Yunus tells of new goals for students

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Nobel Peace Prize winner Prof Muhammad Yunus yesterday urged Dhaka University students to be more original in their thought and be more innovative in finding ways to take advanced technology to the poor.

The Nobel laureate also called for a separate stock exchange for ‘businesses for the good of the people’ that would cater to investors willing to buy shares of locally designed innovative organisations run by students to eradicate poverty.

Yunus made these comments while speaking at Dhaka University’s 43rd convocation after receiving an honorary Doctorate of Law from the university for winning the Nobel Peace Prize along with his brainchild Grameen Bank.

“I think the new spaces of knowledge can only be created by protecting the students’ individuality. If students completely mould themselves emulating their teachers without protecting their individuality, then the production of knowledge will stagnate,” said Yunus.

“The most important condition for the growth of knowledge, constant debate, will stop,” added Yunus, who defied teachers and students protesting his participation in the convocation for his recent move to join politics.

“In our educational institutions, teachers in most cases do not give their own perspectives or analyses on issues, they always quote some western pundit on the issue,” said Yunus, also the first Dhaka University alumnus to receive the coveted Nobel prize.

“We have now reached an age of innovation. An age of ideas,” Yunus said adding, “More than a half of our population are under twenty. A great opportunity has arrived for us in this age of innovation because we have had a history of it.”

Citing the example of Grameen Bank, Yunus explained that greater innovation of the Bangladeshi youth would enable them to tap into global opportunities that can be availed through possessing intellectual property.

He said the rapid advances in technology, especially in information technology, can be used by the students to spread their ideas across the globe and help the poor.

“We are lucky that we live in a knowledge-society. We used to give up out of frustration before but these days knowledge is enough, as it is the biggest capital in a knowledge-society.”

Yunus said students are spending more years in universities and specialised institutions as they do not have access to practical learning experience. “If the curricula included widespread internship opportunities, or if those included volunteer or paid work, then that wouldn’t happen.”

“In most cases, university education has become an abstract world that has lost touch with the challenges of reality,” he added.

Yunus encouraged students to work on problems of Bangladesh, as local students have an opportunity to better understand local poverty issues and solve them through creating innovative information technology.

He said students can design projects so that a poor woman can ‘rub her magic lamp to produce a digital genie, who would help them in solving their problems and enable them to communicate with people located across the globe’.

He also lamented the growing detachment of students from the people on the streets and encouraged students to try and solve the small problems they see in front of them as that alone is also valuable work.

The Nobel laureate urged students to become innovative and shed the mantra of running after profit in favour of starting ‘business for the good of the people’ or ’social businesses’ geared towards poverty eradication and social benefits.

He said the success of a social business would be determined by how many people it can help.

Yunus encouraged people to invest in social businesses, from which they would not get profit but would draw satisfaction from helping other people. He added that the conventional stock markets only cater to companies pursuing profit, so a separate stock exchange is required for social businesses.

The profit from social businesses would be used to expand and develop the projects instead of putting it into the coffers of the shareholders, Yunus said.

He said the theory of social businesses need to be incorporated into the realm of economic theories, as the people of the world are suffering from the ‘rat race’ of narrow goal of profit-centric economics.

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