amended the concept by opening the grameen bank the success of the grameen model of micro financing has inspired similar lucena hundred countries throughout the world many but not all micro credit projects also retain the emphasis on lending specifically to women more than ninety seven percent of grameen loans have gone to women who are more likely than men to devote their earnings to their family mohamedi news is our guest on spotlight today. and welcome to the show thank you very much thank you very much for being with us program well first of all i wanted to ask you. how come that your institution hasn't been touched by the by the crisis or is it wrong what i'm saying no you're correct. it's because. money to poor women in the villages in our work is very close to the economy when we give a loan against there's

a college there some of them older goods they have produced boss kids or dresses made whatever they're doing so there you have no problem of moving away from the other city the crisis came because we have build defend us economy building castle in there and you are chasing paper so you don't know what these papers are present how much content they have in those papers when one piece of that castle falls apart then the whole castle. disintegrates so this is what happened to the other economy other kind of banking which is more related to that kind of fantasy world well you were consulting duma deputies you spoke in the russian parliament well what provoked their interest in microcredit do they believe that it may be may be a solution for russia and what was specific questions they asked. well basically

everybody agrees on the very nature of the economy which is dependent on several basic items export oriented items bulk of the population is not the. creator of the economy here so it's needed that they get involved in the economy and how do you do that financial services would be one. that is strong. a service that you can provide to the people can create their own economy so that's one reason that they wanted to discuss with me another reason is the financial crisis which came heavily on russia and many people lost jobs a lot of unemployed people how do you create employment employment creation is a long drawn process but what we're promoting is the self employment immediately you can everybody can create their own employment provided they have the financial resources people have the ability people have a skill people have where they can work so that's why the interest generated in the

discussed they go to the issues institutional issues how this can be done how grameen works in bangladesh why did we focus on women what is that vantage and the logic of focusing on women how do those kind of questions but basically how the banking system can be brought into the picture and what alternative financial services can be provided to cooperatives and other things those are the issues that we discussed let's talk about the business well first of all you said interesting thing you said that the the reason for the crisis is that people are too far away from real economy from real life to start caring about paper but you bet also deals with paper as many is paper so how do we do distinguish when money. when our money no longer money when does it become paper i mean at what stage

does money become paper. i was not talk about the money as a paper armorel money is not paid no i'm not talking about money as a paper and that's was not the issue issue is for example you gave a loan to buy a house so you have documents that your contacts signed and then the banks don't keep these papers with them the documents not the money part the documents this sell this document to somebody else and they pay the bank back so a bank got the money back. somebody took out the loan to themselves and they put other loans and some other bundle them and sell it to somebody else so those paper said being sold in this sold repackaged you don't know with these papers coming from those you do the same with papers in your bank we are only direct loan very direct very direct and that's that said because our bank is not dependent on any kind of papers any color we don't have any color we don't have any lawyers in our

system so it's a very personalized relationship between the lender and the borrower so so therefore. actually at the moment when you set up your grameen bank you understood that there was something wrong with the regular banking system is that right well that the whole thing started as a kind of protest in the banking system because he hated the banking and he decided to become part of it. i should say hated them i disliked the way they did it because my point was they leave out the majority of the population of the world keep saying that two thirds of the world's population are not served by the banking system the banking system is only serving the top people wealthy people so it's said it's a very funny situation you are lending money to people who already have lots of money and you don't want to lend money to people who don't have money the logic would sit otherwise you should be focusing on the people who don't have the money

and have less priority to the people who. i have loved someone already so i started it said that it cannot be done because you cannot lose money to we don't have money they have money to return your money their logic i said well somebody has to try it out this is what you are speculating why don't you go and find out in the real world they said or nobody will do such a thing it's obvious i said it's not obvious to me so i went ahead and did it and it works. no color twelve nothing poorest person even beggars take loan from our bank we have no problem with them so we started it and it worked and gradually we expanded and expanded beggars come back to you and return the money returned do you ever ask where did you get. the yeah the way we do it. very simple we tell the beggars that as you go from house to house begging. to

carry so much and as we do some cookie some candy some foods as you go you will give people option whether they want to give you some charity or they want to buy something from you so you have your giving anxious trying to turn them into into micro business absolutely that's what ideas then if people buy something from your cave you have an income out of that. if they want to give charity take it well that bed begging is for isn't just going in your part of the world as well as by the way in russia also it's part of the cultural tradition so give money to beggars isn't it not to become a beggar. else society kind of pushed you and pushed too to the brink. bring it to the tipping point and finally you can take care of yourself so you started. asking for help from your neighbors then you see the your neighbors are getting fed up because you still don't have your income you can really you can feed your children so you go a little farther down and it becomes kind of

a survival technique what's the amount of money that a beggar would usually taken as a low you know typically i would say about fifteen dollars fifteen dollars so that's about the money to start with. ideas if you can pay us back this fifteen dollars you can take us much. more if you want do you have a maximum amount that you give no not really because they asked for a very small amount because they know that if you take. big amount they cannot pay back this is somebody comes to your bank and ask for a million dollars would you would you make this no. i would not because first suspicion is he or she is not a poor person. there's only only the poor people because you don't have an official image we have one has to be. then this person people don't have any land it doesn't have a livelihood only thing he or she can do is to sell the service because there's nothing else to do either he or she works for somebody or. whatever

a day laborer or something so that's how the survival is and we look at the house what kind of house he or she lives if she lives in a one room house then we say ok then if you have a solid roof on top of your will we have to wait because we are looking for people with one room but. and if you find someone like that we say if you have one little funny chair inside the house we said ok we are looking for one drum little but no furniture so that's how we tried to go as deep as in the poverty is about that makes you very personal very person who should have you should have a lot of staff we have all of this is really just bringing a piece of paper down showing your income should send you people to actually take. the door to door service because our basic principle is people should not come to the bank bank should go to the people so we have now over eight million borrowers in bangladesh ninety seven percent of them are women and we are we go to those

eight million households to do business at that premises they don't have to come to our office so our twenty eight thousand stuff that we have the ad job every day is to go out and meet them we didn't one week we have to meet all the eight million borrowers says mohammed you know this. banker and the laureate of the nobel peace prize that was back in two thousand and six spotlight will be back shortly. roy after a break so stay with us and get. discovery . communicate with you want to. test yourself and become free.

see what nature can give you on the. first creepy removal cold clear cut. second explosives are used to. herd the remains are. finally on board soil is deposited in vallecito. top legal on our. welcome back to spotlight and just to remind you that my guest today is the

nobel peace prize winner back in two thousand and six banker mohamed you know. well we talked about your your my micro credit system well actually a unique experience that started that you started. but you mentioned a couple of times already that mostly women and that's right like according to. what i read ninety seven percent of your borrowers are women. well how would you explain this phenomenon did you mean it as a bank for women or you meant it as a bank for the poor and they should have to be women how does it step by step because i was betting with conventional banks in the beginning to persuade them to lend money to the poor people and that if used then i was accusing them of many things one accuses the banking system is totally wrong because it's refuses to lend money to the overwhelming majority of people and then i said it's also wrong because it's refused to give loans to women and they said not this is not true as

it is true because a look at the gender composition of your body not even one percent of your body happen to be one in bangladesh and one of the of and this is not unique in bangladesh who checked through it in russia you'll be surprised. so i said there's something wrong with your system so when i started my own work as a kind of challenge that i will do it so first thing i decided that half the borrowers in my program must be a woman to know that there are no less than house but it's easy to see but very difficult to implement because women's in on the phone give it to me i don't know what to do with money i never handled money in my life give it to my husband so i said no this is not for your husband it's for you think about it so we had to build up courage because this was scared of money and getting into trouble with the money so it took us six years after six years finally we even did out man and woman then these we saw money going to the family through a woman brought much more benefit to the family than the same amount of money going

to the family through men why women took very good care of children as soon as she starts running income she took good care of the money she got from the bank with a small amount of money because she has a very special skill she is that she is an excellent manager of scarce resources because her husband always gives a small amount of money or whatever to take care of all the family needs and she has to cover everything with that little thing if she doesn't do that husband gets mad he. or something so she's very careful about handling resources so in the process history has told her it taught her how to become an excellent manager of resources so so women are better measures are for for a tiny little resources that you have in that level they're very good but also they want to build up a future what happens on a larger scale why why don't we see a lot of women be being resource managers at a company level and historically historically we never give

a chance so they had to grow up even if you go to europe you go to united states if you look at the top c.e.o.'s you see very few women there for them and because the start to never took place so now gradually that is starting stateless young girls coming young woman coming as executives probably that one day you'll see top c.e.o.'s their women well women turned out to be not only very good borrowers are not very good good measures this or that also but also a very very good clients for your bank because as far as i know like ninety nine percent even more of the loans you give get paid back why also because a woman. said that a payment is something to do with women the payment is good with the men too we have no problem with the man it's impact which made us differentiate men and women because it's impacting the family it's much greater if you're a woman it's an income on

a woman as the borrower so we focused on women because our aim is to see how the family gets out of the problem they have and that is done much efficiently if the woman is in charge so we took the woman as the representative of the family she is the borrowing she can borrow for house husband too so it's not that man doesn't get the money he gets the money but he gets it through his wife so this is how we expanded the program you told us. berger's very micro credits that you give to beggars to the very poor you can give big credit but as far as i understand when the loan is like twenty thirty dollars you don't you don't put any interest into that yeah but at what point does the. do the interest rate start only for your make any profit and profit should only for beggars it's interest free only for back only for players for others they have to pay full interest rates so if they have a job or something then they pay the interest rate is no not that they don't have

a job because basically self employment i am self up is a woman in the house who didn't have an ok she's just looking after the children in the family for the first time she starts earning because she has money what she does she takes her skill the artes and i was real sewing clothes or making busk or raising the washing of her show what the more she has the nature of the skill family skill she had transformed into a business of a bit was to rate. to twenty percent simple interest rate for income generating activity here yes and then for housing loan we also get housing loan for housing loan is eight percent per year simple interest rate and also we give loans for students to go into higher education and tired financing of have. coming back that's five percent and for bigger it's a zero percent zero percent ok and then makes a profit every year and the profit goes back to the borrower because this bank is

owned by the borrower so it's a bank which is owned by millions of women do only do loads or does your bank provide a whole range of several of the services for example we have insurance programs like if the woman dies the borrower dies her family doesn't have to pay anything because it's covered by a very tiny small insurance program which is built into the program even if her husband dies she's still alive. still active but she doesn't have to pay anything anymore of the outstanding loan certain date fest loans these two so the loans are insurance for the board for the order that you do you insure yourself myself the i mean the bank owed on the one is all there is are you so high that you did then use your ears we don't insurance because the permit is high we never had worries about that see bundling this is a country of. endless disastrous we always have floods we always have sec loans. big floods almost have the country's underwater. people lose everything even then

we don't have those insurance to cover disasters and so on which we should probably in the future but at the moment we don't have them we have health insurance program so that with health insurance you can get the health services from the government system we also have some kind of funeral insurance that if the borrower dies all the funeral expenses are covered by the bank because he is the owner of the bank at the same time we built in a small insurance program to cover that. heard about your sister and your banking system becoming increasingly popular around the world though the world is also a place full of the actual calamities of poverty no less than bangladesh is it true or is it gaining popularity today almost every single country in the world has the main program and in this country like even like developed countries like europe

americans a lot of countries in europe like you create norway sweden friends many countries and also united states we just opened the main program in new york city about eighteen months back what we called them in america we give to the low income women in the neighborhood of queens. now we have about fifteen hundred baht worse all women have original owners about two thousand and the deployment data. ninety nine point three percent no collateral no guarantee no lawyers nothing. and they pay about the same way that we do it in bangladesh exactly same principle same methodology weekly payment fiber men get together form themselves into a group so that they look at each other supervise each other. so we never we see a microcredit bank somewhere in the world it's like inside the grameen group while there is. create organisation independent of each other many many are others to go

and you know how i mean no one that i said all countries all over the doing that is a coming type of program but any type but there are many many programs they will call the grameen inspired program soon follow everything but the whole idea came from come in but now that the word microfinance or microcredit became popular everybody says we are doing microcredit like even the agricultural bank say we do very microcredit credit coverage and say we are doing my cook savings and loan associations say we are doing micro credit so that's a kind of. captioning their own program that's not real micro credit but simply calling that while we have sort of micro credit. do you think that if your system will be applied systematically it can help eradicate poverty around the world. completely it will be a very important intervention not

a single work can do everything but this is a very important one because if you give financial saying to the people it's not only a loan that we provide which is important but at the same time we mobilize the savings we encourage in examine system every borrower has to have our own savings account so that every week you put a little money into your savings account it grows very big today a mound that saved by the examine ball or worse comes. to over half a billion dollars in their own savings account which is a tremendous amount of resource for them defected and by often a big company in the country with their own savings do you see a lot of happy people that you that your assisted me your work really made happy because because according. to philosophy special indian philosophy money does make it. would you are in dire need of money money does help you to overcome your troubles so that makes you happy that you have them when i also

believe that money is the only it's not the only source of happiness when you make millions and millions of dollars billions of dollars. do you think that's the only source of happiness you get tired of adult about what could you do with all this money after all you're here in this world for a very short period. of the money and then it's gone you're gone so cool remember because you have not done anything for anybody so helping others is also a source of happiness that you have you have your own pleasure that you have played a role in making this planet a better place and that is. much more in terms of happiness then what happened as brought by money thank you thank you very much and just to remind you that mr muhammad hugh nous was our guest the spotlight of the man who won a nobel peace prize back in two thousand and six by stablish inc

a unique banking system for the poor and that's it from all of us in the spotlight will be back tomorrow with more firsthand comments on what's going on in and outside russia until then stay on r.t. and take care. every month we give you the future we help you understand how to get there and want to bring the best in science and technology from across russia around the world to join us for additional g. update on r g.

argy continued to track the wildfires raging across russia destroying homes

villages and lives. moscow's again in the grip of smog a toxic cloud covers the russian capital after a short break the day before forcing many to escape from the city out of fear for their health. forces all the most watched people in the more c.c.t.v. cameras per capita than any other nation and it's here at the university of reading the new in-flight surveillance system is being developed. the new e.u. project is aimed at tackling terrorism but many worry it will erode privacy. and temperatures for russia to cut its grain harvest will cost for the year but that won't be mixing up grain export anytime soon i'll have thought small in the business but it's been in twenty.

instead of the russian capital you watching r t was marina joshua welcome to the program and after a few hours of relief on monday millions of russians are ghana waking up to six layer of smaug is forced and pete fires continue to rage across the country experts have already called the current record breaking heat wave the worst in us thousand years are just in the snow is in the moscow region for a. whole too many so while the suburbs of the capital are among the worst hit areas so what can you see around you tell us more. well we're in an area which has been directly affected by these fires in fact you can constantly hear the roar of emergency service planes trying to put these fires out we know that there is a fire somewhere back in that forest a couple of kilometers and you can see the smoke coming out and officials say it's moving closer and closer this area has a ready been destroyed we're standing in the ruins of what was once someone's home

here you can see this is obviously what used to be the kitchen you can see the remains of a sink and a stove practically the only things that are recognizable here this bowl one of the few little items that has remained something that you can understand what it once was the chimney is still standing which is often the case in fires like this sometimes it's the only thing that remains standing as in this house this obviously was once the bathroom you can see the bath tub water heater radiator and then over here is obviously the room where this family once slept you can see the remains of what was once a bed and it springs you have to remember this house and a lot of these houses are very small this family's entire collection of things of possessions were completely destroyed in just a matter of minutes it's a really dramatic thing to see once you're really here this is my first time out in the moscow region feeling anything more than just the smog.