The labour law case involving Professor Yunus is centered on alleged violations of the Bangladesh Labour Act of 2006. The critique of this legal proceeding has centered on the fact that the defendant should be the organization that supposedly violated the Act—Grameen Telecom—rather than any individual or individuals, and also on the reality that the penalty should be, at most, a fine of the local equivalent of $227, not up to six months in prison for four of its volunteer directors. But what has gotten lost in this, and what might be confusing to those not familiar with Professor Yunus’ work in the 1990s, is the significance of the organization Grameen Telecom, which Dr. Yunus established and for which he has served as an unsalaried chairman since its inception.
In short, Grameen Telecom was established to ensure that tens of thousands of Grameen Bank borrowers were able to set up cellular payphone enterprises soon after GrameenPhone—a company Grameen Telecom is also an investor in—was launched as a highly successful business. Professor Yunus’ idea, revolutionary at the time, was that with proper support, poor women could be the agents of bringing new technologies to their villages in a business format that vastly accelerated their journey out of poverty.
To fill this gap in understanding, Professor Yunus recently told the story of how and why he launched Grameen Telecom and of the impact it had on thousands of formerly poor Bangladeshi women, on the concept of doing business with the poor that is now taught in business schools around the world, and ultimately on the global mobile telecommunications industry.
While it might sound odd, on the surface, to set up a Bangladeshi nonprofit company to work in the local mobile telecommunications market, on further inspection it represents one of the most farsighted and high-impact decisions Professor Yunus ever took. The fact that this institution is being harassed rather than celebrated by the Bangladeshi government is one of the many tragedies unfolding in the country today.
The “Telephone Ladies” of Bangladesh will be remembered by historians as a vital force propelling the global mobile telecommunications revolution of the early 21st century, just as the persecution of Professor Yunus will be recalled as one of the most shameful acts ever perpetrated by the Bangladeshi government.