Muhammad Yunus told a news channel there was a critical need to restore law and order in Bangladesh, warning of potential spillover effects into neighbouring countries, including India. (Image: AP File)
Nahid Islam, one of the key coordinators of the protest movement, said Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus has agreed to take on the responsibility to ‘save the country’
Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus will be the chief adviser of the Bangladeshi interim government, coordinators of the student protests announced on Facebook early Tuesday.
Nahid Islam, one of the key coordinators of the movement, said Prof Yunus has agreed to take on the responsibility at the call of the student community to “save the country”, the Daily Star newspaper reported. “We took 24 hours to announce a framework for the interim government. However, considering the emergency situation, we are announcing it now,” Nahid said.
Nahid also said the interim government would be formed in which internationally renowned Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, “who has wide acceptability, would be the chief adviser”.
Bangladesh Army Chief Waker-Uz-Zaman is scheduled to meet the protest leaders at 12 pm on Tuesday.
Yunus told a news channel that there was a critical need to restore law and order in Bangladesh, warning of potential spillover effects into neighbouring countries, including India. He stated, “If you destabilise Bangladesh, it will spill over all around, including Myanmar and the seven sisters in West Bengal.” He warned of a “volcanic eruption” that could impact the region, especially with a million Rohingyas already in the country.
Who is Muhammad Yunus?
Yunus is a distinguished social entrepreneur, banker, economist and civil society leader. He was born on June 28, 1940 in Chittagong in Bangladesh, and studied at Dhaka University. Later, he received a Fulbright scholarship to study economics at Vanderbilt University.
According to the website nobelprize.org, Yunus received his Ph.D. in economics from Vanderbilt in 1969, and in the next year he became an assistant professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University. He rose to international fame when in 2006 he received Nobel Prize for his pioneer work in microcredit and microfinance.
The Grameen Bank, set up by Yunus in Bangladesh in 1983, provided small loans to underserved entrepreneurs, empowering them to achieve social and economic development despite limited access to traditional banking services.
His Accomplishments
From 1993 to 1995, Yunus was a member of the International Advisory Group for the Fourth World Conference on Women. He has served on the Global Commission of Women’s Health, the Advisory Council for Sustainable Economic Development, and the UN Expert Group on Women and Finance.
Yunus is the recipient of numerous international awards for his ideas and endeavors, including the Mohamed Shabdeen Award for Science (1993), Sri Lanka; Humanitarian Award (1993), CARE, USA; World Food Prize (1994), World Food Prize Foundation, USA; lndependence Day Award (1987), Bangladesh’s highest award; King Hussein Humanitarian Leadership Award (2000), King Hussien Foundation, Jordan; Volvo Environment Prize (2003), Volvo Environment Prize Foundation, Sweden; Nikkei Asia Prize for Regional Growth (2004), Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan; Franklin D. Roosevelt Freedom Award (2006), Roosevelt Institute of The Netherlands; and the Seoul Peace Prize (2006), Seoul Peace Prize Cultural Foundation, Seoul, Korea. He is a member of the board of the United Nations Foundation.
He had floated a political party in 2007 named ‘Nagarik Shakti’, but ruled out any possibility of contesting elections.
Yunus served as a Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland from 2012 to 2018 and was previously a professor of economics at Chittagong University. He was a board member of the United Nations Foundation from 1998 to 2021.
In January 2024, Yunus was sentenced to six months in jail by a court on a labour law case decried by his supporters as “politically motivated”. He was also jailed in a $2.3 million embezzlement case. The embezzlement case involves workers welfare fund of Grameen Telecom, which owns 34.2% of the country’s largest phone company, Grameenphone, a subsidiary of Norway’s telecom giant Telenor.
The charges involve the embezzlement of over 250 million takas and money laundering.