On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 9:50 PM, ashok _ <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 8:09 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Closer to home (for most in this list that is), Manmohan Singh and >> Montek Singh Ahluwalia both receive pensions from the World Bank. > > I have read this stated as a worrying thing before, but why is this > problematic ? > If they worked for companies prior to becoming politicians or > technocrats they would receive pensions....its a declared and > documented and legally entitled income. I dont see anything > inappropriate in that. Isnt this the same thing ? I mean if they ran > the country as a communist state the world bank would not stop giving > them their pensions.
It's disturbing for the same reason that it's of concern to many that Dick Cheney and Haliburton have links in the past. We are shaped by our past, and we are known by the company we keep. If Messrs. Singh & Ahluwalia cut their teeth in the World Bank circles, they are no doubt persuaded to a greater or smaller degree by its policies, and think it good for the world. Money is very important to those who have it - for they who have worked hard to accumulate the money, or create the monetary system would like a world order which respects it. The WB and its sub-ordinates like the IMF are tools to ensure that the cash economy remains a viable means of establishing and maintaining international power. The moment the tide turns though, and the cash economy threatens to take down its masters, it is ignored and undermined. Where was the World Bank, when the Nixon delinked the dollar unilaterally from the gold standard undermining the Bretton Woods system? Or during the King Dollar good times times of Reagan, when the US enjoyed an unequal advantage on trades? Was the World Bank ever around to enforce fairness and eradication of global poverty as its charter asks it to when the culprit was the US? These days you have QE1 & 2 and rumors of an impending QE3. China may have a trillion dollars worth of debt, but the US would rather manipulate its currency to make it worthless rather than pay the debt. Does the World Bank intend to step in to play referee when the US performs currency manipulation? It would be so funny if it weren't so sad, as the sitcom line goes The World Bank and the IMF were created as, and have been faithful hand maidens of the West, and specifically the US, far more often than they have worked for global prosperity and poverty eradication. They are more concerned with repayment of debts to the rich lenders and maintenance of the global financial order than the maintenance of democracy [1] or the protection of the environment. If the WB had its way, it would rather have privatized water in Bolivia [2], which may have made sound economic sense to the bankers, but would have denied millions of people access to water by rendering it beyond unaffordable. The World Bank enjoys sovereign immunity - in that it cannot be proceeded against or taken to court by any government or people that it screws over as it has time and time again, and yet there is one country it can never screw over, which is the US because the US is the sole nation with veto powers over the World Bank. The US cannot be proceeded against by the WB even if its sins merit action. It's written into teh very laws. Every President of the World Bank is an American, for good reason. The global currency and economic system therefore deserves no more respect than any other historical system of power. One only needs to pay attention to it as long as one profits from obeying it. Especially for a poor country like India it makes little sense to always hang on to every word of the World Bank and run the country like the WB would like it to be run. India is a democracy, and the last time I checked, the WB doesn't vote in Indian elections. The WB shouldn't have a say in whether India should enact a certain law or not. That said, to Manmohan's credit, his leadership has seen the introduction of NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) and the RTI (Right to Information) Act, both of which are hallmark steps in advancing the social net and democracy. However the same leadership has been responsible for the rampant slide into violence with the Naxalites, which for the most part is an economic war. It's of course hard to blame any one side for the horrible mess that has since ensued, but the big money economic policies of the west are to blame for starting off the restlessness in those regions. This isn't so much about Singh as the naiveté that middle class Indians display in all things Western. Singh has had the same aspirations as any educated Indian - his heart may be in the right place, but the world is a tough place and one needs to be guarded in one's embrace of friendship in politics. Singh & Co are very corporate friendly, and would bend over backwards to accomodate Walmart and others into the Indian system. A leader of a nation should have more caution than eagerness; there is as much risk if not more in embracing corporate economics as there is profit to be had. There have been a handful (maybe 2-3% of India) of people liberated from poverty thanks to call centers and IT shops. However, who in middle class India earning a fair wage today can still afford to buy as much land and property as their parents could afford? Is it possible to buy a decent sized house in the city where one works in India today without incurring multiple decades of indebtedness? Of what value then is the economic progress? Real wages are falling in India like elsewhere in the world that has swallowed the pill of economic progress. That the idli is being replaced by the McAlooTikki if of little consolation. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank#Criticisms [1] http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2465/is_6_30/ai_65653637/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Cochabamba_protests
