Yunus advocates participatory economy

Nobel Laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus termed financial service as the oxygen of economic life of the people. Bottom half of people, particularly women in the bottom half, do not have access to this oxygen. That is why their economic life remains extremely weak. This oxygen remains exclusively for the privileged.

Prof Yunus was speaking as a keynote speaker at the three-day National Women's Parliament (NWP), organised by Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly, India, with the theme “Empowering Women -- Strengthening Democracy”, which began on Friday in the state capital of Amaravati, says a press release of the Yunus Centre yesterday.

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About 12,000 young women from all over India participated in the conference.

Prof Yunus said, “Ensuring participatory democracy is a fundamental goal. But we all should remember that participatory democracy is not feasible without participatory economy.

“Economy that we have in the world today is certainly not a participatory economy. Bottom half of the population hardly has any share in it. One percent of population of the world owns 99 percent of the global wealth. That does not sound very participatory.”

The Nobel Laureate and spiritual leader Dalai Lama, Union Ministers M Venkaiah Naidu and P Ashok Gajapati Raju, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, Puducherry Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi, Gandhian Ela Bhatt, Speaker of Bangladesh Parliament Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, actress Manisha Koirala and many other dignitaries attended the inaugural event of the conference.

The vision of NWP is to enable and encourage social, political and economic empowerment of women in all strata of the society. One of the objectives of NWP is to generate new ideas, concepts, theories and ideologies for women empowerment.