In January, Oxfam, an international confederation of charitable organisations, revealed some worrisome statistics. Timed to catch the attention of the rich and the mighty who were participating in the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam stated that 82 per cent of the wealth created last year went to the richest one percent of the global population. The 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity got nothing.
Some four years ago, WEF had identified rising economic inequality as a major threat to social stability. Oxfam wanted to remind the WEF dignitaries, which included India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that despite world leaders signing up to a global goal to reduce inequality, the gap between the rich and the rest has widened. The grim warning being that if left unchecked, growing inequality can pull our societies apart. It increases crime and insecurity, and undermines the fight to end poverty.
You can feel alarmed and turn pessimistic, or remain optimistic and try to find ways to tackle the inequality problem head on. Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, credited to have helped lift millions of people in his country Bangladesh, and elsewhere, out of poverty through his pioneering efforts in microcredit, is an optimist. A new economic model that embodies the concept of social business, self employment or entrepreneurship, and a financial architecture that supports it is what he believes can bring about this change. Yunus' latest book, A World of Three Zeros, is thus an attempt to evangelise the new economics of zero poverty, zero unemployment and zero net carbon emissions that he is promoting on a global scale.
The book cites studies, including that of Oxfam, to build a case against capitalism in its current form. Once Yunus establishes that a system where selfishness is the driving force behind all economic progress can only add to the inequality gap, he illustrates the counter economics of entrepreneurship where one can solve human problems in a sustainable manner.
Yunus' vision of social business is not an abstract idea. Throughout the book, he gives dozens of examples of such businesses that are bringing solar energy to millions of homes in Bangladesh, turning thousands of unemployed young people into entrepreneurs through equity investments, and the proactive involvement and partnerships of global corporates like McCain, Renault and Danone that are creating environment-friendly social enterprises, start-ups and technologies that focus on generating employment and in the process reducing poverty.
You may not agree with the model that Yunus advocates, but you can't ignore the possibilities it opens up. The book holds a lot of promise for Indian policymakers as it provides tips to address many of the problems they are grappling with - job creation, for instance. Yunus wants the young generation to be trained to become job creators, not job seekers. He wants Social Business Action Tanks (think tanks) to help the youth build social businesses that meet unmet needs of the society while creating wealth. He wants the legal and financial infrastructure to be rebuilt to help such entities. A World of Three Zeros has enough ammunition to provoke your thoughts.
The book also discusses the limitation of the idea. Yunus is candid in admitting that it would make no sense to create a world in which social businesses are working to repair the damage caused by profit-maximising companies. A holistic change is what is needed and the book attempts to provide a framework.