Yunus, for his part, has used his Nobel bully pulpit to gently goad his country’s leaders to behave better. Engage in a marathon negotiating session, he has urged; work out a deal; exploit the euphoria his award has created. His name has even been floated as a substitute caretaker. He has expressed no enthusiasm for the job.

Since the announcement last Friday of the Nobel, which Yunus shares with his Grameen Bank, songs have been written in his honour. Banners and posters have gone up all over Dhaka, the capital. So many bouquets and wreaths have been dispatched to Grameen headquarters that it is a wonder there are any flowers left in Bangladesh.

Again and again, people here describe the Nobel as a prize second only to the country’s freedom from Pakistan in 1971.

To recognise Grameen, of course, is to recognise how such nongovernmental organizations—Bangladesh seems to have more than its share— have stepped in to do a great many things that would normally be expected from government: building schools, offering health care and creating economic opportunities for the poorest in a country that is among the poorest in the world.

Instead, political deadlock has carried the day, pitting the country’s two most powerful women against each other, and the legacies of their respective families.

Prime Minister Khaleda Zia rose to power after the assassination of her husband, Gen Ziaur Rahman, the country’s military ruler, in 1981. The opposition leader, Sheik Hasina Wazed, is the daughter of the founding prime minister, Sheik Mujibur Rahman.

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