Dhaka, Dec 9 (UNB) - Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus Wednesday presented in the Indian parliament his dream of a well-functioning South Asian Union by 2030 with a common flag and common currency but no poverty within its precincts.

The founder and managing director of Grameen Bank unveiled his vision while delivering the 2nd annual Professor Hiren Mukherjee Parliamentary Memorial Lecture at a joint meeting of the members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha in Delhi.

“Let’s dream that by 2030 we’ll create a well-functioning South Asian Union. There will be no visas required, no customs officials limiting travel among the South Asian countries. There will be a common flag, alongside our national flags, a common currency, and a large area of common domestic and international policies,” he said.

Prof Hiren Mukherjee, a prominent member of the West Bengal Communist Party, was member of the Lok Sabha for five times from 1952 to 1977, deputy leader of the Communist Party in Parliament (1952-64) and then its leader from 1964 to 1967.

The first Prof Hiren Mukherjee Memorial Parliamentary Lecture was delivered by Nobel-laureate economist Prof Amartya Sen in 2008.

The subject of Prof Yunus speech was ‘Social Business--A Step toward Creating a New Economic and Social Order’, as the pioneer of small lending to the poor without collateral is now propounding social business in a redesigned economic order against the backdrop of world economic disarray.

Prof Yunus urged the Indian leaders to dream of making South Asia the first poverty-free region of the world by the year 2030 with a synergy of efforts of the countries in the region.

“Let’s prepare to challenge the world to find a poor person anywhere in South Asia,” he told his audience of lawmakers from across the sub-continental India, according to a message from the Indian capital.

He also foresees that by 2030 South Asia would set up a reliable state-of-the-art healthcare system that will provide affordable care for all sections of people.

“Let’s dream that by 2030 we’ll create a robust financial system to provide easy access to financial services to every single person in South Asia,” he said.

Prof Yunus hopes that by 2030 every child of the region would be able to start their own enterprise as their career when they will grow up in South Asia and not work for some company.

The microfinance pioneer also forecast that by the third decade of the new millennium South Asia would have a range of creative and effective social business working throughout the region as a panacea to solve all the social problems.

“Do all these dreams sound impossible? If they do, that means they are likely to come true if we believe in them and work for them.

That’s what the history of the last fifty years teaches us,” the lone Nobel winner from Bangladesh told the Indian lawmakers.

The Grameen Bank managing director noted that poverty is created by the system the humans have built, the institutions they designed, the concepts they have formulated. Poverty is an artificial, external imposition on a person. And since it is external, it can be removed.

“Poverty is created by deficiencies in the institutions that we have built. For example, financial institutions. They refuse to provide financial services to nearly two-thirds of the world’s population. For generations, they claimed that it could be done, and everybody accepted that explanation. This allowed loan sharks to thrive all over the world,” he said.

His Grameen Bank questioned this assumption and demonstrated that lending money to the poorest in a sustainable way is possible.

“During the current financial crisis, the falsity of the old assumption became more visible. While big conventional banks with all their collateral collapsing, micro-credit programmes, which do not depend on collateral, continued to be as strong as ever,” he said.

Prof Yunus observed that the present financial crisis across the globe provides an opportunity to redesign, recast, and rebuild.

“When a crisis is at its deepest, it can offer a huge opportunity.When things fall apart, that creates the opportunity to redesign, recast, and rebuild.”

He said, “We should not miss this opportunity to redesign our financial institutions. Let’s convert them to inclusive institutions.

Nobody should be refused access to financial services. Because these services are so vital for self-realization of people, I strongly feel that credit should be given the status of a human right.”

Prof Yunus made it clear that every human being is born into this world fully equipped not only to take care of himself or herself but also to contribute to the wellbeing of the world as a whole.

“Some get the chance to explore their potential, but many others never get the chance to unwrap the wonderful gifts they were born with. They die with those gifts unexplored, and the world remains deprived of their contribution.”

He told the audience in the joint parliamentary meeting of India that Grameen has given him an unshakeable faith in the creativity of human beings and the firm belief that human beings are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty.

“We can create a poverty-free world if we collectively believe in it-a world in which the only place you would be able to see poverty is in poverty museums. Some day, schoolchildren will be taken to visit these poverty museums. They will be horrified to see the misery and indignity that some human beings had to go through. They will blame their ancestors for tolerating this inhuman condition for so long.”

The Nobel laureate said that to him, poor people are like bonsai trees. When anyone planted the best seed from the tallest tree in a tiny flower-pot, he will get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall.

There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted, only the soil-base that was given it is inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people.

“There is nothing wrong with their seeds, but society never gave them the proper base to grow on. All it takes to get poor people out of poverty is for us to create an enabling environment for them. Once the poor can unleash their energy and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly.”

Indicating some flaws in the present theory of capitalism he said the biggest flaw in existing theory of capitalism lies in its misrepresentation of human nature.

In the present interpretation of capitalism, human beings engaged in business are portrayed as one-dimensional beings whose only mission is to maximize profit.

This is a much- distorted picture of a human being. Human beings are not money-making robots. The essential fact about human beings is that they are multi-dimensional beings.

Their happiness comes from many sources, not just from making money, he added.

“No doubt human beings are selfish beings, but they are selfless beings too. Yet this selfless dimension of human beings has no role in economics. This distorted view of human nature is the fatal flaw that makes our economic thinking incomplete and inaccurate.

Over time, it has helped to create the multiple crises we face today.

“Once we recognize this flaw in our theoretical structure, the solution is obvious. We can easily replace the one-dimensional person in economic theory with a multi-dimensional person -- a person who has both selfish and selfless interests at the same time.

He pointed out two kinds of businesses, one for personal gain (profit maximization) and another dedicated to helping others. In one kind of business, the objective is to maximize economic gains for the owners, even if this leaves nothing for others, while in the other kind of business, everything is for the benefit of others and nothing is for the owners-except the pleasure of serving humanity.

“Let us call this second kind of business, built on the selfless part of human nature, as social business. This is what our economic theory has been lacking.”

A social business is a business where an investor aims to help others without taking any financial gain himself.

At the same time, the social business generates enough income to cover its own costs. Any surplus is invested in expansion of the business or for increased benefits to society.

The social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company dedicated entirely to achieving a social goal.

“Judging by the real human beings I know, many people will be delighted to create businesses for selfless purposes,” he told the parliamentarians.

He said that once the concept of social business becomes widely known, creative people will come forward with attractive designs for social businesses. Young people will develop business plans to
address the most difficult social problems through social businesses.

The good ideas will need to be funded.

The Nobel laureate informed the meet that there are already initiatives in Europe and Japan to create Social Business Funds to provide equity and loan support to social businesses.

In time, more sources of funding will be needed. Each level of government-international, national, state, and city-can create Social Business Funds to encourage citizens and companies to create social businesses designed to address specific social problems--unemployment, health, sanitation, pollution, old age, drug, crime, disadvantaged groups the disabled, etc.

He further proposes that bilateral and multi-lateral donors can create Social Business Funds. Foundations can earmark a percentage of their funds to support social businesses. Businesses can use their social responsibility budgets to fund social businesses.

The microfinance pioneer said there would soon be a need to create a separate stock market for social businesses to make it easy for small investors to invest in social businesses.

Only social businesses will be listed on this Social Stock Market.

Investors will know right from the beginning that they'll never receive any dividends when they invest in social stock market.

Their motivation will be to enjoy the pride and pleasure of helping to solve difficult social problems.

About the government’s role in social business, Prof Yunus said that governments would have an important role to play in the promotion of social business.

They will need to pass legislation to give legal recognition to social business and create regulatory bodies to ensure that transparency, integrity, and honesty are ensured in the social business sector.

They can also provide tax incentives for investing in social businesses as well as for social businesses themselves.