Who is Muhammad Yunus, the head of Bangladesh’s new interim government?

Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus is all set to take the helm of Bangladesh's interim government. The 84-year-old microfinance pioneer once upon a time helped Bangladesh unleash breakneck economic growth and will now once again man the nation that is in the grip of major unrest.

Here's everything you need to know about Muhammad Yunus:

Muhammad Yunus: Early life and education

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Born June 28, 1940, in British India, Yunus spent his early life in Bathua village. He completed his BA in 1960 and MA in 1961.

After his graduation, he joined Bangladesh's Bureau of Economics as a research assistant to the economics researchers Nurul Islam and Rehman Sobhan.

In 1965, he obtained the Fulbright scholarship to study in the United States and obtained a PhD in economics from the Vanderbilt University Graduate Program in Economic Development (GPED) in 1971.

He also worked as an assistant professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro.

Muhammad Yunus: Nobel Prize and other awards

Popularly known as the "banker to the poorest of the poor" he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work in microcredit.

Fuelled by the belief that credit is a fundamental human right, Yunus established the Grameen Bank in 1983.

His objective was to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few sound financial principles so they could help themselves. To do this, he would loan small cash sums to rural women who used that money to invest in farm tools and business equipment, thus boosting their earnings.

He has also received several awards and honours. In 1984, he was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award. In 1998, he was honoured with the Indira Gandhi Peace Prize. In 2021, Yunus was awarded the Olympic Laurel, for his extensive work in sports (via the Yunus Sports Hub). The same year, he was also awarded the United Nations Foundation's Champion of Global Change Award.

Yunus' enmity with Sheikh Hasina

Sheikh Hasina's 15-year tenure ended abruptly on August 5. Before that, it was marked with dissent, and Yunus's popularity as per AFP marked him as a potential rival. In 2007, the Nobel laureate announced plans to launch his own Citizen Powerparty to challenge and end the nation's confrontational political culture.

While he abandoned the political plans within months, the hostility aroused by his challenge to the ruling elite persisted.

In 2011, he was unanimously pushed out of the Grameen Bank established by him.

In January 2024, he and three colleagues from a company he founded were awarded six months jail sentence by a Dhaka legal court for illegally failing to create a workers' welfare fund. All four denied the charges and accused the court of rubber-stamping the Sheikh Hasina government's decisions. International watchdog Amnesty International also criticised the case as politically motivated.

(With inputs from agencies)