The lecture should be over by now. The time is 06:00 p.m and
it is outrageously extended by half an hour. The movie is about to start
anytime in the auditorium and I am atleast 400 m away from it and to add to the
woe, it is an uphill run. If I am late, I know for sure that I am not going to
get a seat. The lecture finished by 06:15 p.m. and I rushed out of the class.
Prashant, Ashish and I climbed the slope and gasping, made it to the entrance.
The show was about to start – the time was 06:30. After apologies from the
ushers, the movie started at 7 with a packed hall.
The hero of the movie, Prof. Mohammed Yunus ran the
storyline depicting his life-changing, revolutionary Grameen movement, with Mr.
Hans Reitz, Founder & Creative Director, Grameen Creative Labs in the
supporting role. The picturesque dialogue-filled power-boosted two hours was
beautifully crafted by Mr. Shekhar Kapur, critically
acclaimed director and producer. Background scores were replaced by powerful
dialogues and the life experiences of the three eminent personalities. Within a
few minutes I found myself lost in the deep thoughts that they provoked.
“An idea can change the whole world” was the first dialogue
of the movie from Mr. Reitz and the idea was social business. Prof. Yunus took
over from there and enlightened us on how he saw a business opportunity in
every social problem. And he reaffirmed the fact that, a social problem can be
solved only by a social business solution and definitely not by a business that
runs after money. He clearly explained how social business was different from
charity. In charity, people donate money, money is used, money runs out and the
needy people are back to square one. But, in a social business, one creates
sustainability. As Mr. Kapur rightly said in the latter half of the movie that,
“We give a mango sapling. People plant it, grow it and sell the mango and
create a sustainable business. But, in charity, people are made to eat the
mango sapling.”
Kapur started scene no.2 with “We live in a world where, all
we are concerned with is how to survive, live and exist happily by exploiting
rather than doing good for the community. In this world, we are not becoming
closer, but we are being compressed. We don’t have enough resources. What we
have to do here is to stop comprising and shift our paradigms”.
The comprising attitude in human beings gave way to the next
topic of discussion – empowerment of women. Reitz felt that the role of women
plays a very important part in developing a community, to which Prof. Yunus
replied, “The loan sharks deny loans to every woman. They ask have you
consulted your husband about this. Why don’t they ask a male, if he has
consulted his wife about his loan plan? Why does the inequality exist? Why put
doubts in the minds of women that they can’t handle money? We changed that. 97%
of Grameen Bank customers are women and they own the bank. And what do the
feminists have to say? They attack us, saying we have given women so much power
that they are not handling the day-to-day activities of a family. My question
is who is a feminist here. Because women are involved in the banking system,
responsibility is taken in the development of children as well. And there we
created a social business answering a social problem.”
Prof. Yunus then touched upon Grameen Shakti. “The solar
energy arm was formed 15 years ago in a country (Bangladesh ) where 70% of the
population lived in centuries of darkness. With reducing solar panel prices, we
are envisioning a day where every house will have a Solar Home System. We go a
step ahead and train school drop-out girls in assembling the system through
which they learn the maintenance aspect of the system as well.”
To a question on how the young generation will make a
turnaround with social media from Reitz, Kapur answered, “We don’t need an
editorial for social media. Everyone feels that social media is too chaotic.
But, there is nothing more chaotic than our community and hence social media
will balance it out. We can still run a country if we replace the Members of
Parliament with a huge computer and guess what, we will work with improved
efficiency.”
Corporate dominance has been a thing of the present and
Reitz asked Prof. Yunus on how to circumvent it. Prof. Yunus opined that one
doesn’t need to circumvent it, rather go through it. He quoted real-life
examples of how Danone created delicious and nutritious yoghurt to eradicate
malnutrition in Bangladesh .
Danone called it the most powerful yoghurt in the world. Similar talks with the
chemical giant BASF has also yielded benefits in converting the patents which are
not being currently used into social businesses. Prof. Yunus approached Adidas
and asked them to set their vision as “Every person in the world will wear
shoes.” Adidas replied saying, “This is a big goal” and Prof. Yunus politely
replied, “You are a big company!” Their project is underway and soon a pair of
shoes will cost less than €1
and it won’t be charity shoes.
Mr. Kapur speaking on the issue of water sustainability
highlighted how important the resource is and how hastily we have been using
it. It hasn’t dawned on us yet that water is a scarce resource. He said that
within 10 years, River Ganga will be a seasonal one and in the next 25 years it
would have dried up. He asked if we are ready to face that. If we aren’t ready
to change it, no one will.
The best was reserved for the climax with Prof. Yunus’s
speech addressing the young, vibrant IITB-ites. “You guys should change the
world. You young people are the most powerful generation that the entire
mankind has seen. You shouldn’t inherit the world that we are in right now.
But, you should create your own new world. A world where there should not be a
single person unemployed. A world that doesn’t know what hunger is. If you guys
don’t do it, the next generation which will be even more powerful than you are,
will laugh at you. Envision a new world and change it, because you are
powerful.”
The movie ended with a thunderous standing ovation from the
audience. There are lots of trivial things that you can get anywhere in the
world but for things that make life interesting, you got to be in IIT Bombay.
Many thanks to E-Cell, IIT Bombay for hosting such an event and we thoroughly
enjoyed it!
“I believe that every
problem has many solutions, and all that we had to do was to select the best
possible alternative” – Prof.
Md. Yunus in “Banker to the Poor”
Tippu S
M.Mgmt
Class of 2011-2013
SJMSOM
How true that there are numerous proven social business models that are ready to take investments and be implemented in Caldas?
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