The coveted Nobel Peace prize for the year 2006 went to Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh and the Grameen Bank (Villagers Bank, in Bengali language), he started in 1976. Returning with a degree in economics under the Fulbright scholarship from the United States, Muhammad Yunus was appalled by the famine in the wake of cyclone and floods of 1974. It compounded the terrible toll of the war of independence that gave birth to Bangladesh in 1971.  As a young economist with a prestigious degree and a teaching position at a college, he thought he could help. He traveled the country side and found people, particularly women severely indebted to money-lenders charging exorbitant interests, designed to keep them perpetually indebted, in effect indentured slavery. The local banks based on "sound capitalistic principles" could not help because the poor, who often go hungry, could not offer collateral (a guaranteed security).   More.....