|
One afternoon in 1976 an economics professor, taking a walk
in a village in Bangladesh, met a poor woman. The woman was trying to support
herself by constructing and selling bamboo stools. She earned two cents a day.
When the professor asked her why her profit was so low, she explained that the
only person who would lend her money to buy bamboo was the trader who purchased
her final product and the price he set barely covered her costs. The professor's
instinct was to open his wallet and give her some money. Then he had another thought.
Why not give her a loan? That thought became the genesis
of a remarkable institution: the Grameen ("Village") Bank. Today, the
Grameen Bank is considered the most successful self-sustaining antipoverty program
in the world. It has more than two million borrowers -- 94 percent of them women
-- and its approach has been replicated throughout the world, including in hundreds
of locations across the United States and Canada. The Price of a Dream
traces the history of the Grameen Bank and in candid, vivid prose transports the
reader to one of the world's most dramatic settings for a firsthand view of how
this institution is helping millions of people change their lives. Since
its independence in 1971, Bangladesh has received billions of foreign aid dollars
and seen the majority of its citizens grow poorer. Against this backdrop, Muhammad
Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank, reversed the conventional top-down development
approach. In his view, development has to begin, not end, with a country's poorest
citizens. In Bangladesh, this means landless women. In two decades, Yunus has
shown that miracle cures are not required to alleviate poverty; instead, poverty
can be addressed through innovative institutions that demonstrate faith in and
respect for poor people. Yunus began building his bank
by rejecting the age-old notion that poor people are not creditworthy because
they have no collateral. If banks couldn't figure out how to deal with the poor,
then they weren't "people worthy". Today, his masterful system for extending
small loans for self-employment to women in thousands of villages has won praise
around the globe. Heralded in publications such as The New York Times,
The Wall Street Journal and The Economist, the Grameen Bank -- part
"laissez-faire" and part "interventionist" -- has become an
inspiration to policymakers everywhere, conservatives and liberals alike. In The
Price of a Dream, David Bornstein explores the ideas that underlie the Grameen
Bank and, in particular, Yunus's central idea: that, by unleashing the creative
power and industry of poor people, a more humane world can be built. In Yumus's
words, perhaps "one day poverty can be placed in museums." David
Bornstein was born in Montreal, Canada. He studied commerce at McGill University
and journalism at New York University. He has written articles for The Atlantic
Monthly, Details, New York Newsday, and Village Voice.
He lives in New York. This is his first book. |
