Foreign Policy Blogs

Guardian op-ed on BRAC and Grameen Bank As Exemplary Social Entrepreneurs

The Guardian published an op-ed by Simon Chestertman and Kishore Mahbubani today.  Though a run-down of the pragmatic way countries in Asia have dealt with global challenges, the article features Brac and Grameen Bank prominently.

“Asia has emerged as a leader in social entrepreneurship. The successes of social businesses such as Grameen Bank and Brac in Bangladesh have contributed to renewed thinking about how social objectives can be fused with revenue-generating practices.”

Perhaps it’s because I’m  a partisan, but it seems to me that both organizations are particularly Bangladeshi enterprises. Being an Asian country did not enter the social and political calculus when either organization was founded.

 

Author

Faheem Haider

Faheem Haider is a political analyst, writer and artist. He holds advanced research degrees in political economy, political theory and the political economy of development from the London School of Economics and Political Science and New York University. He also studied political psychology at Columbia University. During long stints away from his beloved Washington Square Park, he studied peace and conflict resolution and French history and European politics at the American University in Washington DC and the University of Paris, respectively.

Faheem has research expertise in democratic theory and the political economy of democracy in South Asia. In whatever time he has to spare, Faheem paints, writes, and edits his own blog on the photographic image and its relationship to the political narrative of fascist, liberal and progressivist art.

That work and associated writing can be found at the following link: http://blackandwhiteandthings.wordpress.com