Nobel Laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus has asked all to get ready to fit them into a future to be purposefully created for all, not the one created 'by force'. "Which future are we talking about? Should we prepare ourselves to fit into a future which was created by forces beyond our control, or we purposefully create a future to fit us. The real question is, what kind of future we want and how do we create it?" He questioned while addressing the CEOs and top executives of some 240 Tata companies in India on Monday. The program was held in Bhubaneshwar, Odisha at the Tata Sustainability Conclave Conference on Future, said a Yunus Centre media release here on Tuesday.
Prof Yunus narrated the story of how he wanted to create a future for poor people by creating a new a financial institution, Grameen Bank. He mentioned how he, as a university teacher in Chittagong University, faced the reality that made the poor helpless confronting a famine, age-old curse of loan sharking, poor health, illiteracy and lack of work. Yunus says, "When he had found out the academic economics which he taught and the institution of banking were of no help, he took the unconventional steps of lending to the poor with his own personal fund. This led to the creation of a bank, known as Grameen Bank."
He said human beings were not born for working for other people. "Human beings are born entrepreneurs. They are not job-seekers, they are job-creators." Young people, Yunus said, should be encouraged to be entrepreneurs. Appropriate eco-system should be developed to make it possible for every young person to start business. An appropriate financial system must be an essential part of that ecosystem. This will also reverse the dangerous trend of extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people. "This trend is bound to bring social disaster soon," Dr Yunus said adding that the businesses of millions of entrepreneurs would prevent the sucking up of all the wealth to the top.