Tap entrepreneurial spirit to solve problems of poverty: Dr Muhammed Yunus

MYSURU: Nobel Laureate Dr Muhammed Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, today called for tapping the spirit of entrepreneurship latent in every person to solve the problems of poverty.

"Human beings are born free with a spirit of entrepreneurship but economics has created a distortion in which people have been reduced to cattle and are seen as mere numbers as labour, firms...", Yunus said.

In his lecture on the topic "Redesigning Economics to Redesign the World" at the Mysore University to mark its centenary celebrations, he also noted that the present education system does not kindle spirit of entrepreneurship in students but rather renders them job seekers.

Observing that the present model of growth was unsustainable environmentally, he said it was also unequal with 99 per cent of the world's wealth concentrated in one per cent of the population.

He said poverty was a creation of systems and a denial of opportunity for people to grow and the economic framework was like a mould which had to be changed to create a new world.

Yunus also shared his experience about building Grameen Bank that disproved the notion that the dispossessed were not credit worthy and about helping the children affected by night blindness.

He lamented that profit was the only driving force and making money was considered a virtue in the modern world and added that he believed that making other people happy was the most important value.