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World Bank is Evil but Ford money is just right

Source: For these economists, World Bank is Evil but Ford money is just right

Today, five ‘‘Left’’ economists threatened to give up their assignments with the Planning Commission in protest against the World Bank representative’s inclusion in the commission’s review panel. Their argument: it’s Washington that pulls the World Bank’s pursestrings.

What they did not mention, in their letter to chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, is the fact that two of them are founding members of an international economic research group set up with help from the United States-based Ford Foundation.

The foundation had an investment portfolio of $9.8 billion last year, a chunk invested in US and international equities. And its audit is done by the very foreign PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Ignoring the fact that its government in West Bengal has been using foreign consultants to showcase its success stories, the Left has been raising the bogey of ‘‘indirect surrender of sovereignty’’ to Americans, because of the commission’s decision to include a World Bank, an ADB representative and a Mckinsey (US-based multinational business consultancy firm) executive in one of the mid-term review panels.

The five economists, Prabhat Patnaik, Utsa Patnaik, C P Chandrasekhar, Jayati Ghosh and T M Thomas Issac, claim that the Planning Commission is not a ‘‘debating society’’ but an ‘‘organ of the Indian State.’’ Their letter says: ‘‘A sovereign State is necessarily exclusionary, in the sense that its organs must exclude personnel owing allegiance to, or under the control/patronage of a foreign sovereign state.’’

It goes on to insist: ‘‘There can be absolutely no doubt about the fact that the World Bank and the ADB are under the control of foreign states: the US Administration routinely uses the threat of withholding World Bank loans as a means of putting political pressure on foreign governments.’’

And as for McKinsey, the economists said: ‘‘The firm has been getting consultancy contracts all over the world not because of its brilliance but because it enjoys the patronage of the US state (and other developed country States).’’

Now contrast these reasons with the fact that IDEAS, International Development Economics Associates, a group of leading ‘‘progressive’’ economists and set up with help from Ford Foundation includes two of the protestors: Ghosh and Chandrasekhar.

IDEAS was set up after a conference in South Africa in September 2001. The conference was organised with support from the US-based Ford Foundation.

When asked about this apparent double-standard, Chandrasekhar said: ‘‘The Ford Foundation does help research work in various Third World Countries.’’

‘‘We are protesting against the inclusion of representatives of institutions whose voting powers are controlled by the Americans,’’ he said. ‘‘How can they be allowed to make a statement in our planning process?’’

That IDEAS operates out of London and receives help from UN organisations which, in turn, receive money from the West, is something Chandrasekhar doesn’t feel a need to explain.

He claimed that economists involved with IDEAs are renowned the world over for trying ‘‘to develop alternatives to the current mainstream economics.’’ That doesn’t take away from the fact that IDEAS would not have been there had it not been for the very American Ford Foundation.