Micro-finance at Centre-stage

This is the autobiography of Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize and the creator of the Grameen Bank, the micro-finance institution that revolutionized lending to the poor. Naturally, perhaps, the book focuses on the Grameen Bank and how it came into being, ignoring, some may cavil, more personal aspects of Professor Yunus’s life. Thus one of the interests in reading this book lies in trying to trace how Muhammad Yunus develops into the man who spearheaded the micro-finance movement. What is the Grameen Bank all about? Very briefly, it is about lending to the poor (the poorest, Profesor Yunus would insist). It is driven by the belief that the poor are critically constrained by their lack of access to capital. Because of various reasons, e.g. lack of assets, lack of a credit history, lack of education, etc., they cannot access the formal credit market. Thus there is market failure, leaving the poor at the mercy of the village moneylender.