar loan schemes have already proved beneficial in the kingdom.
