Cartoonists are a special breed within the journalistic fraternity, and around the world first-rate practitioners are very rare. Because they can pierce the heart of a problem with the few lines of a sketch, they are understood as well by the less literate as by the erudite. The feelings a powerful cartoon evokes involve the total personality, rather than only literate faculties.

With this unique effectiveness a gifted cartoonist can blacken the prospects of a public personality with a single sketch of his chin or nose. But this talent must be tempered by a sense of the broad underlying yearnings of the society, plus a persistent search for the truth that lies beneath surface appearances. No school has yet been able to produce gifted cartoonists; they are born and self-trained.

From an illustrious intellectual family in Mysore, South India, RASIPURAM KRISHNASWAMI LAXMAN was drawing by the time he started school. Self-taught, in high school he was illustrating the short stories of his author-brother, R.K. Narayan. He also began to study the cartoons in The Hindu by David Low, dean of British cartoonists, who would one day visit the young man in Bombay and compliment him on his work.

When LAXMAN started to work on the Free Press Journal in Bombay in 1946, Indian newspapers had yet to appreciate the power of the political cartoon. It was after he joined The Times of India in 1947 that LAXMAN’s extraordinary talents were recognized. Today many readers look first for his cartoons when they pick up their morning papers. Meanwhile he has expanded his talents to become an accomplished writer of short stories, articles, travelogues and a novel, Sorry, No Room.

Besides his newspaper readership LAXMAN has reached out to another audience for his cartoons. For nearly 30 years his cartoons You Said It have appeared in inexpensive paperback books. The preface to an early volume, reprinted in six editions, gives the flavor of his occupation:

“A cartoonist works for an industry in which time is of the essence. The Damocles sword of deadline rules his days, which for him follow one another in a bewildering order of importance: tomato shortage, nuclear threat, five-year plan, pot holes, corruption, monsoon forecast, adulterated drugs, prohibition and mission to the moon…”

LAXMAN’s trademark is his portrait of the Common Man — a small figure with a bulbous nose, caterpillar eyebrows, the hair behind the ears bushing out below a bald pate, and mustache like a brush. His dress is unchanging — a dhoti, long shirt and checked coat. His mien suggests a determined staying power. As his creator wrote: “You can not do away with the Common Man. They have tried it for centuries and not succeeded. . . he is the mirror image [of millions of readers] . . . the conscience that pricks the evildoer, the social offender, the practitioner of all those trades which we might have liked to practice but for fear of the police, if not of God.”

Through the eyes and fate of this long-suffering, harried, cheated and burdened, yet brave and uncomplaining character, LAXMAN gives his readers a sense of identity with the experiences that constitute India’s national life. Both the bad and the good become real and shared.

This ability of now 60 year old LAXMAN, the cartoonist, has prompted journalist colleagues to dub him their “national treasure.” For above all it is through public enlightenment that civilizations stumble up the long stairway that supposedly leads to progress. And as India wrestles with the compounding dilemmas of the world’s most populous democracy, it is the sane and hopeful daily effort of persons of LAXMAN’s profession of journalism that must help point out the better paths.

In electing RASIPURAM KRISHNASWAMI LAXMAN to receive the 1984 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes his incisive, witty, never malicious cartoons illuminating India’s political and social issues.

I am overwhelmed by your kind decision to select me to receive the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts.

I did not imagine for a moment that my efforts in this field merited a reward of such dimensions. I thought all along I was providing a momentary relief to a public leading a monotonous humdrum existence. I pondered over this happy news and I realized the significance of the Award in relation to my role in society, and at the same time arrived at a very revealing philosophy. At the risk of it being considered somewhat too fanciful I would like to share it with you.

In this world there is no man who can say he is free from problems and nagging worries. A rich man has his worries about his wealth, I am sure, and so a poor man, obviously, has his about his impoverished state. The masses of people in between are, one way or another, victims of varying degrees of frustration, stress and tension. With these rather liberal assumptions and a dash of creative imagination, one can picture the common man running away in horror from the specter of poverty and at the same time, alas, not quite making it to the haven of contentment. In such a situation he bemoans his lot and blames it on rulers, administrators, petty officials, tax collectors, taxi drivers, grocers, doctors, judges and a score of others he has to deal with.

At this pyschological juncture the satirical commentator, in this case the cartoonist, steps in to administer the anodyne to his frustrated spirit and tickles his almost atrophied sense of humor.

I draw cartoons satirizing and lampooning his tormentors. He takes a look at them. A slow smile spreads over his face as he views his persecutors ridiculed and derives a vicarious comfort, as if he has been avenged! Such a pictorial comment helps him, to some degree, overcome his blues and relax his overwrought mind. Thus prepared he goes to face the battle of life, not with an impotent anger in his heart, but with a healthy good humor and an affable disposition, and survives another day.

A sense of humor is very essential for human welfare. A man with this quality is a better neighbor, a better friend, and above all a better citizen than the grumpy one among us who is bereft of it. Laughter is Mother Nature’s device to insulate us against the onslaughts of harsh realities of existence. God must have, in his infinite wisdom, realized the sad state of the human condition on earth very clearly indeed.

That is why, I suspect, that of all the animals he created, he gave the gift of laughter only to humans so as to help them survive. It is the business of the satirical commentator to kindle, stimulate and develop this instinct in man for the collective good of the whole civilized community. I like to believe that this Award is a tribute to that supreme quality of laughter which we all possess. I am grateful to the enlightened trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for recognizing with such a grand and noble gesture the importance of this human quality and the significant role that it plays in our lives.

Safeguarding human rights poses one of the key tests for every country. The state must insure its survival against threats from right and left, from political opportunists and even terrorists. Yet the rationale for governments is first and always to protect the rights and well-being of their citizens.

When codified legal systems and courts emerged they curbed the whims of rulers and sought to provide legal equality and justice for all. However those who could afford to pay for the services of able lawyers continued to enjoy an advantage. Their wealth and status often influenced the courts before which they appeared. Yearning of the poor for prompt administration of legal justice is universal, but attorneys who have responded faithfully to this need constitute only a small, but special, fraternity.

THONGBAI THONGPAO learned the hard way that life often is unfair. Born 58 years ago into the family of a poor farmer in northeastern Thailand, he was educated through primary school in a temple. He was orphaned by age nine and worked for two years in the family rice fields before attending secondary school. Living in a Bangkok temple, working at various jobs, and with modest help from his siblings, he completed Suan Kularb College and graduated in law from Thammasat University in 1951. For the next seven years he worked as a reporter and political commentator for several Thai newspapers.

THONGBAI found his mission when his own rights were ground down by the wheels of authority. In 1958 he and a group of writers and journalists visited the People?s Republic of China,with which Thailand had no diplomatic relations. Upon their return Marshal Sarit Thanarat, who had seized power in a coup, ordered the travelers arrested as communist suspects. Detained without trial for eight years in Laad Yao prison, THONGBAI finally was acquitted by a military court in mid-1966 after Sarit had been posthumously discredited.

During those prison years, as he wrote a book of the experience of his group, he determined to become the legal champion of the oppressed. Of the many, often obsolete, laws he has found on the books that can be employed to abuse the underprivileged, he has taken particular issue with those denying the right of the poor to remain on land they occupy. His other cases have ranged from defending men and women accused of crimes they had not committed but who could afford neither bail nor legal help, to activists arrested on false charges of ties to the Communist Party of Thailand.

THONGBAI lives simply above his office, and he and his seven young volunteer lawyers sometimes use their modest fees to pay expenses for the accused they defend. Taking cases other lawyers shun, he has successfully defended against libel a newspaper whose reporters exposed the corruption of the Lord Mayor of Bangkok in the purchase of several hundred acres of land for a housing project. After the October 1976 coup a committee of lawyers joined him in securing the release of 18 students whom they proved were wrongly arrested. Even Thais abroad have elicited his concern, including four workers in Kuwait who were sentenced to death for allegedly robbing and murdering a moneychanger. He is now challenging Thailand’s proposed new Press Bill on grounds that it accords undue power to the director of police.

Despite his own struggles and his uphill battles for the rights of the needy, THONGBAI remains a warm, gregarious individual, devoted to his wife who works as a nurse, and their three children. In the finest tradition of the legal profession he maintains a strict care for accuracy and impartiality that compels respect even from many who may appear against him in court.

In electing THONGBAI THONGPAO to receive the 1984 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his effective and fair use of his legal skills and pen to defend those who have “less in life and thus need more in law.”

I consider this prestigious Award high honor not only for myself, but for my fellow countrymen and my country. The honor I receive today is a symbol of the victory of right and justice. It represents a victory of human rights over tyranny and oppressors who wittingly or unwittingly abuse humankind.

I firmly believe in the ideals of human rights and the rule of law, which means the rule of just law. I have to stress this point because several countries have been operating under laws which are not democratic. They have been applying laws which limit and suppress the freedom and rights of the people. I cannot accept that the rule of law which runs contrary to human rights is legitimate rule.

I agree with and support the faith of the late President Ramon Magsaysay in human values, in freedom and in peace. This faith is a great and mighty power which is essential for the building of this world into a place of lasting peace and happiness. I abhor and am enraged by injustice. I abhor and am enraged by the suppression of freedom and human rights.

The failure to respect human rights and the lack of appreciation of human values, lead people to look down on others, to hate and despise them, to oppress them and to abuse them. This in turn leads to a fight, a struggle to oppose the tyranny. It leads to the use of force and to destruction, which is a tragedy for humankind.

The majority of the people in the world are still living amidst great hardship, hunger and suffering. A great number of people are leading a bitter existence because of poverty and the power of tyrants and oppressors. To help our fellow human beings escape from this suffering, we can only urge all people to be aware of human values, to respect the rights of others, to be willing to share fairly in the wealth of each nation.

We must work together to get rid of all injustice, to help build a society — a world — in which all the people have freedom and can enjoy a life of honor and peace.

I will be supremely happy if my work plays just a small part in helping to bring the wishes and the faith of President Magsaysay closer to realization.

Assimilation of science coming from the West has been the core of the conflict between China’s own immense inherited intellectual traditions and ideas from abroad. Nearly four centuries ago this struggle began when the first Jesuit scholar-missionaries won entry to the Forbidden Kingdom during the Ming Dynasty. At the Board of Astronomy in Peking and elsewhere they introduced an entirely new world view, challenging ancient Chinese classical precepts.

While the past century saw the emergence of important modern universities in China, and many students eagerly imbibed the new learning, a scientific view of reality did not permeate popular attitudes. As the Manchu Dynasty began to collapse in the 19th century, wars and revolutions compounded the crisis of conflicting ideologies and until recently crippled education in mainland China. In Taiwan over the past 35 years Chinese civilization for the first time has been able to digest modern science and technology.

TA-YOU WU came to his role of scientific innovator on Taiwan after an eminent career in physics as teacher and researcher. Born 77 years ago in Canton, WU began his study of physics at Nankai University in Tientsin and completed his graduate training at the University of Michigan before returning to a faculty appointment at Peking National University. In 1937 when Japanese aggression against China accelerated, WU joined other intellectual refugees at National Southwestern Associated University in Kunming. Between 1947 and 1978 he taught and engaged in research abroad at the University of Michigan, Columbia University, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and the State University of New York at Buffalo, and headed the theoretical physics section of the National Research Council of Canada.

Although such foreign opportunities were absorbing, WU was concerned for his countrymen’s future and in 1958 proposed to leaders in Taiwan a plan for the formulation of science policies and their implementation. Decisive action was taken after 1967 when the late President Chiang Kai-shek asked WU to head concurrently the new Advisory Committee for Science Development of the National Security Council, and the National Science Council (NSC), which was a greatly strengthened successor to the earlier committee set up in response to WU’s proposal. In 1968 a 12-year science development plan was adopted for science education and the promotion of research in natural and applied sciences, the humanities and the social sciences. Today universities and research institutes throughout Taiwan are staffed by professors sent abroad for advanced study and Chinese scholars brought back from abroad under this plan. The NSC budget has risen from US$10 million to US$30 million annually to insure continuous invigoration of science education and research in the republic.

WU led this effort and commuted between Taiwan and his professorial duties at the State University of New York in Buffalo from 1967 to 1978 when he returned permanently to Taipei. Eschewing retirement he was soon embarked, for the Ministry of Education, upon a complete review and reorganization of the science curricula of junior and senior high schools. Under his direction more than 100 professors and teachers are rewriting, and revising after trials, all the textbooks on mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, earth sciences and engineering. This comprehensive project forms the basis for a new system of teaching science to young people and is leading toward a more dynamic society. As the electronic information industry becomes an integral part of Taiwan’s economy, there are well-trained new graduates to staff it and help it expand.

For a person with a dozen scientific books and numerous pioneering papers on such subjects as molecular, astro and atmospheric physics to his credit, WU remains a man of simple habits, shunning material wealth. His attention to science education and research, for this and future generations, has won him the respect of his students—two of whom are Nobel Prize winners—and of the international scientific fraternity. Impatient for the improvements he seeks, he has set a standard for selfless service that invites emulation.

In electing Dr. TA-YOU WU to receive the 1984 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his designing Taiwan’s move toward the forefront of science in education and practice.

 

 

Dr. TA-YOU WU deeply regrets that illness prevents him from being; here this evening to receive this prestigious Award and has asked me to read to you his response as follows: 

It is generally agreed that in the last decade Taiwan has made considerable progress in economic development. It is also generally believed that the economic success is in large measure due to four factors: 1) social stability as a result of the land reform program carried out in the early 1950s; 2) the government’s policy of a free economy; 3) the policy of building up our agriculture and light industries before attempting heavy industries, and 4) the enterprising qualities of our people. But the important contribution made by our education program may not have been so widely appreciated.

Today over 99 percent of our youth receive nine years of free education. As a result our literacy rate is one of the highest in the world. Our society, therefore, is receptive to new ideas and new technologies.

I am a physicist by profession, but I have always been concerned with the general development of science in my country. In 1967 I was given an opportunity to map out a broad program of science development in Taiwan which covers, in addition to research in basic and applied science, science education at all levels, from high school through college, graduate and advanced study. In the last few years I have started and taken part in a project involving complete review and reorganization of the science curricula of our whole education system, and a rewriting of all science textbooks for our junior and senior high schools. I hope I am not too presumptuous in thinking that our science and education programs over the last 15 years have played some role in the industrial and economic development in recent years in Taiwan. It is my firm conviction that the essential steps toward modernization of a developing country are integration of basic science into education at all levels, and encouragement of basic science research, so that technology transfer and development can find hospitable roots.

It is often said that the Asian region will be the most vibrant area of growth in the next few decades, and it has been my vital concern that in Taiwan we would build up a momentum for participation in this growth.

Again, my sincere thanks to the Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for their recognition and appreciation of my efforts and meager contribution to a better world consistent with the principles of the Philippine president whose memory lives on in this Award.

Foreign scholars studying village life throughout Asia learn much of value which is shared, particularly with their peers. Frequently they also develop enduring personal relations among families with whom they live and learn. These cultural anthropologists, sociologists, economists and others contribute to the growing intellectual milieu of one world.

With only rare exceptions, however, the villagers who have hosted research scholars and offered insights into their cultures receive little or nothing in return. After the dissection of their life-styles, problems and aspirations, these usually friendly folk may be left even more discontented by an awakened awareness of unattainable possibilities.

More than 30 years ago JIRO KAWAKITA began studying the disintegrating environmental equilibrium of Nepal’s Sikha Valley, located west of Pokhara below the snow-clad peaks of the Himalayas. Population pressure upon scarce land was compounded by modernizing demands of retired veterans of Gurkha regiments and seasonal laborers who worked abroad. Forests were being destroyed as need for livestock forage and human food compelled enlargement of ever-higher hillside fields. Focusing upon high-elevation terraced culture of barley, wheat, maize and African millet, KAWAKITA complemented his ethnogeographic research with mountain climbing. Crossing over mountain crests and through gorges gave him a vivid appreciation of villagers’ hardships. He also designed an information analysis system which he used to help villagers identify their most urgent problems. This system he patented and it is used today by Japanese corporations for business planning.

Impelled by the plight of these some 5,000 Sikha Valley villagers, KAWAKITA in 1963 decided to find technological answers to their two priority needs: transporting fuel and forage down steep slopes to their homes, and securing drinking water without carrying it many kilometers across rugged mountain terrain. Extended discussions with Japanese technicians led to the choice of two simple technologies. The first was a wire ropeway similar to that used by tangerine growers in Japan to move harvests from hillside orchards. In Nepal it would need to be much longer, lighter, of greater tensile strength and highly durable to cross deep chasms and withstand harsh weather. The second was a hard polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipeline to carry water to villages without cutting into the fragile schist structure of the mountainsides.

Discovering that government funds were not readily available, KAWAKITA and his associates established the Association for Technical Cooperation to the Himalayan Areas. After soliciting contributions from individuals and corporations—sometimes in kind—and enlisting volunteers, they flew their wire rope, plastic pipe and supplies to Pokhara.

With the help of the villagers who had participated in all the decisions, these eight tons of materials were carried four walking days over an arduous mountain trail to the Sikha Valley. The villagers helped install, and quickly learned to operate, the ropeways which greatly eased transport of fuel and forage from distant slopes. The pipeline has become a model for programs of the Royal Government of Nepal and UNICEF. A superhydro pump, whereby a stream fall of four meters lifts water from 120 to a maximum of 200 meters, did not prove durable in the Sikha Valley. At Nepalese government request this hydraulic ram that worked well for five years is being further tested in a village near Kathmandu to determine the required technological improvements and maintenance system.

As vital as easing the daily lot of the five Sikha Valley villages, is the development of binational relations between Japan and Nepal, and the new awareness of villagers that beneficial technologies are attainable without endangering their cultural environment. KAWAKITA has shown that the skills of human perception of ethnogeographers and other research scholars can be used to bring technology appropriate to their needs to the villagers they study.

In electing JIRO KAWAKITA to receive the 1984 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes his winning the participation of remote Nepalese villagers in researching their problems, resulting in practical benefits of potable water supplies and rapid ropeway transport across mountain gorges.

It is my great honor to be given this noted Award which commemorates such an esteemed man as the late President Ramon Magsaysay. I am told he loved the common people and served them with the full strength of his energetic personality. My challenge in the Himalayas was also directed to the welfare of the common people, those who live in a remote area of those mountains; naturally I sympathize with his way of thinking. The honor of this Award, however, extends not only to me, but also to every participant who joined my project. Without their efforts, surely I would have accomplished nothing.

The aim of our project was to develop a concept of international technological cooperation, in particular directed to the revitalization of rural areas and based on self-reliance. Our motivation was not one of charity, but more that of a cheerful venture based on the spirit of mutual participation between the villagers concerned and my colleagues. The villagers gave their best willingly; consequently I learned many things through this experience. From this platform here tonight I want to say to them: “Thank you very much.” Their efforts moved us close to tears.

The mutual participation came from a common understanding of the total ecological and cultural environment. In other words, the participation was based on the holistic integration of qualitative data to achieve a scientific recognition of reality. In this sense, I believe, the way of true science coincides with the way of humanism. If this were not so, this so-called true science must be fundamentally reformed in the future.

Throughout the “third world” inadequate access to reasonable credit in most villages remains a major hurdle to the fulfillment of basic human aspirations. Complex application procedures and lack of connections and collateral are insurmountable impediments. Ironically moneylending, especially to the poor, makes many fortunes and scarce resources are immobilized for consumption rather than invested in development.

Usury rates throughout much of Asia and some other lands illuminate the problem. Bangladesh villagers routinely pay 120 percent annual interest on loans used for investment and consumption purposes. Metro Manila market vendors commonly operate on a “five-six system,” paying 20 percent interest per week on their borrowed capital. Especially in agriculture such exorbitant rates cripple investment. Access to credit at more reasonable rates often favors those who already hold wealth or exercise power, thus stifling more egalitarian participation in the economy.

When he assumed his post as professor of economics at Chittagong University in 1972 MUHAMMAD YUNUS established a Rural Economics Program to do research in the villages. Beginning with an idle tubewell, abandoned for lack of management, he developed in 1974 the Tebhaga Khamar (three-share farm) program which the government has adopted as the Packaged Input Program. To make it effective YUNUS and his associates found it essential to propose a new institution, Gram Sarkar, or village government, which would allow ordinary people to participate in making the decisions affecting them. Gram Sarkar was adopted by the government as a national model in 1980, but dropped by the succeeding regime.

However, even these efforts proved inadequate to arrest a process of pauperization that left ever more villagers without hope. And the traditional poverty-focused programs proved incapable of “breaking out” of the straightjacket of ingrained habits and half-truths compounded by myths. Supposedly, the poor cannot save, will not work together, have no marketable skills, are uninterested in change and the women are not allowed to keep what they earn. Thus the life of the poor is a vicious self-perpetuating quandary, and population growth multiplies their burdens.

YUNUS’ solution is the Grameen (village) Bank Project (GBP) for the landless. It aims to: 1) extend banking facilities to the poorest segment of society, 2) bypass moneylenders, 3) create self-employment for unutilized man/woman power, and 4) bring the disadvantaged into an organization they can understand and operate. It began in 1976 at Jobra near Chittagong University where the Bangladesh Krishi Bank in 1978 agreed to establish a branch with operational policies designed by YUNUS and his Rural Economics Program.

All loans are made to members of a group of five men or women, two of whom are given loans, with the other three eligible only when the first two start making their weekly repayments. Groups meet weekly and monitor each member’s performance. Repayment of loans on schedule has been better than 98 percent. Group members also must save weekly for capital in their Group Fund.

For over 100,000 villagers, formerly submerged in poverty, but who today have utilized GBP loans, the results of releasing productivity have been spectacular. They have built small mustard seed oil mills, bought cows and goats for fattening, begun weaving saris and making fish nets, started pottery works and betel nut growing, purchased fertilizer for rice growing, and expanded the inventory of their small shops. The evidence is compelling that even the poorest villagers have sound ideas about how to use effectively loans ranging from the equivalent of US$2 to US$2,100.

Only 44 years old, YUNUS, his ex-students from Chittagong University, and their collaborators in the Bangladesh banking fraternity, with a modest investment of less than US$8 million, have launched a major, positive rural change in one of the world’s poorest nations. Their collaboration has brought closer the day when it again can become “Golden Bangla.”

In electing MUHAMMAD YUNUS to receive the 1984 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes his enabling the neediest rural men and women to make themselves productive with sound group-managed credit.

I am deeply touched by the great honor given to me by electing me a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee. It was a big surprise to hear the news about the Award. I still cannot make out how the trustees of this prestigious foundation could notice a small effort such as ours, which has reached only some 100,000 in a population of more than 90 million. I can only admire the foundation for taking a big risk in choosing me, and in demonstrating its confidence in our work when we need it the most.

As a student of social science I could not feel comfortable with what I learned. When it came to applying this knowledge in solving real problems, it appeared toothless. I continued to get a feeling that the knowledge that we present in the discipline of social science is replete with pretensions and make-believe stories. We have picked up the habit of imagining things, rather than seeing things as they are.

Social scientists enjoy being up above in the sky and having a panoramic bird’s eye view over a wide horizon. A bird’s eye view is certainly very revealing when you’ve already fortified yourself with enormous quantities of close-up shots at ground level and you know what you are looking at. The view from the sky without the supportive close-up view from the ground merely encourages you to take recourse to daydreaming.

Not all people have access to a bird’s eye view. Poor people don’t. They are too busy eking out a survival for themselves with their worm’s eye view. With this view they have to assess their immediate neighborhood in a continuous search for a way which will keep them out of trouble today.

When a problem is seen in a lumped form, it is easy for the viewer to be overwhelmed by its enormity. In many cases, however, large problems are merely a composite of a great number of simple problems. Simple problems can be solved by simple people. But by putting them together to make a complex problem we take them out of the comprehension of the everyday person. Once we remove something from the comprehension of an individual, we have incapacitated him mentally and physically. He cannot make himself useful in any way in solving the problem.

Poverty can be better understood if we look at it from the ground level and at a very close range. Then, instead of generating billions of words about it, we can find ways to cope with it.

Poverty is not caused by a person’s unwillingness to work hard or lack of skill. As a matter of fact, a poor person may work very hard — even harder than others — and he has more skill and time than he can use. He languishes in poverty because he does not receive the full worth of his work. Under the existing social and economic institutional arrangements someone else always comes in between and skims off the income that was due to him. The existing economic machinery is designed in such a way that it allows this process of grabbing to continue and gather strength everyday, so that the earnings of others can make a handful of people richer and turn a large number of people into paupers.

A poor person cannot arrange a larger share or return for his work because his economic base is paper thin. If he can gradually build up an asset-base he can command a better share.

Land to the landless will help build up this base. There are other forms of assets which will improve his economic situation. Credit, for example; it is a liquid asset. The recipient of credit can decide which particular tangible form he will convert this asset into. Best of all, credit is something that a nation can generate at a rate commensurate with its requirements.

With financial resources at his disposal, an individual is free to build his own fate with his own labor. Nothing can match the spirit of a free human being.

Many suggest generation of employment as the solution to the problem of poverty. Employment per se does nor remove poverty. Unless designed properly, employment can turn into a handle to perpetuate poverty. Employment may mean being condemned to live in a squalid city slum or working for two meals a day for life.

Removal of poverty must be a continuous process of creation of assets by the poor at a steady rate. Poor people know what they must do to get out of the rut. But the people who make decisions refuse to put faith in their ability.

In Grameen Bank, not only are poor men and women changing their lives by their own efforts, in the process they are changing the lives of the people who work with them. Bank workers, who are in fact the architects of this bank, continuously surprise us with their ability and willingness to put in extra hours, travel longer distances in difficult terrain, and reach toward new horizons of activities. On this magnificent occasion I wish to record my sincere thanks and gratitude to them for making Grameen Bank a great institution.

I am overwhelmed by the honor you have granted me. I realize very well that I am receiving this Award because hundreds of young men and women in the Grameen Bank have been working so hard to make a dream come true. With all humility in my heart I receive this wonderful Award and thank you, and then my co-workers.