Muhammad Yunus

Chief Adviser Prof Muhammad Yunus sends out a message on the occasion of a month since the student-led mass uprising in Bangladesh.

Patent-free global medicine production is the way to go in order to fight the next pandemic.

You and I are human beings, with family, perhaps children and grandchildren, certainly with friends and neighbours. We are of different nationalities, ethnicities, beliefs. We have all seen extreme poverty, and witnessed wars and the killing and the dying, whether firsthand or through the news.

The world is facing an unprecedented crisis with the coronavirus pandemic. Day after day, all the failures in our economic and social systems, and our thinking processes are being revealed. We were aware of these failures all along, but we ignored them, and we let them grow worse each day. We knew about global warming and that it is worsening, as well as about wealth concentration, and that it is getting worse. We knew about the problems of poverty, healthcare, deforestation, plastic pollution, gender inequality, and numerous other issues. We knew how to solve them. But we did not mobilise our capabilities to end these problems. Why? One explanation may be: we are so 'addicted' to the present system that we do not want to disturb it.

The history of human beings is a history of being driven basically by collective interest, not by personal interest. Economists made us believe that we are driven only by personal interest, and act accordingly through profit maximisation.

I just want to draw everyone’s attention to the time factor. Time is of the essence here, and every moment wasted is an opportunity squandered.

Abed left us. But it is not possible to bid him farewell. He will remain our friend and a fellow nation builder forever.

Abed left us. But it is not possible to bid him farewell. He will remain as our friend, and fellow nation builder forever. From the Liberation War to this day, he is present in every sphere of our society. There is no corner of the country which the refreshing wind of Abed’s activities did not touch. He is the main architect behind the monumental changes in Bangladesh’s society.