Selfishness shouldn’t guide business: Nobel laureate Yunus

DHAKA - Bangladeshi Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has called for establishing society-oriented business to tackle global poverty and social injustice and added that “selfishness has created a string of socio-economic problems across the globe”.

“If we had created another kind of business on the basis of selflessness, we could have created a different kind of world,” said Yunus, dwelling on his pet theme in a lecture on “Creating a world without poverty-social business bridging the gap”.

“Selfishness is at the heart of business that has created a string of socio-economic problems across the globe,” The Daily Star quoted him as saying.

“Poverty is not a question of money, it is a question of structure.”

He said poverty is not created by the poor: it is the result of mistakes done by someone else and is imposed on them.

The trend of maximising profit led to many problems such as food and oil crises, and the recent financial meltdown, said the micro-credit pioneer.

Social business practised by Grameen Bank, which he founded nearly three decades back, is getting popular in countries like the US where banks were on the verge of collapse during the global financial crisis, Yunus said.

The model of traditional banking is wrong because it denies service to the poor and women, who need it the most, according to Yunus.

“People criticise me, but I think that is the only way I can solve problems. You create a company to solve problems, not to own,” he said.

Yunus said humans are not “moneymaking machines or robots… They are also selfless.” If social business coexists with traditional business, most problems could be solved easily, he said.