It is winter and Dhaka is full of lights. Shaheed Minar, the memorial commemorating the Language Movement that led to the independence of Bangladesh, glows a bright orange. In the posh neighbourhoods of Gulshan and Baridhara, entire apartment buildings are illuminated to celebrate winter weddings, but these are overshadowed by the bright lights of new shopping malls. This is the city into which I have just landed - lit up, hopeful and humming with electricity.

I am a sheeter pakhi - a bird who has flown east for the winter. Every year I travel home to visit my family and reconnect with Bangladesh. There's something about this country that inspires a deep longing, and whenever I am pulled back, I come home to take stock. This year, on Bangladesh's 40th anniversary, I ponder the great changes that have occurred here, ponder the brightness and vitality of a country that no one expected would succeed. But succeed it has. Its dramatic transformations - imperfect, yet to be fully realised - are testament to the resilience of its people, and to the great power of democracy that is hard-won and home-grown.

As always happens when I land in Dhaka, I am immediately struck by the sense that something exciting is about to happen. In early February, the city is abuzz with anticipation because the ICC Cricket World Cup will kick off at the Mirpur Stadium in just a few weeks. People are scrambling for tickets. Municipal elections mean that every available intersection and telephone pole and exposed brick wall is festooned with political posters and slogans.

This year the agents of change seem to have raised their voices, and I realise something has shifted in the tone of the country. The stakes are higher, people are restless, poised for even greater transformation. In the meantime, the things that are difficult - that make you avert your eyes - are as apparent as ever. The city is full to bursting, and everywhere there are signs that the changes have not reached everyone: not the children picking through rubbish heaps on the side of the road, not the women who cook dinner over roadside ditches, thin sheets of blue plastic the only thing between them and the bitter winter evenings.

"Une personne emprunte 400 reais (240 dollars) pour acheter une carriole de hot-dogs. Elle aura un profit de 100 à 800 reais par mois", a expliqué Alessandra França à l'AFP.

"Elle fait un second emprunt de 1.000 reais et porte son revenu à 2.000 reais. Pour quelqu'un qui a très peu, 400 reais est une somme importante", ajoute-t-elle.
La jeune femme est arrivée encore enfant avec sa famille de l'Etat amazonien du Para pour s'installer à Sorocaba, une ville en pleine croissance où les condominiums de luxe côtoient les quartiers pauvres.

Inspirée à l'âge de seize ans par un livre sur le prix Nobel de la Paix Muhammad Yunus, fondateur de la "Banque des pauvres" au Bangladesh, França a obtenu un très convoité MBA (diplôme de conduite des affaires en entreprise) et a travaillé dans des associations de quartier, avec une seule idée en tête: changer la société.

Ask any American what they know about Bangladesh, and you're likely to hear one of two things: 1) It's a pitifully backward place cursed with floods and droughts and overpopulation and insuperable poverty; and/or 2) It's the very fortunate place where social innovation supported by donors, the government and the poor themselves has provided leadership to the world, a phenomenon exemplified by Muhammad Yunus and his microcredit revolution. His work has enabled eight million poor women in Bangladesh to borrow tiny sums, start cottage industries, and work to lift their families out of poverty, for which Yunus and the Grameen Bank he created won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2006 and has inspired countless others to adopt the model in other countries including the United States.

A shining example of private enterprise at work, these women who began with nothing but a small loan now own 75% of the shares in the Grameen Bank and 96.5% of the paid-up equity of the bank. Their success has been emulated around the world, and now more than one hundred twenty-five million borrowers are proving that the poorest among us are not only creditworthy but capable of extraordinary entrepreneurship. Who wouldn't want to emulate and perpetuate such a brilliant success?
Unfortunately, the answer is "The government of Bangladesh". Its central bank, the Bank of Bangladesh which regulates Grameen Bank, has instructed the board of Grameen to immediately remove founder Muhammad Yunus as Grameen's Managing Director.

The order was a sudden and baffling effort to overturn a decision made more than a decade ago by the Grameen board (which consists of nine women who are clients and shareholders, plus three government officials) to grant an exception to its normal retirement provision so that Yunus, now 70, could continue to serve as Grameen's Managing Director. This dictatorial interference completely contradicts the government's own longstanding insistence that banks operate as independent private institutions, foregoing government ownership, not to mention its forbearance for ten years of Yunus' leadership beyond the originally stipulated retirement age of 60.

Professor Muhammad Yunus's Opening Remarks

Welcome. To all members of the media, I extend my good wishes to you.

In the past few days, that which has been published in significant parts of the Bangladeshi media has been the cause of deep sadness in me. I have come here to express that sadness to you. I feel that, like me, many of my fellow citizens have been similarly hurt.

The charge leveled in the microfinance documentary shown on Norwegian television NRK has been completely misconstrued to show misappropriation of wealth and corruption on my part by this part of the media. In the documentary shown on NRK, it was argued that by transferring funds from one organization to another, Grameen Bank broke the agreement under which such grants were provided. There was never any mention of misappropriation or corruption.

By Muhammad Zafar Iqbal

I like Prof. Yunus a lot, and more than that I respect him. I also know that there are many like me. I remember, on hearing the news of Prof. Yunus' Nobel Prize I jumped about and screamed like a person gone mad with happiness. There have not been too many such occasions in my life. My happiness was not because someone I knew got the Nobel Prize but because the prestige of Bangladesh went sky high. Only those who have lived abroad can truly gauge how cruelly, indifferently and disrespectfully Bangladesh is sometimes talked about, and it is Prof. Yunus and his work that have helped us enormously to counter that. The Wall Street Journal in a recent piece, pointing out the difference between Pakistan and Bangladesh, wrote, "Pakistan's hero is a rogue nuclear scientist who unlawfully smuggled nuclear technology, while Bangladesh's hero is Prof. Yunus, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for helping the poor with small loans".

Prof. Yunus is now the victim of a cold and calculated harassment campaign of the government. I think it must be a very important agenda of the Awami League, and this campaign would have started now or later. The perfect opportunity came when the Norwegian Television released a documentary regarding a dispute between Norad and Grameen Bank that was settled in the nineties. Following that, our Prime Minister launched a most vicious attack on Prof. Yunus that left sensible people in the country stupefied and hurt. Our finance minister spoke sensibly in the initial stage but followed the same tune when pressure was brought to bear on him.