Book Review

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP ASSIGNMENT

BOOK REVIEW ON BANKER TO THE POOR

Submitted by:

Parth Doshi (114019) MBA I2 – SIBM PUNE

Faculty – Mr.Sumit Roy

Date: 17th March 2015

Introduction to the Book: Banker to the Poor

Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle against World Poverty is an autobiography of 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus. This book chronicles Yunus’ journey from a “bird’s-eye-view economist, teaching elegant theories in a classroom, to a worm’s-eye-view practitioner” and the creation of a bank owned by its poor borrowers Grameen. This book shares the intense thoughts, feelings and experiences of the author Mr. Muhammad Yunus

It starts with the author giving a brief introduction about himself and his hometown, Chittagong, Bangladesh. He takes the example of Jobra, a small village near Chittagong to exposes the vicious circle of poverty at his hometown. This helps him to develop a keen desire to a practical mechanism to free the poor from the shackles of poverty hence developing a micro credit business. The incubation phase of the idea, the challenges met in alleviating poverty and the successful creation of a banker for the poor are all covered in this book. It also throws light on the challenges faced by the author and how he overcame them.

Chapter Wise Review and Analysis (Chapters 1&2)

Chapter 1: Beginnings 1940-76

Bangladesh fell into the grips of a severe famine in 1974. Muhammad Yunus, an economics professor at the Chittagong University, witnessed death and destruction in its ugliest form and began questioning the very nature of economics. He wanted a dose of reality and to understand the real economics that played out every day in the villages of Bangladesh. He made a neighboring village ‘Jobra’ his university and the villagers his teachers. Fed up with the bird’s eye view approach offered by economic models he decided to adopt a worm’s eye view model in understanding every...