Add ‘em’ before power and you have a goal that would change the face of the earth. The question “how”, however, is the challenge. There was a time when it was thought that by taking from the rich and giving to the poor would help alleviate poverty. In the name of subsidy it was actually a dole the structure of which struggled with the concept of empowerment.

It would be wrong to say that policy makers were not aware of the need to make the poor literate and create a path of self-sustaining development. But the form or the strategies that were thought of kept defying effective achievement of the goal of poverty alleviation. Again it would be wrong to say that it was totally fruitless. But the speed of achievement was too slow to create the thrust to bust the vicious cycle of poverty and turn it into virtuous cycle of prosperity.

However, Muhammad Yunus, for the first time, applied the generally accepted tenet that the poor are inherently enterprising into real time actionable strategy. Subsequently, he also showed the world that the model that he proposed was not only actionable, but also scalable and sustainable.

He thought of a very simple experiment. It involved handing out a little sum of money to a group of women near the Chittagong University where he was a professor of Economics. The women used to make stuff from bamboo and were hugely exploited by the market. With this money as capital they started their own business without depending on exploitative structure of raising funds to run a business that kept them perennially indebted and in bondage. Riding the prosperity curve was just a dream. But with access to unfettered capital they could generate surplus for productive consumption.

The concept of micro credit, as it’s known now, essentially focuses on a few principles. It recognises the role of women in the dynamics of development. Women set a lot of store by bringing up their children and creating opportunities for them – the core tenet in sustainability. Women understand the merit of health and, being traditionally exploited, set a greater store by empowerment than the menfolk. Yunus, therefore, chose the women as his focus of work with microcredit with remarkable success.

Subsequently, the microfinance model that we see today with endorsed claims of success is the output of what Yunus had started in Bangladesh. Here microfinance companies are the agents for creating micro enterprises across the length and breadth of the country. This act is not a charity, neither the beneficiaries are recipients of dole.

Microfinance companies create access and awareness about funds. It’s not a process of charity. So there is a responsibility to stay productive in the entire chain of operations. The lender has the responsibility to empower through handholding so that the loan given out doesn’t turn into an NPA. The customer has the onus of being productive else she will not be able to generate the surplus required to pay back the loan and retain enough to run the family. Given this dynamics, the microfinance route is changing the country’s greatest weakness into its greatest power by busting the vicious cycle of poverty and replacing it with a virtuous cycle of prosperity.