Spare the man and Grameen, please!

Bangladesh's Nobel Peace Prize laureate has again incurred the wrath of the powers that be. But it is not clear what went wrong this time that Grameen Board's power is being drastically curtailed through bringing an amendment to the GB ordinance, 1983. The Cabinet has okayed the decision to go ahead with the amendment by way of an ordinance promulgated by the presidential; as the Jatiya Sangsad (national parliament) is not in session.
The aim of this amendment is to vest all powers of GB in its Chairman, who along with two other directors represent the government, while the remaining nine (9) other directors represent the 8.3 million borrower-owners of the GB. To all appearances, it is a constitutional coup to usurp the institution belonging to millions of poor borrowers, 95% of whom are women.
Thus empowered, the GB chairman will have the full authority to choose any one of the persons as Managing Director from a panel of three candidates. Which in other words mean that despite owning a marginal share of only 3%, the government will have 100% control of the GB!
By any standard, the move is highhanded and unfair. What does the government want to do after taking control of the GB? Is it not strange for the government to be so hell bent on taking control of the very institution that its ministers, particularly the prime minister, have often criticised for the interests it charges against lending and termed those exorbitant and as such exploitative for the poor?
Is then the government planning to slash its lending rate so that the poor are no more exploited by any 'bloodsucker (!)?' In that case the government will also have to change the directives of the Microcredit Regulatory Authority (MRA) instituted under MRA Act, 2006, which allows the micro-lending institutions to charge up to 27% on the small loans they advance.
Now that the government itself allows charging interest at a 27% rate on the small loans by Micro-finance Institutions (MFIs), how can it censure the Grameen for asking only 20% interest on the loans? Or by what arithmetic does this interest rate leap to as high as 35 to 45% as the PM had told Stephen Sackur of HARDtalk during her interview with BBC?
Ironically, the 20% interest as charged by GB is also approved by the Bangladesh Bank (BB). Is it not surprising that even after complying with the government fixed interest rate, the GB is still taking a lot of flak from the government leaders as well as pro-government intellectuals, for reasons best known to them?
It is really an instance of double standard on the part of the incumbent government's ministers, bureaucrats and others to whom casting aspersions on GB's founder and its pro-poor programmes has become a pastime.
The government has not limited its efforts to only grabbing the GB after having removed its founder MD from office on the pretext of his crossing retirement age last year. We may also recall that before finally elbowing him out of office, a nefarious smear campaign was launched to assassinate the Nobel peace laureate's character.
Regrettably, another campaign is now on to belittle the man.
Clearly, in the guise of seeing if the Bank's rules have been compromised while drawing salaries and benefits especially past his retirement age or if there was any instance of tax evasion or if as a government official he had taken advantage of the wage earners' scheme to bring any foreign currency, the aim is to again harass Dr.Yunus with no specific aims.
How heartening (!), isn't it, to see the lofty phrase "Law will be equally applicable to all citizens" or that "the law will take its own course," being so unsparingly applied in Bangladesh even against a person of Dr. Yunus's stature! But alas, how sparing or even indulgent is the law when it comes to taking action against highly placed government leaders like Abul Hossain, Suranjit Sengupta, et al. Nothing could be found against the man, so far? So what? The pursuit cannot stop, even though he did no wrong, except that he brought great honour for himself and the country by winning the Nobel Prize.
Have we then any prejudice against a Nobel Prize so as much that Dr. Yunus has to be condemned to eternal perdition because he committed this sin of getting the prize? The nation then owes an answer, at least to the rest of the world.
Dr. Yunus has not still taken all this broadside fired at him personally. The grave concern he has expressed is about the future of his brainchild, the Grameen. If the government takes full control of the Bank, then it will run as good as any other nationalised banks and soon become a politicised institution afflicted with all the ills like corruption, mismanagement, high default loan culture, etc.
What worries one further is that the bureaucrats who would run the GB lack the philosophy, the ideological mooring, the sense of conviction and dedication that originally drove people like Dr.Yunus and his fellow travellers to build the institution of the poor, the Grameen Bank.
Small wonder the only concern the Nobel laureate expressed after the government move is about the fate of GB and appealed to all people to come forward to save the Bank of the poor and its millions of owner-members!
It is time the government spared the man and also the Grameen Bank. The whole world is watching us.

The writer is Editor Science & Life, The Daily Star. Email: [email protected]