Poverty denial of human rights: Yunus

Kolkata, Feb 12 (UNI) The poor's banker and Nobel laureate Mohammed Yunus today observed that ''poverty is the denial of all human rights.'' The economic reformist had successfully implemented the concept of micro-credit, originally founded by Pakistani economist Akhter Hameed Khan, to give loans to the poor, who are termed by the traditional banks not credit-worthy.

In a felicitation programme organised by Calcutta Chamber of Commerce here, Dr Yunus questioned whether such banks were people worthy so as to provide loans.

Dr Yunus said ''We have to change the idea that the poor cannot play a role in the global economy. Why they are deprived of their creativity to do better things.'' ''We can't remove poverty by removing the poors. We have to reach to the root cause of poverty. Poor people are just like a bonsai plant, who are not given the base to grow,'' said the founder of the Grameen bank, that has provided million of dollars loan to about 7 billion borrowers so far.

Asked upon the implementation of such concept in India, he said '' Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, when came to Bangladesh as finance minister, had discussed regarding the implementation but was not able to do so because of some constraints. But recently we have discussed with the NABARD and the RBI and they have agreed to implement the scheme soon.'' Citing some statistical figures, Dr Yunus said of the 60 per cent of the world population only six per cent was the earning population.

'' This has to be increased and for this we have to give the people credit.

''Credit is power and by giving this power to the poors and even the beggars, we can bring political, social and economic revolution.'' he said.

Stressing on social business, the economist said Grameen bank has benefited about 85000 beggars in Bangladesh and of them about 6000 have completely stopped begging.

Besides Grameen bank, among other projects are Grameen phone, Dr Yunus's brain child, that connects each and every rural areas in Bangladesh with 10 million subscribers.

UNI