The Hindu Business Line : Should Yunus join politics?

To many passionate admirers of Bangladesh's "banker to the poor" and this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner and Managing Director of Grameen Bank Muhammad Yunus, it came as a surprise that Yunus is considering joining politics some day.

He indicated this when last month there was speculation in Bangladesh while putting a caretaker administration in place to conduct the national elections in January 2007.

As there were suggestions that a man with integrity like Yunus should head such an administration, mediapersons asked him at the airport when he was leaving for Seoul - to receive yet another prize - whether he would take up such a responsibility.

When Business Line asked him in an interview at the Grameen headquarters in Dhaka if he had political ambitions, Yunus said, "The whole thing began because I was involved in the "clean candidate campaign" and a controversy started as some political parties suggested that if you're serious about clean candidates and clean politics, instead of just talking about it from the civil society side, join politics and form a political party.

"So while going to Seoul, reporters asked me at the airport if I would do that. So I said if necessary I'll do it to emphasise my commitment to the clean candidate campaign. And then the next day there were headlines that he is forming his own political party."

So is he not going to do that?

"No, at least not in the near future, because elections are barely three months away, and I have a huge responsibility before me at the Grameen Bank right now," said Yunus.

Interestingly, a lot of "well wishers" are advising him against such a move, while some are saying that he should do it to clean up the murky politics of Bangladesh.

So how does his brother Muhammad Ibrahim, Professor of Physics at the Dhaka University, look at Yunus' role in politics? "It is up to him to decide. But people are looking forward to it because they can see him as a politician with a difference; a man of integrity and culture.

The person who comes to their minds is former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, who was a nation builder; they say that Malaysia was just like Bangladesh, a chaotic country and Mahathir made it a developed country. They say if he could do it, so can Yunus; perhaps, it's a dream but they dream about it!"

Ibrahim says that two groups are advising Yunus to keep away from politics; the first comprises the "real well wishers" who feel that politics is a dirty place and it will drag him down.

"But the other group comprises politicians, "who say the same thing but for a different reason. They are really scared that he may win and say: `You are above all this, be our guardian, slap us when we do something wrong, but don't come down to our level! But some are quite abusive and say: Don't think politics is a lollipop'!"

So the debate rages in the Bangladesh media on whether Yunus should take the plunge or continue with his mammoth task of poverty alleviation through microcredit and social business enterprise.

But Tehmina, a 24-year-old woman in a Grameen village about 40 km from Dhaka, who has become a graduate thanks to a Grameen loan for higher education taken by her mother, screws up her nose and says definitely: "No, Yunus should not join politics; he has so much more work left to do to empower the women of Bangladesh".

(Concluded)

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