A Glimpse at Motivation... The Reason We Do What We Do

Starvation. Aid. Need. Help. Death. Life.

Why do people starve and die?

Why do people help and try?


In the Introduction section to the book "Banker to the Poor", Muhammad Yunus sums um the motivation of humanitarian aid and the reason why these things are happening and the reason why people help in the midst of overwhelming odds. Here is what was written...

"In the year 1974 Bangladesh fell into the grip of famine. The university where I taught and served as head of the Economics Department was located in the southeastern extremity of the country, and at first we did not pay much attention to the newspaper stories of death and starvation in the remote villages of the north. But then skeleton-like people began showing up in the railway stations and bus stations of the capital, Dhaka. Soon this trickle became a flood. Hungry people were everywhere. Often they sat so still that one could not be sure whether they were alive or dead. They all looked alike: men, women, children. Old people looked like children, and children looked like old people.
The government opened gruel kitchens. But every new gruel kitchen ran out of rice. Newspaper reporters tried to warn the nation of the extent of the famine. Research instituations collected statistics on the sources and causes of the sudden migration to the cities. Religious organizations mobilized groups to pick up the dead bodies from the streets and bury them with the proper rites. But soon the simple act of collecting the dead became a larger task then these groups were equipped to handle.
The starving people did not chant any slogans. They did not demand anything from us well-fed city folk. They simply lay down very quietly on our doorsteps and waited to die.
There are many ways for people to die, but somehow dying of starvation is the most unacceptable of all. It happens in slow motion. Second by second, the distance between life and death becomes smaller and smaller, until the two are in such close proximity that one can hardly tell the difference. Like sleep, death by starvation happens so quietly, so inexorably, one does not even sense it happening. And all for lack of a handful of rice at each meal. In this world of plenty, a tiny baby, who does not yet understand the mystery of the world, is allowed to cry and cry and finally fall asleep without the milk she needs to survive. The next day she may not have the strength to continue living.
I used to feel a thrill at teaching my students the elegant economic theories thhat could supposedly cure societal problems of all types. But in 1974, I started to dread my own lectures. What good were all of my complex theories when people were dying of starvation on the sidewalks and porches across from my lecture hall? My lessons were like the American movies where the good guys always win. But when I emerged from the comfort of the classroom, I was faced with the reality of the city streets. Here good guys were mercilessly beaten and trampled. Daily life was getting worse, and the poor were growing even poorer.
Nothing in the economic theories I taught reflected the life around me. How could I go on telling my students make believe stories in the name of economics? I wanted to become a fugitive from academic life. I needed to run away from these theories and form my textbooks and discover the real-life economics of a poor person's existence.
My repeated trips to the villages around the Chittagong University campus led me to discoveries that were essential to establishing my life's work. The poor taught me an entirely new economics. I learned about the problems that they face from their own perspective. I tried a great number of things. Some worked. Others did not. I was only trying to relieve my guilt and satisfy my desire to be useful to a few starving human beings. But it did not stop with a few people. Those who survived would not let it. And after a while, neither would I."