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Nobel Laureate Dr. Yunus : Let charity begin at home

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 23:22:41 -0500

Nobel Laureate Dr. Yunus : Let charity begin at home In a recent interview with a young group of representatives of the Hong Kong Bridge Society, Professor Yunus identified the weak political system as the root cause of corruption and held the political parties responsible for nourishing the same. In his typical style, especially after wearing the current crown of the debated Nobel Peace Prize, he prescribed yet again a poor and wilfully “distracting from the root cause” solution, by asking the children to revolt against their parents by showing strong hatred to them in such cases. Although I do not endorse his ideas or solutions, I would expect him to let charity begin at home in testing his own prescription. Professor Yunus must be aware that an official request has already been made on 10.12.06, in response to an appeal by the Durniti Daman Commission (a new and supposed to be independent version of the former Anticorruption Bureau) to enquire on the allegation of illegally smuggling out of Bangladesh, thousands of crores of taka (worth a few thousand Nobel prize money and the highest-scale corruption in a single sector which evidently made Bangladesh much poorer and the drainage of huge amount of money is still continued) by the Grameen Phone and the Grameen Bank. The complaint also includes illegally snatching sky-high interests by bluffing the 70 lac simple women folk borrowers. The matter was published on 04.12.06 in the Daily Ittefaq too. According to a report published in the daily Ittefaq on 18.12.06, Professor Yunus confessed that a share holder of Grameen Phone is responsible for illegally snatching crores of taka from the poor people of Bangladesh. Grameen Phone was enjoying the monopoly of mobile phone business since 1996. Recently, in the competitive market, they had to drastically reduce the price of their sim cards to Tk. 500/- from Tk.1,50,000/- (!) , call charge per minute to Tk.0.80 from Tk. 7.00, recharge system to monthly/biyearly/yearly basis from only 21 days, which obviously makes the allegation of illegally smuggling out of Bangladesh, thousands of crores of taka justifiable, on the basis of their more than 1-crore subscribers. It is not unknown anymore to anybody that because of the friendship with Mr. Clinton (since his studentship) and Ms. Hillary and the service of President Clinton as the “Chief Publicist” of Professor Yunus and “many other reasons ” which pleased (!) the western world, Professor Yunus was a top favorite person to the West. Therefore, the people certainly has the right to ask Professor Yunus, how effective was his influence (backed by the interested powerful western countries) in getting the right of monopoly mobile phone business in the country for Grameen Phone and which government(s) and govt. servant(s) were responsible for giving that gift of monopoly, and why he is admitting all these now after thousands of crores of taka have already been looted out illegally from the poor people of Bangladesh and why didn’t he unveil the conspiracy beforehand. Regarding Grameen Bank, let a research oriented write-up styled as “Grameen Bank : Poverty alleviation or elevation” (1994), published in 1995 in largely circulated dailies and periodicals be referred to. The research work was sent to many places both at home and abroad including Grameen Bank, Ministry of Finance and Bangladesh Bank for their comments and necessary action. Later, many similar write-ups and letters on Grameen Bank and NGO’s have also been published, each in the largely circulated dailies and periodicals in the last more than one decade. But no reply has yet been received from any authority including Grameen Bank. Although, there were many allegations against Grameen Bank in those write-ups and letters, only 4(four) of them are placed today. (1) Effective minimum rate of interest on general loans of Grameen Bank is 36% (correctly 43.63%). (2) It is better to take loans from the blood-sucking money lenders offering loans @ 219% interest than from Grameen Bank, because of the additional hard conditions of Grameen Bank, besides interests. (3) The propaganda that “Grameen Bank gives loan without any security” is nothing but a complete bluff. (4) The Western countries become very happy if a portion of their uncountable and surplus wealth from the sale of arms is reinvested in the exorbitantly high interest oriented poverty business, since they get hardly any place to invest such a huge wealth with guaranteed return. Elaborate discussions have been made in the above mentioned write-ups. In a recent interview with the TV channel-I, Professor Yunus, on the question of money lending at exorbitantly high rate of interest replied “various comments are normal in new kinds of ventures”. No, Dr. Yunus, your such answers or even hundreds of foreign Nobel certificates aren’t acceptable answers to the very serious type of allegations against Grameen Bank. Therefore, I would expect the family members of Professor Yunus to revolt and pressurize him either to accept the serious allegations like making the motherland poorer to a great extent and illegally snatching sky-high interests by bluffing 70 lacs of simple women folk borrowers or to face the long over due challenges with courage and honesty, by arranging a seminar in the presence of a patriotic media. On the question of root causes of corruption, well-planned poverty sustainability and moral degradation programs, discussions have been made in the above mentioned write-ups and also in a recent world wide widely publicized (more than 6090 international sites including Wikipedia and Guardian Unlimited, many commercial CDs have also been brought) article titled “100-Dollar Laptop: UN Secretary General’s Office shouldn’t be used for exploiting the poor”. Nazmul Huda 38/10 Siddheswari Road, Dhaka-1217 nazinvbd@yahoo.com

new technology for the poor

Anonymous — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 21:01:20 -0500

i have invented a new , long usable life,multipurposes,high performance,affordable, socially acceptable,POU,practical, simple , system for water purification, to be use by needy people in remote areas and third world,the system is possible to save so many lifes especially children the new system is much difference than other inventions in the field, my question who may be intrested ?, and possible to support?should i keep this patent for ever?, while its pssible to help those people,how can i protect my rights?, how to put my name on this precious product?, on the other hand i have won a prize in a national competition in my country for ANOTHER project for improving poors life

shouldn’t be used for exploiting the poor

Godwin Isaac — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 05:19:16 -0500

i'm interested in buying this item(shouldn’t be used for exploiting the poor) if it still available for sell get back as soon as possible an the condition of the goods thanks

$100 laptop timing

Rob Katz — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 08:18:39 -0500

According to the 100-dollar laptop web site, the computers will be manufactured later this year or early next: [they will be] ready for shipment by the end of 2006 or early 2007. Manufacturing will begin when 5 to 10 million machines have been ordered and paid for in advance.

While India has decided not to order the laptops, the government of Nigeria and, I believe, Brazil have committed for 1 million each. So the OLPC team is probably waiting for another 3 million in committments before they will start manufacturing them. Hope this helps.

i need a computer fast

laura — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 17:07:45 -0500

i think the 100 dallor lap top is great when will it come out?

I agree with anonymous

joris — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 07:43:30 -0500

I agree with anonymous that cheap computers will help a lot of people who are poor as opposed to absolutely poor lets say. I also see that learning and skills will help lift people out of poverty. I also dream of these kind of initiatives allowing poor people to compete in the global economy. ie a person who is just getting by can offer their services directly to the west and so secure a stable income. I do believe that poverty exists in the west and that something should be done about it. If, however, I had to spend/give a dollar and it would either go to someone in a 2,000 $'s GDP per capita country or someone in a country with a GDP per capita of 42,000 I would probably spend it on the latter. The differences between having a tough time getting by in a western country, and I don't want to offend or downplay your situation, and having a tough time in a two dollar a day country is significant. The thing I'm struggling with is, will $100 laptops be better than mosquito nets?

Won't Reach the Poor

Alexander Barth — Wed, 31 May 2006 13:19:10 -0500

To me there is a very obvious hitch in the 100$ laptop by the One Laptop Per Child Initiative (OLPC).

A laptop of 100$ can’t obviously be sold in least developed countries, where average incomes are well below this amount. Poverty is roughly defined by a daily income less than 1$. You would have to distribute these laptops for free.

Say, the 100$ laptop is nearly as useful and versatile as OLPC says *). Why shouldn’t the child, or her parents, sell the laptop? Perhaps not for the 100$ catalog price, but for 10$, just for buying food for the family in a hard week? This is a very likely outcome. Think of donated clothes ending up on African and Latin American markets.

OLPC errs horridly on the aspect of ownership, I cite from http://www.laptop.org/faq.en_US.html :

“Why is it important for each child to have a computer? What’s wrong with community-access centers?
(…) Furthermore, there are many reasons it is important for a child to own something—like a football, doll, or book—not the least of which being that these belongings will be well-maintained through love and care.”

Benefit not ownership is the reason for taking care of something. The 100$ laptop won’t reach the poor. It definitely makes sense to deploy modern Internet and communication technologies to fight poverty **) but distributing 100$ laptops will probably only feed one poor kid's family for a week per laptop.

–Alex

PS: http://del.icio.us/lx_barth/100dollarlaptop

——-
*) http://www.laptop.org/faq.en_US.html :
“What can a $1000 laptop do that the $100 version can’t?
Not much. The plan is for the $100 Laptop to do almost everything. What it will not do is store a massive amount of data.”
**) e. g. http://globalknowledge.org/gkps_portal/index.cfm?menuid=201&parentid=179

The problem is the rhetoric

Anonymous — Wed, 31 May 2006 05:42:16 -0500

The problem is the rhetoric that has been used to promote the laptop. The images that are constantly conjured are of the poorest of the poor sitting on earthen floors browsing the web on their laptops during the little time not devoted to staying alive by the sweat of their brows. Mainly impoverished agricultural economies. But that's not the true population of people that need these things. Many areas of the Middle East & SE Asia, for instance, which are fairly industrialized but by Western standards poor, are where these will be most helpful. One place they will not be distributed is among the poor of Western nations, such as the United States. i think it's ridiculous. By virtue of being an American citizen & not absolutely destitute, I would not be considered poor by world standards, but by US standards I am far below the poverty threshhold. I have three children in school, & these would allow me to provide my children with learning tools that I otherwise can't. Don't forget the 'other America' spoken of by Michael Harington. It still exists.

I keep thinking about the child dying of malaria playing mineswe

joris — Tue, 30 May 2006 04:36:54 -0500

I'm sorry to hear that your technology has been hijacked. I also agree that the money could be better spend on schooling and things like disease controll. I keep thinking about the child dying of malaria playing minesweeper on his $100 dollar laptop. The $100 dollar laptop is so much more romantic and significant(to western companies, just compare their charity efforts they love building schools, not so much into buying books, since school buildings seem so much more significant, and the pictures are better. It seems better to them than providing people with one dollar malaria nets. They think of their own situations: I have a computer, it helps me, lets me learn, lets me make money let us spread this prosperity. They can not conceptulize living with the tse tse fly. It's also by virtue more alligned with rich tech companies and what they do. It is however not as immediate a concern as clean drinking water, reading skills, jobs etc. But could you not believe for an instant that these companies and organisations sponsoring the $100 laptop, have intentions that are honourable and that they believe in the project? Could you not believe that they think that this will help with education and participation in the global economy? I also disagree with your $ 25 margin estimate, gross margins on regular PC's are much much smaller than this(single digits in %, except if your apple) so one would expect a bare bones PC to carry less. And although parts suppliers will make money on this it does not seem to be that the organisations themselves will make any margin. I do comiserate with the way in which your invention has been treated and furthermore applaud your idea of providing inexpensive accessible patent protection to third world inventors, this is truly one of the best, and cheapest, ideas I've heard in a long time.

100-Dollar Laptop: UN Secretary General’s Office shouldn’t be used for exploiting the poor

Wed, 24 May 2006 08:52:44 -0500

My eyes were stuck to the news that the UN Secretary General Mr. Kofi Annan, while launching a 100-Dollar Laptop, on the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis, Tunisia, said “the invention is an impressive technical achievement. The project promises to provide flexible technology that can be used in any place, even in the desert without energy supply”. It is also reported that the U.N. is backing the project even with financial support thinking that it could help to promote education in the Third World. A professor and his team mates of MIT (USA) have claimed the credit for the project and the invention (!).

At the very outset, let me state certain hard facts, which I believe will largely explain the title of today’s write-up. Long 31 years ago, in 1975, I invented the Free-play Radio technology and demonstrated a working model in a jam-packed press conference on 23 July 1975 in Dhaka.