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PARISER PLATZ REDE LECTURE

First Distinguished
PARISER PLATZ REDE LECTURE
Professor Muhammad Yunus

Brandenburg Gate in Berlin
11 November 2016

Thank you, good evening. I'm very honoured to be here this evening, I have been on this stage in this hall many times before, but this time you've made it so important and so significant, I find it difficult to speak now. I am told that this is the first lecture in the series, which makes it more difficult, as it is making me self-conscious. But I will go ahead and speak anyway, whether it fits into that high stature of the lecture or not. I'll just share with you the excitements that I feel in my work, the hopes that I see for the future, the worries that constantly trail me, and fresh imaginations that drive me forward all the time. All these have their root in my work that began some 40 years back.

It began without prior preparation; as a spur of the moment action, an action of desperation. I had no plan to do such a thing. When you are desperate, you do things you never thought you'd do. That's what happened to me. That is what I did. It was the desperation that pushed me into it. This was mid-70s, 40 years back. A famine in the country triggered it all. Then one thing led to another.

I was just trying to see if I could be useful to another person in the village next door to the university campus. As a teacher of economics, I was feeling that I was a totally useless person, because the subject I taught had no relevance whatsoever to the lives of the poor people who live next door to me. If the subject that I taught had any usefulness, then it would have had its reflection in the lives of the people around me. They would not have suffered from hunger, suffered from death caused by hunger. Then the famine condition would not have ever occurred. I was blamed myself for what I taught. That feeling of guilt pushed me to get out of the classroom and go to the people with a simple idea: could I make myself useful to at least one person? One more person, that's all the ambition I had. I did not think I was capable of doing anything more.

So that was the beginning. Soon I found myself trying to stop loan sharking in the village. I was doing very simple things, little things. So I was not hesitant about doing things, I didn't have to consult any big expert or anybody, I just did what came to me naturally.

I started to notice the loan sharking in the village, and I felt awful about it. I felt ugly about it, seeing from close range how one person could be so cruel to another person living in the same village. I started to feel desperate to find some way to protect individuals who fell victim to loan sharking. Suddenly an idea came to me: yes, I could do that, it's very simple. Why don't I lend them the money myself? If I lend the money, they don't have to go to a loan shark, the problem will be solved. I did exactly that, immediately, I started lending money out of my own pocket. Each loan was for a very small amount, so I didn't have to hesitate, I had some money in my pocket, so I could spend that. As I did that it became popular, and the more popular it became, the more excited I got. Yes, I was succeeding in protecting them, because they were so happy now, taking money from me.

After a few years I created a bank to continue doing that. I called it Grameen Bank, or Village Bank, and continued my work of giving tiny amounts of money to poor people. Right from the beginning I focused on women. I gave them loans so that they could start income generating activities. Over the years we became a nationwide bank. Today it has over 9 million borrowers, 97 percent of them are women.

Grameen Bank became known worldwide as it introduced the world to microcredit. This word did not exist in the English language. The word was coined to describe what we do - we give 'microcredit' to poor people to stand on their feet. Sometimes I joke about it today, I say, "If I had known, it would have become so popular, I would have called it 'nano credit'," because it's so small, probably even micro is not quite an appropriate name for it. So that's what we do.

Grameen Bank was created from the beginning to be owned by the borrowers. Today 9 million women borrowers own it. One good way to describe Grameen Bank is to point out that it is almost the opposite of conventional banks. The rich own conventional banks, usually rich men. We created a bank that is owned by poor people, and almost all of them are women. Not only that, but most of them are illiterate women, rural illiterate women. They have no knowledge of how an organisation functions. Now they sit on the board; they make the decisions because this is their own bank. In 40 years it has come a long way. I started out with a loan of USD 27, last year it gave out USD 1.5 billion as loans. The significant aspect of it, which pleases me a lot, is that in the beginning I not only lended money, but I also insisted on basic rules. One such rule is that each borrower must open a savings account and save something each week. It is part of the condition for the loan, nobody can ignore it: if you want to borrow money, you must open a savings account. Some pleaded that they didn't have money, how would they put away money. I would say to them "Anything you can find to spare, even a fraction of a penny each week. The amount does not matter; it is the habit that matters. If you keep on doing that, it will grow. Someday you'll be proud it."

It became the norm, the standard; everybody had to have a savings account. Once we started it with seriousness, it became a habit-forming thing. Over years their total savings grew. An interesting thing happened last year, 2015, the total loan that we gave out was over $1.5 billion, and the total deposits by all the 9 million  borrowers, came to nearly $2 billion. That excited us a lot, because that's not what we were aiming for. We were simply encouraging them to keep savings so that in an emergency they could fall back on it.

Now the table has turned. Those who were 'borrowers' of Grameen Bank now have become 'lenders' to Grameen Bank. The bank became the net borrower. So that's the journey the bank has made in 40 years. This was beyond our imagination when we began.

We introduced many other features in the bank. One such feature was introduction of health insurance. Once a borrower pays a tiny little money she comes under health coverage. We created a separate business, a separate unit, to manage the health insurance money. A borrower participates in the health insurance programme by putting in $4 a year, a fixed amount. This covers the entire family. They get all the health services right there in the village. We set up a clinic with a full medical doctor, support staff, pathology lab and a little pharmacy, so that they can buy their medicines there at a discounted price. All this is covered by health insurance.

In the beginning we didn't know whether it would succeed, because I wanted to make sure that a separate unit covered all the expenses with its own income and we were not sure whether we would be able to cover the cost. Then we started to see that it was possible, that we could do that. We were able to the break-even with insurance money. We were very happy to bring healthcare to the poor families. It was not available to them prior to this. Women in particular suffered.

We brought technology in to the healthcare programme. One such technology was to identify risky pregnancies and reduce maternal death at childbirth.

We negotiated with equipment manufacturers, particularly General Electric Healthcare. We worked with them to make a simple portable ultrasound machine that looks like a tablet. With this, women did not have to go to a clinic for an ultrasound to determine pregnancy risk.

Finally when they developed it, we trained girls in the village who were high school dropouts to handle this medical professional job and they excelled. The girls go around the villages, meet the pregnant women, and do the check up. It's not easy to find pregnant women because pregnancy is kept as a personal matter. It is not talked about openly. So they have to befriend women to find out who is pregnant, and then persuade them to do the ultrasound. The image is then sent to the city by Internet. The doctor in the city examines the image on a big screen, and speaks to the pregnant mother on the phone. Luckily everybody in Bangladesh has a mobile phone today. Doctors talk to the mother and say, "Your baby is doing fine, no problem". Or, "I will look at it in two weeks to see what's happening", meaning that she might have a problem. Our objective is to find the risky pregnancies. Once we identify a risky pregnancy, we focus on making sure that a safe delivery can take place.

We are trying to bring other technologies too. We have one technology from our joint venture with Intel Corporation, called 'Grameen Intel'. This technology comes as an ornament, a bangle, but a bangle with sophisticated technology. It is meant for pregnant women. It's a little expensive for them to buy, so we are planning to rent it to them for the duration of pregnancy.

It will do two things, it will give a weekly message, for example: this is the 6th week of your pregnancy. You'll feel these kinds of symptoms in your body. This is normal; there is nothing to worry about etc. Each week the message will change, along with the progress of the pregnancy.

The women that have other symptoms can press a button, and someone will get in touch with them. This way they can talk to someone on the phone. There will be a call centre that they can talk to.

We want to bring more and more technology. Now that everybody has a phone, why not make the phone as the instrument to do all the diagnostics. We hope the body of information can be monitored and stored by phone. If that happens, healthcare delivery will enter a new phase in history. Prevention in its true sense will become a real possibility. Today some specific diagnostic services can be provided through smartphones. Eye scanning can be done. You take it with a mobile phone, and the screen gives you the reading, of what you may have in your eye, what kind of problem you may have etc. You can also do ECG. ECG can be done, recorded and saved. If any irregularity shows up you can identify the moment when it happened, and see the time path of its development.

We see many possibilities through smartphones. We are excited about it because smartphones are in everybody's hands. It is so cheap. If we can bring basic healthcare through this, it can become universal and almost without cost. Healthcare services have become more and more complicated globally; as you see even in the United States
the big issue in the election was its healthcare delivery system. Health service costs are going up, delivery is becoming more difficult. We cannot keep doctors in the villages. Villages and small towns are ignored, with no doctors and no facilities. We see technology as the escape route.

We can bring technology to make healthcare inexpensive and more efficient. We are trying to push technology to move us in the direction of prevention rather than cure. Prevention should be the key of healthcare. Cure will come where prevention fails. We should build strong early warning systems for our health through technology. We can address the health problems before it becomes a disease. I am trying to inspire the tech people to pay attention to this and bring a fundamental change in healthcare. There are so many exciting things to do in healthcare.

We also got involved in energy. We created an energy company, because Bangladesh villages don't have electricity. They only have kerosene lamps. It is so sad that in this day and age people have to live with kerosene lamps. It's also expensive. We came up with the idea to start a company that would bring solar energy into the villages. We created a solar company to sell solar home systems in the villages. We made it very cheap, as cheap as you can get. In the beginning it was very difficult to persuade the people in the villages to go for solar system. They were naturally very doubtful, very skeptical. Why should they spend money on something they are not sure about? Then we gave them an attractive offer.

Our offer was simple. Give us the money that you spend on kerosene every month, since you are buying kerosene anyway and we will give you solar home system. Try us out. Tell us how much you spend on kerosene; we'll give you the appropriate solar system. For three years you pay every month, then it is all yours, nothing to pay, you will get free electricity after that.

We explained to them that this light is so much better, your children will be able to read better, and you'll spend your time better. You won't have to go to sleep very early because there's no light and there is nothing to do. Now your working hours and enjoyment hours will be extended.

It was difficult in the beginning to sell four or five systems per month, but we kept at it, campaigning, giving them test sets so that they could experience it, since they'd never experienced it before.

Twenty-two years of companies. We called them 'social business', and defined them as a "non-dividend company to solve human problems." Everybody at their business schools and economics classes got very worried: what kind of business is this? Business is supposed to make money, business is supposed to make a nice profit for the investors, that's what we've been told in the textbook, now you're saying you create a business not to make money - it can't be business, what can I do now?

I joked with them by saying "Is there a law that if I run my own business, I have to make money for myself? It's my decision whether I take the profit for myself or I leave it to the company." I said, "I don't know of any law that forces you to take out money from the company even if you don't want to." So I decide not to take money out. Business makes money, the money stays with the business, and I only take back whatever I have invested. If I put $100,000 in it, I'll get my $100,000 back, if I put $1 million in it, I'll get my $1 million back, but that's it. My company is dedicated to solving problems. I want to devote the company for only one purpose -- i.e. solving the specific problem/s of the people for which the company has been designed.

I gave you the examples of our solar company, Grameen Intel company etc. I created eye care hospitals, each eye care hospital is capable of 10,000 cataract operations per year. You can get very good surgery at a low cost. And even if people cannot pay, we take care of them, nobody's rejected. Hospitals cover their costs by the income they generate. We already have three running hospitals in three rural parts of the country. Each one is self-sustaining; the fourth one is under construction. In social business, expansion is made easy because each hospital will be returning the money that is invested in it. This money can be invested in another new one. Same money can be used again and again. 

When I compare this with charity this looks more attractive. I could have done this eye care hospital as a charity. Then every year I would have to find money to run it, I would have to go around to look for donors to support the cause. I would be dependent on their decision each year. The future of the hospitals will remain uncertain.

In the case of social business this is different. Each hospital is financially self-reliant. It earns enough to pay for everything, salaries, purchase of supplies, bills, cost of equipments etc and generate a surplus to return the investment money.

In charity money goes out, does a great work, but the money doesn't come back. Charity money has one life; social business money has endless life. Social business avoids dependency and uncertainty. When I create my own business, and it returns the money, I can invest it again. The same money can be used over and over again. It creates a non-stop investment cycle.

I try to draw the attention of foundation policy-makers by saying, as you donate money, please consider this, you can continue with your charity work, try and use some of this money to invest in social business. It is the same objective of a charity, but powered by a business engine.

Not only that, what makes it more interesting is that, it is a self-fueled engine. This makes a world of difference. This can turn around everything we do to help people. To begin with, you can experiment with funding some social businesses, see which one serves your objective better. You can do both and try to find out the right ratio between the two.

We are happy that besides foundations, big corporate bodies are coming forward to initiate social businesses, some as joint ventures with us. There are platforms created by big companies to work in collaboration with each other to create social businesses alongside their conventional businesses. France, India and Brazil already have these platforms known as Social Business Action Tank.

So we have a joint venture with Danone, to produce yoghurt, to address the problem of malnutrition among the children in Bangladesh. Almost half the children of Bangladesh are malnourished. What do you do? A lot of effort is devoted to this, but the problem still remains. To participate in this effort we created a social business with Danone. We created a special kind of yoghurt containing all the micronutrients that the children are missing. We made it cheap and made it very delicious for the children. One of the good things about these yoghurt companies, they know how to make the yoghurt according to the people’s taste. They tested the different varieties of flavours among the children, and found the one which almost everybody liked. They picked this taste. Now everybody loves this yoghurt. It has become a popular yoghur and it costs very little. We want to reach the poor children, so we developed our own marketing system. Jointly with Danone we designed it as a social business. Neither Danone nor Grameen will ever get any dividend out of it, except getting back the investment amount. All the profit will be ploughed back into the business.

We had joint ventures with many other companies: Veolia from France, BASF from Germany, Uniqlo from Japan and Euglena from Japan. These joint ventures are located in Bangladesh. We have joint venture with McCain, a Canadian company. We run the business in Colombia. Soon we'll start a joint venture with them in Morocco. McCain themselves started a social business in France. Each one of these joint ventures is an exciting experience.

While more and more global companies are getting involved in social businesses they are coming up with new structures too. One such initiative started in France; eight multi-national companies in France created a platform to create social businesses alongside their main business. The platform will provide them an opportunity to share each other's experience. This is called the Social Business Action Tank. Similar platforms are created by large companies in India and Brazil.

Universities around the world are also taking interest in social business. Many of them have established Social Business Centres in their universities to offer courses and provide research facilities. Academic interest in social business is growing. Academics now hold global annual professional conferences on social business.

Many still grapple with the old question: why should anybody get into business not to make money? They were told you have to make money out of business. I try to respond in my own way, if you want to solve a problem, social business is the most efficient way of solving people's problems, such as poverty, water, healthcare, climate change, anything. Good thing about social business is that it is self supporting, it stands on its own feet, once you create it runs by itself. Above all you can replicate it. Once it works, then all you have to do is to repeat it.

As we keep on creating new social businesses we face new issues. One of the issues came from Grameen Bank. Soon we realized that this is a big issue. Right from early years of Grameen Bank we sent the children of borrowers of Grameen Bank to school. The parents of these children are illiterate. We wanted to make sure that the second generation in these families did not repeat the fate of their parents. Now all the children of 9 million borrowers of the bank have the opportunity to go to school. We gave them education loans to go to universities. a large number of them graduate from college, some do their masters degree, and even PhDs. Meeting these young PhDs from illiterate families is a thrilling experience. I meet mothers and daughters when I visit villages to meet the borrowers. I look at the daughter and I look at the mother, they look alike. One can easily think that the daughter is the younger version of the mother. They do similar things in the household, she helps her mother to do the sewing or something, as a daughter does in the villages. When I talk to her I find her completely different. The daughter says, "I'm a medical doctor." "So, what are doing with your mother?" "I came to visit my mother, because you were coming to the village, I wanted to meet you, I've never seen you, so that's why I've come here. But I practice in the town nearby, that's where my chamber is." Now I look back at the mother, I look at the daughter, they look alike, but what a difference between the two, one is totally illiterate and the other is a medical doctor. A thought immediately comes to my mind: her mother could have been a doctor too! There's nothing wrong with her mother, she's as smart as the daughter. But she never got a chance, she never went to school, never learned the alphabet. Why? Because she never had the opportunity. Society never gave her the opportunity. It’s not her fault. This experience brings me to a basic conclusion, poverty is not created by poor people, poverty is imposed on them by the system that we created. Why could the daughter make it? Because we created this new bank , called Grameen Bank, the bank for the poor. If that bank didn't exist, the daughter would be just like her mother, she would be married off, she would have many children already, she would be taking care of her children and struggling with her life. Just because a new type of bank came in, things have changed. Her mother had the same human quality as anybody else. It was there all along, society simply did not allow her to unleash it. That is the basic problem of poverty and unemployment all over the world.

This is a story I am going to share with you. I told you about education for the second generation of Grameen families. They have degrees from universities but no jobs. They complain, "We don't have jobs." I confront them, "Why are you looking for jobs?" "What do we do? We have no job, no future!" Then I tell them, "Look, forget about jobs, job is a very old fashioned idea, it's an obsolete idea. You shouldn't worry about that“. Obsession with jobs should have ended in the last century. Somehow it sneaked in here.

Now you have to tell yourself again and again, 'I'm not a job seeker, I'm a job creator', and look at the world as a job creator, then you feel tall. If you're a job seeker you feel small, you're at the mercy of other people. Why should you be at the mercy of anybody? You can do anything you want." They get very puzzled. "I don't have a job, he's joking with me!" I tell them, "No, I'm not joking, I'm very serious about what I am saying".

I wanted to make this happen. I created a fund, Social Business Fund, and told all the young people of Grameen families, "Come with a business idea and give it to us, and show us that that business idea makes sense. And if you can show us that it make sense, we'll invest the money you need. We will become an equity partner with you. We are not a lender, but a partner. In this partnership you'll run the business, you are the operating partner, I'm the financing partner. And make it successful, as you say it will be. We'll be working together. If you have a problem, we will help you to solve the problem. But you put in the hard work, struggle to overcome all odds, and make it successful. All you have to do is to return the exact amount of money we gave you. Since we are a social business, we are not interested in your profit. All we need is to get the money back, then we can invest it in somebody else. Money should recycle.

In the beginning they were slow to respond. They were not sure whether they could do it, now they come in hundreds and thousands. We started two years ago, right now we have more than 10,000 of these young people running businesses, and many in long lines are waiting. Every month we are turning out almost 1,000 additional entrepreneurs. We call them 'new entrepreneurs'.

Youth unemployment is a global issue. It is a problem created by the flaw in our thinking, not by something lacking in human beings. We somehow made ourselves believe human beings are born to work for somebody. This cannot be further from the truth. Truth is rather the other way around -- human beings are not born to work for somebody else. The moment we started out with the wrong premise we planted the seed of unemployment. If you don't get a job, you are unemployed. Your life stops there. But it does not.

Young people were never told the truth that they are born entrepreneurs. I keep telling them again and again, "Look, our whole history as human-beings is a history of entrepreneurship, not about jobs. When we were in the caves, we were not sending job applications, from cave number five to number ten.

We were not asking anybody 'Do you have a job for me?' We were always go-getters, and problem solvers. We became hunters, farmers, and gatherers. This is in our blood. But we are made to forget that. We are now told that we have to work hard to get ready to get a job. Job is our life.

I tell the young people, please don't take it otherwise, I tell them, you always remember, a job is the end of creativity.

I knew you'd laugh. I tell them to look at what happens. When you take a job, you start at the very bottom. You never get your first job in the middle or at the top. That's standard. When you start as an energetic dutiful ambitious young man, a little boss oversees you. You'll never see the big boss, he's too far away. That little boss will shape you for the rest of your life. He'll put you into his mould making sure you get into the right size and shape for the company. He'll allow only that part of your creativity which is consistent with company's requirement, and trim off the rest, your creativity may create risk for company.

Look at the educational system, they are so proud and busy creating job-ready young people. It almost sounds like a factory process. To me education means something else. To me education is to make me aware of the world -what it is, what it could be; also to make me aware of myself, introduce me to my potential -the capacity I have inside of me. If I don’t find out what capacity I have inside of me, then that's not education. It should prepare me to set the purpose of my life, I want to know why I am here. What kind of world I would to create. What do I want to do in my life? What is my mission? What is my purpose of life? That to me is education.

I am convinced unemployment is an artificial concept. We cannot allow it to take control of people's lives. I present fiction to young people. I tell them, imagine a classroom in a school in 2070, some 54 years from today. They are studying world of 2016. Somebody was saying there was a lot of unemployment in the world in 2016. One kid immediately asks the question "what is unemployment?"

Response comes, "Unemployment means not having a job."

"What is a job?"

"A job means you have to work for somebody." "Why did they want to work for somebody? Why didn't they do something for themselves? Were they sick?"

"No, they were not sick!"

"Were there problems, psychological problems?" "No, no, they were fit people, young people, creative people."

"Then why didn't they do something?"

It would be extremely difficult to tell the class why people are unemployed, it doesn't fit into their perception of human beings.

Why don’t young people become entrepreneurs? First, all their lives they are told that they have to get jobs. They were never told entrepreneurship was an option. Secondly, even if somebody wants to start a business no bank in the world will finance a startup business from an unemployed youth. Again the financial system is fully to be blamed. Banks are looking for bank-worthy people, we should be looking for people-worthy banks. We should not make do with what exists, we should be designing what we need. Create a new financial system. That's the issue I always come back to again and again, reminding everybody that our financial system is wrong. Our financial system is not addressing the issues that need to be addressed. What do they do? They give the money to people who already have lots of money, and make them continuously richer. They acquire enormous capacity to amass wealth. What is the result of the process? The result is extreme wealth concentration in a few hands. That threatens the economy, threatens the peace and order in the society.

People who are concerned about this phenomenon remind us that 1% of people in the world own 99% of the wealth of the world. It is difficult to translate it in mind what an absurd thing this is. What kind of economic system can produce such an absurdity? Most horrifying thing is that the wealth concentration is getting worse in a sustained way. Concentration is becoming tighter, fewer and fewer people owning more and more wealth, leaving less and less for almost the entire world population.

If someone tries to draw a diagram showing the wealth for each percent of world population it will be a "j" shaped diagram. For the first 99 percent there will practically be no visible bar, but suddenly a bar will rise like a sky high wall on the final percentage, because all the wealth is there.

This is not an acceptable society, whoever created it, for whatever reason, that's a wrong society. Since concentration is continuing this turns into a ticking time bomb, it will explode at any time. But we'll continue to see signs of it massive anger from the deprived masses. Our politics and economy are exposed this ticking time bomb.

Six years back, it was 308 people, 308 people owned more wealth than the bottom half of the population. It changed, it became 66. What will happen six years from now? 40 people, 30 people owning more wealth? What will happen 10 years from now? Five people owning more wealth, because that's the direction. I said that is a big explosive thing. Now you see the signs, signs of people accusing each other, saying immigrants are the ones who are taking everything, our fortune. So we can't find jobs, they are taking our jobs, because that's the only livelihood we have. Refugees are taking our jobs, these minorities are taking our jobs, protect them, build walls, and that policy and the politicians, particularly negative politicians who want to take advantage of it, use that to their advantage, and exaggerating much more than what they feel, and get a big applause.

And that's why Brexit happened, Brexit has the same story, build a wall. They didn't say a wall, but a wall was said by somebody else, but basically that's what they're saying. I said that's the most negative thing they could have done, by removing from the system. And they hate trade packs, because our jobs are going away. Jobs are going away, not because somebody's stealing it from you, it's because the system that we've built forces you to do that, you can't sustain that, because all the wealth is going into a few hands, and they make more money, and the entire financial system is at their service.

Then I tell people, what are we doing the job for? For whom? I get my salary, fine, but who am I serving? If 99% of the wealth is owned by a few people, ultimately I'm serving them, because everything is going to them anyway. Direct to me, or directly or indirectly, that's where it all ends up, if that is true. So, what is it that I'm doing? I said, maybe I'm just a mercenary, I'm a mercenary to make that happen. I don't feel good about it, that because of all my hard work somebody else makes money, and then creates the whole society which is unacceptable. And I challenge myself, should I do that? Or should I do something else? This is a question that has to be answered. Can wealth concentration be stopped? Can this be slowed down? Can it be reversed? Because, if we cannot reverse it, we are up for big trouble, if it continues this way.

And the same phenomenon came out in the US election, all the surprises, because people are basically terribly unhappy - I'm not getting anything, but the economy is moving forward. I see people moving up. I see them, because of the information and communication technology. I see everything, but I'm not getting anything. So, build walls, stop the immigrants, get all the immigrants out. That way we will have a better life. We saw the outcome of this feeling in two countries already. Which will be the next two countries? If the core reasoning is right this will not be limited to these two countries, this will happen in another country, then another country. Some politicians will use this negative general mood to their advantage.

Why am I saying all of this? I started talking about my experience with microcredit, and now I've ended up with concentration of wealth, a product of super finance. Because if the way I am looking at the world is right, then we may have a solution to the problem of wealth concentration.

Our first step would be to redesign the entire financial system. It should focus on removing all its features that make wealth concentration not only possible, but also make it as if it is the dedicated objective of the system. It prioritizes the super rich, totally ignores the bottom half. Obviously we can change the financial system, where everybody, even the homeless person can have easy access to financial services, so that they can change their lives. If access to finance is available, people can take care of themselves, particularly since they are all potential entrepreneurs.

Interesting thing is microcredit works even in the United States. We created Grameen Bank replication program in the US. We call it Grameen America. We started eight years back by opening one branch in Jackson Heights of New York City.

It worked beautifully. Demand from other parts of the city became strong. We kept opening more branches. Now we have eight branches in eight boroughs of the city.

Demand from other cities came asking for help, saying their poor are worse off than the New York poor. We responded. Now we have branches in Omaha, Nebraska, Charlotte, North Carolina, Indiana, etc. In total we have 19 branches in 11 cities. There are more in the pipeline. We have 85,000 borrowers, 100% women. Nearly half of them are un-documented women. Our repayment rate is 99.5% and above. During our history of eight years this rate never dropped below that. No papers, no lawyers. In Grameen Bank, we point out that we are the only lawyer-free bank in the whole world.

We handle billions of dollars, but no lawyers, no legal papers. The money comes back.

We have created a new financial system in Bangladesh for the unemployed young people. We tell the unemployed that we want to become your partner. We'll provide venture capital without any intention to make money out of your business. We are in social business; our intention is to solve your problem, not to make money out of your business.

One by one they get interested. When an unemployed person sees his friend get into business with our money, he starts thinking about a business idea himself. He thinks why am I sitting around looking for a job? I can be in business. He even thinks he will do better than his friend. That's how it started spreading. It created a chain of demonstration effect.

If the business world includes social business, and if all people become entrepreneurs will it stop wealth concentration? Of course it will. It will slow down to begin with. Social business will definitely have an impact, because if you are moving away from personal money making business, no wealth can stick to you. In social business money is recycled to solve problems of the people. There is no chance of adding to wealth concentration. You are actually doing the reverse; you are distributing wealth. The more social businesses we create, the less the concentration of wealth.

Then, in addition, if we all become entrepreneurs, we all become wealth creators and owners ourselves. That wealth will not go to the top, it will stay at the bottom. Also, we'll not be available to serve the top one percent to help them accumulate more wealth.

In addition to more and more people having less and less under the current system, another worrying fact is that world population is increasing faster than before. Size of bottom half of people will be twice as many in 2050 than it was in say, 1985.

Today the world population is over 7. 6 billion; by 2022 it will be 8 billion, we can't stop it. It took us a million years to reach the first million in the whole world. It took at least 15,000 years to move from the first million to the first billion. It was reached in 1804, only the other day. Once we reached the first billion it took only 123 years to reach the second billion, in 1927. And since then, we are adding one billion every 12 years. We'll be 8 billion in 2022, and 10 billion in 2050.

This is just to say that there will be a much bigger deprived population in the future than today. Would that world be a happy world? Obviously it won't be. They will be unhappy but equipped with extremely sophisticated technology at their disposal to make that unhappiness known to others. Before this unhappiness becomes explosive we have to come up with ideas to avoid that path.

Obviously we'll have to put a brake on this extreme rush of wealth to a few mega rich people. Only option is to make drastic changes in the financial system. That is the vehicle through which all the wealth is channeled. This system is dedicated for this purpose. Worst part of wealth concentration is that if you are part of 1%, you own wealth, you command wealth, you command politics, you command the economy, you command anything you want, because you are the power. This is not an environment where democracy can function, or human rights can be upheld.

I am trying to focus on three goals. I hope that by aiming at them I can also hit this wealth concentration. These are my three goals - zero poverty, zero unemployment, zero net carbon emission.

Zero number one: zero poverty. Bangladesh has already achieved the millennium development goal number one. We were supposed to have achieved it by December 2015, under the UN schedule. We achieved it in the middle of 2013, two and a half years before the target - so we're very happy. Now we have only a 12.6% population under extreme poverty. In mid-seventies we started at 80%. Now we have come down to 12.6%. Under SDG we look at goal number one, which is zero poverty. I have been promoting this goal for many, many years. I am happy that finally it is adopted. In the past one would be considered a lunatic if he suggested reaching zero poverty. Now it is a goal adopted by all member countries of UN!

We can reach zero poverty in Bangladesh before 2030. Our calculation goes like this: we look at the percentage of people are getting out of poverty each year. In the 90s, 1% each year. In the first five years of 2000, 2% per year, then the next 5 years, 2.5% per year. Now we're at the range of 3%. If we continue that way, if we sustain it and we don't impede it, we will be way ahead in reaching the zero poverty goal. Now when I talk about creating a museum of poverty, it does not sound ridiculous. It sounds very legitimate. We can create poverty museum, so that our children, grandchildren can go and see what poverty used to be like. That's my goal number one for the whole world.

Goal number two, zero unemployment. I have already explained that it is extremely unrealistic an idea to force people to work for other people. What we should be encouraging through our education and institutional support system is to unleash our unlimited creative capacity. Our whole attention should be on that. Young people today are ready for that. They are more interested in discovering their worth than previous generations. It will be our responsibility to give them a chance.

Let's take up big things and make it happen. If we imagine the biggest and the boldest thing to happen, it will happen some day. But if we don't imagine, nothing will happen, because it's not in our mind. If it is not in our mind, it cannot find a shape. It has to be in our mind first before it can get real. Unemployment is something that we can end forever. All we need to do is to reorient ourselves, and reorient our system to be consistent with us.

Third, zero net Carbon emission. Once we've achieved all these three goals, I feel that we have laid down the foundation of a bigger thing, we have laid down the foundation of a new civilisation. The civilisation that we presently have is a greed-based civilisation, and a greed based civilisation will end up in disaster. It has no escape route. It can prolong its life by putting band-aids, but cannot survive. Before it gets to the point of no return we'll have to act. Remember what happened when some people started talking about global warming? People dismissed it as a hoax (some people, even important people, still do that!). They said, “this is a silly thought!” The world is going on, it will continue to go on for more millions of years, as it did before. Your scientists are just imagining things and  indulging in scare mongering. Nothing will happen to this planet, we are fine! That was the beginning of climate campaign 40 years back. It took 40 years of constant demonstrations, constant pushing, constant battling on the streets, and forming political parties to achieve political power, finally 40 years later we came to Paris, to COP21, and signed the agreement. The same thing can happen in stopping the wealth concentration, if we want it with that kind of commitment and passion. We may keep telling people that we have to end this, otherwise we'll end ourselves, we have no escape from that.  

So that is the challenge that we all have. You may like my idea, you may not like my idea - that doesn't matter, but come up with an idea that will make it happen.

Thank you very much, thank you for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts with you.

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