The Wire, an Indian news outlet, in its latest article, highlights that a successful Bangladesh under Chief Advisor Professor Muhmmad Yunus is more likely to be a strong ally of India rather than a failed ally.

Vinod Khosla, a businessman and venture capitalist, wrote the opinion published in The Wire on October 27.

The full text of the article is below:

As a proud American and son of India, I look forward with hope to the exciting possibilities surrounding Professor Muhammad Yunus’ leadership in Bangladesh. Three days after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country on August 5, Younis was sworn in as Bangladesh’s interim head of government.

Yunus, whom I consider a friend and have known for decades, accepted this position at the insistence of student leaders who are at the forefront of the student-led struggle.

I am an entrepreneurship enthusiast, believe in the power of ideas, and am passionate about sustainability and impact. I am amazed at what Yunus has accomplished in his life. With my investments, I work to bring technology that makes life better to the world. Through endless experiments and trials, Yunus has developed a series of corporate success models to reduce poverty, improve health and education outcomes, and combat climate change.

For example, in 1996, Yunus managed to put mobile phones into the hands of hundreds of thousands of poor women in rural villages of Bangladesh, allowing them to earn an income as the village mobile phone lady. I’m passionate about protecting our environment. Starting in 1995, Yunus founded a company that installed 1.8 million solar home systems and 1 million clean cooking stoves, almost all in rural Bangladesh.

This doesn’t even include the creation of Grameen Bank, which has become a model for similar efforts in India and many other countries, providing small, mostly income-generating loans cumulatively worth $39 billion to more than 10 million poor women.

But now Yunus turned his attention to a new challenge; It leads the world’s eighth largest country in terms of population, a country with more than 170 million people. This is a country where nearly half the population of the United States is located on a land mass equal to the US state of Illinois.

There are people all over Bangladesh and all over the world fighting for Yunus’ success. I am one of them too. But there are others who want him and the interim government he leads to fail and are spreading false narratives about what is happening under his leadership. That’s why I want to share my perspectives on his values, his approach, and his initial results.

In his first two months in office, he ensured that police returned to work, which improved the law and order situation, took concrete steps to protect minorities such as Hindus, worked to improve relations with India, proposed that regional powers revitalize SAARC, and caused turmoil in Bangladesh (when he took office has made progress in stabilizing the banking and financial sectors.

He also effectively represented Bangladesh at the UN General Assembly and held more than 50 productive meetings with global leaders during his time in New York.

In his work in this role, I have seen him apply the same values ​​and approach that I have seen him use throughout his career: building a national consensus on key issues, experimenting to determine what works best, inspiring citizens (especially young people). to engage in practical and constructive ways, to treat everyone with respect regardless of religion, gender or ethnicity, and to be pragmatic as well as energetic (despite being 84 years old).

But there are many difficulties. Leading a government can be orders of magnitude more difficult than managing a series of social businesses and nonprofits. People aligned with the previous government that lost power want its efforts to fail. The party, which has not been in power for years, wants to return as soon as possible. But I believe Yunus can do this job.

In September, I joined 198 global leaders, including 92 Nobel laureates, in writing to the people of Bangladesh and people of good will around the world.

“We are excited to see that Professor Yunus is finally free to work for the development of the entire country, especially the most marginalized, a calling he has pursued with great zeal and success for six decades (sic).”

Their initial success in this role bodes well for Bangladesh’s future, and a successful Bangladesh is more likely to be a strong ally of India than an unsuccessful Bangladesh. We must all support Yunus to continue to make progress in this important interim role because it is in India’s interest for Bangladesh to reach its potential.