the loans from other banks in one thousand nine hundred. to the most deprived households in bangladesh. could make a big difference while traditional banks were not interested in giving tiny loans at reasonable interest rates to the poor due to high repayment risks you news believe that given the chance the poor will pay back the money. to the concert by opening the grameen bank the success of the grameen model of micro financing has inspired. hundred countries throughout the world many but not all micro credit projects. specifically to women more than ninety seven percent of grameen loans have done to women likely to devote their earnings to their families. today. thank you very much for being with. well first of all i want to ask you. that your

institution has. a crisis or is it wrong what i'm saying. it's because. money to poor women in the villages in our work is very close to the economy. and the. goods produced by. so there you have no problem moving away from the crisis because we build a fantasy economy building in there and you're chasing paper. present how much. they have in those papers when one piece of that castle falls apart then the whole castle. so this is what's happening to the other economy and the banking. more related to that kind of fantasy world

well you were consulting state duma deputies he spoke in the russian parliament well what provoked their interest in microcredit do they believe that it may be maybe a solution for russia and it was what was specific questions they asked you 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. strong. 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 and the reason is the financial crisis which came heavily on russia and many people lost jobs

a lot of on the plot 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 regular to the issues institutional issues how this can be done how grameen works in bangladesh why did we focus on women what is the advantage and the logic of focusing on women how did those kind of questions but basically how the banking system can be brought into the picture and what alternative financial services can be provided through 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 your bank 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 is a paper armor money is not paper no i'm not talking about money as a paper and that's was not issue an issue is for example you gave a loan to buy a house so you have documents that your contracts 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 papers

and being sold in this old repackaged you don't know with these papers coming from those you do the same with papers in your bank we are not really direct loan very direct very direct and that's. 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 you decided to become part of it. i should say hated them i disliked the way they did it because my point was that 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're 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. to have love someone already so i started it they said that it cannot be done because you cannot live as my middle who don't have money they have no money to return your money left in 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 so it's obvious i said it's not obvious to me so i went ahead and did it and it works and there's no call or trial nothing poorest person even beggars take a 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 know and return the money returned do you ever ask where did you get. your degree 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 you have your giving actual trying to turn them into into micro business absolutely that's what idea is and if people buy something from your case you have an income out of that. if they want to give charity take it well but big big big thing 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 looked to become

a beggar something else society kind of pushed you. to the brink doing it to the tipping point and finally you can take care of yourself so you start. 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't feed your children so you go a little farther down and it becomes kind. a survival technique what's the amount of money that a beggar would usually taken as a logo typically i would say about fifteen dollars fifteen dollars so that's about the money to start with. idea is if you can pay us back this fifteen dollars you can take as much. more if you want do you have a maximum l. that you know 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 low. i will not because first

suspicion is he or she is not a poor person. 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're looking for people with one room but. if you find someone like that we say if you have one little funny show inside the house we said ok we're looking for one drum little but no furniture so that's how we try to go as deep as in the party is about that makes you very personal very person who should have you should have

a lot of staff to realize this is really just bringing a piece of paper down showing your income and 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. households to do business of the premises they don't have to come to our office so all our twenty eight thousand stuff that we have. every day is to go out and meet them we didn't one week we have to meet all the eight million dollars says you know. banker and 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.

welcome back to spotlight time melbourne often just a reminder that my guest today is the nobel peace prize winner back in two thousand and six banker mohammad you know. well we talked about you or your mom. 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 they refused then i was accusing them of many things one accuses and is 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 borrowers not even one percent of your borrowers up until we were in bangladesh and when that 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 say but very difficult to implement because women's anonyma don't give it to me i don't know what to do with money and 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 have to build up courage because this or 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 an income she could take good care of the money she got from the. with a small amount of money because she has a very special skill 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. or something so she's very careful about handling resources so in the process history has told her daughter how to become an excellent manager of resources so so women are better measures of four 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 being being resource managers at a company level historically level 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 never took place so now gradually that is starting stateless young girls coming young woman coming as executive probably that one day you'll see top c.e.o.'s women women turning 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 impact in the family is much greater if you're a woman in income on a board 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 her 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 about this 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 price in profit sure 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-employed is a woman in the house who didn't have an ok she's just looking after the children on the family for the first time she starts on it because she has the money what she does she takes her skill the artes and all those real sewing clothes are making busk or raising the washing of her show what you are she has the nature of the skill family skill she had transformed into a business believe it i'm a bit what's the rate. it's a twenty percent simple interest rate for income generating activity here yes and then for housing loan we also get housing loan for housing loan it's eight percent per year simple interest rate and also we give loans for students to go into higher

education and tired financing of have traditionally done by coming back and that's five percent and for bigger this is a person 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 did only do loads or does your bank. avoid 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 the very tiny small insurance program which is built into the program even if her husband dies she's still alive she's still active but she doesn't have to pay anything anymore of the outstanding loan certain of it fresh loans useless the loans are insurance for the more volatile and what about you do you insure yourself myself the i mean the bank hold on the one is all there is are

you so high that you did then use your ears we don't need insurance because the permit is high we never had worries about that see bangladesh is a country of. endless disasters we always have floods we always have sacked loans and big floods almost have the countries 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 we 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 have 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 a true or is it gaining popularity today almost every single country in the world has the main program and it is going to like even like developed countries like europe americans and lots of countries in europe like you create norway sweden. many countries and also united states we just opened the main program and. new york city about eighteen months back of what we call drum in america we give to the low income women in the neighborhood of queens. now we have about fifteen hundred baud worse all women average loan is about two thousand and the deployment rate is ninety nine point three percent no color no guarantee no lawyers nothing and they pay about the same way that we do it in bangladesh exactly same principles same methodology weekly payment five women get together form themselves into

a group so that they look at each other supervise each other so so we'll never we see a microcredit going somewhere in the world it's like inside the grameen group while there is. create organization independent of each other many many others to go in you know how i'm going no one that i said all countries all over the doing that it's a coming type of program but i mean 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 being microcredit credit coverage and say we are doing my cricketing savings and loan associations say we are doing microcredit so that's a kind of. captioning their own program that's not real microcredit but simply calling that while we have sort of micro credit. do you think that if

your system will be applied system to kill the it can help eradicate poverty around the world well completely i would say it would 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 in. own 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 the amount that saved by the grameen borrowers come to over half a billion dollars in their own savings account which is a tremendous amount of resource for them the practical it can buy off any big company in the country with their own savings do you see a lot of happy people that you that your me your work really made happy because

because according. to philosophy especially indian philosophy money does make. 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 of 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

was brought by money thank you thank you very much and just to remind you that mr muhammad hugh nous was our guest spotlighted the man to the one and 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.

smog that's blanketing moscow over the past week showing no signs of dispersing a change in wind direction and an unexpected thunderstorm has brought some relief from forest and peat fires after a month of record breaking temperatures firefighters the military and volunteers have been working around the clock to get the fires under control prime minister vladimir putin even took to the skies and phidias aircraft to help dump tons of

water on the flames forecasters say the heat wave could continue into made august. one time obeys youngers prisoner detained at just fifteen is facing military trial for crimes he says he was tortured into admitting omar kotter now twenty three's use of killing a u.s. soldier in afghanistan he's the first from the u.s. prison camp in cuba to be tried since barack obama took office. a european union project aimed at tackling terrorism has angered civil liberties groups in the u.k. they say a plan to monitor airline passengers on board planes is a step closer to surveillance state brussels is funding research into detecting suspicious behavior to give air crews an early warning. and you're up to date with our top stories up next it's time for peter lavelle and the crosstalk team to bring you more hot debate on the issues that matter stay with us.

and you can. still. follow and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle hard realities or convenient lines the world will be watching closely the u.s. senate as it debates new climate change laws are these laws based on real science are hyped up myths and if scientists can't agree what are the rest of us the same. topic. to discuss the political climate of global warming i'm joined by lord christopher monckton in london he's a writer and former policy advisor to british prime minister margaret thatcher in

washington we have jason kowalski a policy coordinator at one sky campaign and also in washington we have young miller a senior policy associate at the environmental and energy study institute and another member of our crosstalk team on the hunger large christopher monckton if i could go to you first. going from copenhagen last year to today or approximate what's going to be happening in the u.s. senate about climate change laws what progress is the world made and the progress of the discourse on climate change is a gotten better or worse more intense thinner how would you describe it. i think what's happening is that climate change is rapidly fading from the headlines in most western countries certainly simply because it's become blindingly obvious after the third very cold winter in a row that global warming simply isn't happening there hasn't really been any.