Indian media outlet The Wire points out in its recent article that a prosperous Bangladesh, led by Chief Advisor Professor Muhmmad Yunus, is more likely to be a strong ally of India than a failing country.

Vinod Khosla, a businessman and venture capitalist, wrote the opinion published in The Wire on October 27.

Here is the full text of the full article.

As a proud American and a son of India, I look forward with hope to the exciting possibilities surrounding Professor Muhammad Yunus’ leadership of Bangladesh. Three days after the flight of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, on August 5, Yunus was sworn in as the head of the interim government of Bangladesh.

Yunus, whom I consider a friend and have known for decades, accepted this position at the insistence of student leaders who were at the forefront of the student-led struggle.

I’m an entrepreneurship fanatic, I believe in the power of ideas and I’m passionate about sustainability and impact. I am impressed by what Yunus has accomplished in his life. I work to bring life-improving technology to the world through my investments. Yunus, through endless experimentation and tinkering, has developed a series of successful institutional models for reducing poverty, improving health care and education outcomes, and combating climate change.

For example, in 1996, Yunus successfully put cell phones in the hands of hundreds of thousands of poor women in rural villages in Bangladesh, allowing them to generate income as village ladies on cell phones. I am passionate about protecting our environment. Yunus founded a company that, since 1995, has installed 1.8 million solar home systems and 1 million clean cookers, again almost exclusively in rural Bangladesh.

That doesn’t even include the creation of Grameen Bank, which has provided a total of $39 billion in small, mostly income-generating loans to more than 10 million poor women, which has become a model for efforts similar in India and many other countries.

But today, Yunus has turned to a new challenge, becoming the world’s eighth-largest country by population, a nation of more than 170 million people. It is a country with about half the population of the United States, all in an area equal to that of the US state of Illinois.

There are people all over Bangladesh and the world fighting for Yunus’s success. I’m part of it. But others want him and the interim government he leads to fail and are spreading false narratives about what is happening under his leadership. I would therefore like to share my point of view on its values, its approach and its first results.

In his first two months in office, he brought the police back to work, which improved the law and order situation, took concrete steps to protect minorities such as Hindus, worked to improve relations with India, suggested regional powers reinvigorate SAARC, and made progress in stabilizing Bangladesh’s banking and financial sectors (which were in disarray when he took office).

He also represented Bangladesh effectively in the United Nations General Assembly and had over 50 productive meetings with world leaders while
he was in New York.

In his work in this position, I have seen him apply the same values ​​and approach that I have seen him use throughout his career: building national consensus on key issues, experimenting to determine what works best, inspiring fellow citizens (especially young people) to get involved in a practical and constructive way, by treating all people with respect, regardless of religion, gender or ethnicity, and by being pragmatic and energetic (even though I’m 84 years old).

But the challenges are numerous. Running a government can be much more difficult than running a series of social enterprises and nonprofits. People aligned with the previous government that lost power want its efforts to fail. The party that has been away from power for years wants a rapid return. But I think Yunus is up to the task.

In September, I joined 198 world leaders, including 92 Nobel laureates, in a letter to the people of Bangladesh and people of goodwill around the world.

“We are delighted to see Professor Yunus finally free to work towards the recovery of the entire country, especially the most marginalized, a vocation he pursued with great vigor and success for six decades (sic).”

His early successes in this role bode well for Bangladesh’s future, and a prosperous Bangladesh is more likely to be a strong ally of India than a failing Bangladesh. We should all encourage Yunus to continue to progress in this important interim role, as Bangladesh must reach its potential in India’s best interest.