Leave Professor Yunus alone

• Miscellaneous
• 01st March 2011
• YC

There was a time, not so long ago, when Bangladesh's name was synonymous with disasters. The calamities were either natural (cyclones or floods), or manmade (political assassinations or coup de tats).

Former American Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger, labelled Bangladesh as "an international basket case" in 1974. Although Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman retorted, "Bangladesh is not an empty basket," the label somehow stuck.

Bangladesh's image, however, began to slowly improve in the 1980s when two of its illustrious and innovative sons decided to do something about Bangladesh's abject poverty -- Professor Muhammad Yunus through microcredit and Grameen Bank, and Mr. Fazle Hasan Abed through Brac.

The whole world now celebrates Yunus and Abed. Grameen and Brac are being emulated all over the world. Professor Muhammad Yunus won the ultimate honour the world bestows its citizens, the Nobel Prize, in 2006, and Fazle Hasan Abed won the inaugural Clinton Global Citizen Award in 2007 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2010.

Professor Yunus and Sir Fazle have won incredible number of most prestigious awards from foreign countries all over the world for their incredible achievements. What astonishes the writer is that neither of them has won any award from the government of Bangladesh! On the contrary, based on its recent actions, it appears that the government is going after possibly one of the few honest public figures remaining in Bangladesh, Professor Muhammad Yunus!

Charged with defamation by a politician, Professor Yunus had to appear before a court in a Mymensingh recently for uttering in 2007 the perceived truth about Bangladeshi politicians: they are corrupt and after money. Wouldn't every non-politician Bangladeshi agree with that statement? Yet Professor Yunus was dragged before a court to assuage the hurt feelings of an aggrieved politician! How ridiculous! How silly!

It is extremely difficult to comprehend how one can be charged with defamation by a person who is not mentioned by name in the comment. If a politician says that all journalists are corrupt, I don't think that all journalists in Bangladesh will run to the courts to sue him! Have we completely discarded freedom of speech?

There are reports that the government wants to take over Grameen Bank. That will be a catastrophe. The government-run institutions are mostly failures in Bangladesh. One need not look beyond two failed Bangladeshi government-run institutions, Bangladesh Railway and Bangladesh Biman, as evidence.

Grameen Bank and Brac are world-renowned (Nobel Prize winning in case of Grameen) institutions because they have been conceived and run by brilliant Bangladeshi individuals.

One of the reasons why America is the most powerful nation in the world, politically, militarily and economically, is its emphasis on individual talent. Every world-changing invention that came out of America in the last 150 years was innovated by individuals: photography (Eastman), electric bulb, phonograph, and motion pictures (Edison), air-conditioning (Carrier), aircraft (Wright brothers), mass produced cars (Henry Ford), laser (Townes and Schawlow), personal computer (Jobs and Wozniak) and IPod/I Phone (Jobs.)

During national emergencies, such as World War II, the US government assembled the nation's best scientists, entrusted them with the task of producing the atomic bomb, funded them and got out of the way. In the same way, America won the space race against the Soviet Union and sent a man to the moon, by the government mobilising its scientists, the Congress funding them, and the scientists delivering. And the US military's internal electronic communication system eventually evolved into the Internet.

For Bangladesh to prosper, it is imperative that the government gets out of the way, and lets the individuals innovate. The government should be promoting the creative genius of the likes of Professor Yunus and Sir Fazle, like America would have done, rather than attempting to discredit them.

The world is watching what is unfolding around Professor Yunus. They are upset. The New York Times' Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, Nicholas Kristof, wrote a blistering article on January 5, criticising the Bangladesh government's vendetta against Professor Yunus. Ordinary Americans are stunned, asking us: "Why are you demolishing your national icon?"

I was in a gathering of Bangladeshi Americans in New York last week, where every Bangladeshi expressed shock, disgust and anger at the comment that was made about Professor Yunus: that he is "a good man with a little heart." The consensus was that no person with a real education or any sense of decency can say something like that about a Nobel Prize-winning national treasure.

The charade against Professor Yunus is getting a lot of important and powerful people upset in America. Professor Yunus is an open book. The Nobel Committee thoroughly investigated his background, and made sure he had no skeleton in the closet before awarding him the Prize. They made certain they would not be embarrassed later.

Before President Barack Obama awarded America's highest civilian award, the "Presidential Medal of Freedom" to Professor Yunus in 2009, US intelligence agencies, too, carried out a thorough investigation of Professor Yunus's background, which was found to be squeaky clean.

In light of the above, if the Bangladesh government were to try Professor Yunus on trumped up charges and put him in jail, the world would know that it is an absolute sham. That will have disastrous consequences for Bangladesh.

In all my years as a journalist, I have never done something I am about to do. I should like to make an appeal to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who I like, wish well and admire very much. I have always been a fan of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, played sports with Sheikh Kamal at Dhaka University playground, and was a teammate of his wife, Sultana (Khuki), on Bangladesh's Track and Field team from 1966 to 1971. (That's all the credibility I can muster!)

Madam Prime Minister: perhaps you are receiving bad advice, but for your sake and for the sake of Bangladesh it will be a big mistake and will prove to be counterproductive to go after Professor Yunus. Instead of wasting time investigating Professor Yunus, if we must investigate somebody, it will be far better to ask Bangladesh's intelligence agencies to investigate the background of some of those appointed to higher posts, especially their educational credentials and whether their allegiance lies solely with Bangladesh or elsewhere. We cannot run away from the fact that, if we take down Professor Muhammad Yunus, in the eyes of the Bangladeshis and foreigners alike, we also take down Bangladesh.

The writer is a Rhodes Scholar.

Source: http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=175750