Simplicity

I remember a television clip about Mahatma Gandhi which went on the lines of “The hallmark of this man was his simplicity”.

When I read about Dr.Yunus of Bangladesh winning the Nobel Peace Prize what struck me was the simplicity of his idea and the the huge difference it made to millions. Here’s a clip from the NY Times on what he did.

Traditional banks considered such people too risky to lend to, and the amounts they needed too small to bother with. Dr. Yunus’s simple but revolutionary idea was that the poor could be as creditworthy as the rich, if the rules of lending were tailored to their circumstances and were founded on principles of trust rather than financial capacity. He found that they could achieve lasting improvements to their living standards with a little bit of capital.

Suffice to say that path breaking ideas can be so damn simple.