The Hindu Business Line : Why the World Bank would likely remain standing

Chennai May 8 Debate rages on whether Mr Paul Wolfowitz, President of World Bank, should go, paying the price for the `favours' he had meted out to his girlfriend. Also, alive is a debate if the World Bank should go, too.

"The opposition to the World Bank is becoming increasingly robust, geographically dispersed, and durable," writes Michael Goldman in `Imperial Nature' (www.orientlongman.com) . "Oppositional activists have learned where the Bank's vulnerabilities lie... The World Bank Bond Boycott has persuaded institutional investors to disinvest from Bank bonds." The `boycott' is offered as `an exciting way to fight this huge global institution through local organising on your campus,' on www.campusactivism.org.

"The World Bank, along with the IMF (International Monetary Fund), claims to help fight poverty by lending money to poor countries.

"In reality, they trap countries in a cycle of unpayable debt, and use the debt as leverage to impose a host of destructive policies, including: promoting sweatshop labour, by requiring minimum wage freezes or cuts, and funding `free trade zones' or maquiladoras; imposing user fees for education, which make school unaffordable for students from poor families."

As if to match those scenarios, the preface teases thus: "The book can be read as an adventure travelogue through one of the most powerful and undemocratic institutions in the world, one that determines currency prices in Mexico City, water rates in Johannesburg, and possibly even the direction of the flow of the Mekong River - in sum, the fates of millions of people - based on an economic `science' it produces within the context of capital-intensive deal making."

The book narrates the protest tales, from around the world, and wonders if the activists have the power to shut down the Bank. The answer may be in the negative, according to Goldman.

"Even if every activist across the glob came to Washington DC, to protest, the Bank would likely remain standing," he predicts. For, the power centres of the Bank are no longer with the Wall Street or Washington, as opines the author.

"The World Bank has cultivated institutional and class-based support for its global agenda of development over many years, with hard cultural work and powerful capital forces and incentives spread across the globe."

This `complex power regime' does not reside `just within the New York-Washington corridor', declares Goldman.

"In spite of its long list of abysmal failures and destructive effects, the Bank remains the primary global player in countries in the South, as well as, though less obviously, in countries in the North."

A world without the World Bank and its development regimes may be far different and more vulnerable than now, he apprehends, given the North-South power dynamics, in this `highly exploitative and commodified world'.

It is yet possible, hopes Goldman, to democratise and socialise `powerful capitalist structures', such as the Bank.

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Why the World Bank would likely remain standing