Yunus Calls on Indian Tribal Youth to Become Entrepreneurs
DHAKA, Nov. 23 (NsNewsWire) — Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus said that education system needs to change and encourage entrepreneurship over seeking job offers. He was addressing a house packed with tribal youth from all over India, activists and scholars at an event in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand in India at the concluding day of Samvaad – Tata Steel’s signature event to encourage dialogues and discussions on the essence of being tribal. The event was held in Jamshedpur between November 14 to 19. For the first time the conclave had international tribal representatives from Australia, Canada, Kenya to attend the four-day event focused on the aspirations of Tribal youth. They had come from 20 states covering different regions of the North-East of India, Central and Western India.
Yunus added, “The economic system, which is based on capitalism assumes that human beings have to secure job to earn livelihood. But that’s not why we were born.” Encouraging the tribal youth to become independent, he said, “The education system is such that it teaches us to become someone’s employee. They should be taught about both becoming an employee or an entrepreneur. We wanted to encourage independence and entrepreneurship and that is why we started financial assistance through micro finance. Today Grameen Bank has over 9 million borrowers with 97% of them being women.”
He further said, “We need to learn again and think beyond acquiring jobs. Become entrepreneurs. The sorts of jobs we are doing now, will soon be replaced by artificial intelligence. Large number of people will find themselves losing out on employment.”
“We need social businesses to have zero poverty, unemployment and carbon emissions. Capitalist system is based on the premise that all human beings are selfish. This is wrong premise. We are also selfless ,” he added.
- Chidambaram, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha and former Union Minister of Finance of India launched Professor Yunus’s new book “A World of Three Zeroes” at the Mumbai Literary Festival on November 18, 2017. The launch was followed by a panel discussion where Jairam Ramesh, Former Cabinet Minister of Congress, Vikram Singh Mehta, Chairman of Brookings Institute in India, Naina Lal Kidwai, former Country Head of HSBC India and Professor Yunus took part.
Top executives from different Tata companies met Professor Muhammad Yunus separately during his stay in Mumbai. He also attended Indian Corporate Action Tank (ICAT) meeting. ICAT is a top level corporate action group of leading Indian corporations for social business innovation and action.