World Bank & IMF : Mission, Functioning & Motives !!!!

I know it feels odd when a person who doesn’t understand his own credit card statement writes about World Bank & IMF. But there are certain advantages when you write about something you don’t know much about. Firstly, as a layman you have the luxury to question the very basics of the system which experts can’t do. Secondly, there is an excitement & sense of achievement when you write something people don’t expect. Thirdly, neither does your opinion matters not will it make any difference to anyone. So you are sort of immune from its impact.

I have always been doubtful & sceptical about purpose, functioning & motives of World Bank & IMF even though I don’t know much world finance (or even word ‘finance’ for that matter). An article about possible candidates for IMF chief’s post caught my attention & encouraged me to wear my thinking cap which has been lying idle for a long time now. Little bit of Google & Wikipedia told me that a) World Bank chief has been ALWAYS an American. b) IMF is headed by a European (with one or two exceptions). Everyone knows it is not a mere coincidence & there is nothing wrong with it as such. This shows how important it is for west to have full control (read monopoly) over these institutions. Little bit of more reading & you are convinced  World Bank & IMF are too critical organisation to be left free & fair by western world.

World Bank describe its mission as 'to fight poverty with passion and professionalism for lasting results and to help people help themselves and their environment by providing resources, sharing knowledge, building capacity and forging partnerships in the public and private sectors’.

Most of us have heard or seen stories how Lala (Rich Lender) in earlier times used to exploit poor farmers in rural india by lending them money (Remember Mother India?). It’s ironic & funny how you can exploit a person by helping him (i.e. lending him the money). Lala’s help was actually his exploitation. Poor farmers were virtually forced to take loan from Lala to fulfil their physical, psychological & social needs. Lala made sure that they remain in debt for rest of their lives.

World Bank (read west) is similar to that lala in more than one sense. Only difference being that Lala was projected (& correctly so) as bad guy & was hated by everyone. West is look upto & seen as role model helping the poor. To start with, I have doubt over money being real itself, it seems like an illusion of money (Virtual, soft, complex). World Bank lends money in the name of development (i.e. Help) to poor countries. Sum is huge enough for developing countries to repay easily & tiny enough for developed countries to affect then economically. Easy inflow of virtual money to developing countries increases inflation, decreases their purchasing power & hence making sure they remain poor (even after regular financial help). This has three major advantages for Rich Countries.

1). They can arm twist poor nations to virtually anything they please since poor nations owe them the money.

World Bank has developed a system where no poor country can sustain without financial help from World Bank. They are left with no choice but to borrow from World Bank to fund development, infrastructure and Social projects. Situation in some poor countries is so bad that they can only survive few months without these loans & financial help (This remind of me Epic Dialogue ‘Lala Mere bachche Bhooke hain’). Rich countries manipulate poor countries politics, policies in their favour indirectly, sometimes to an extent that they takes over national resources of poor countries, utilising their human capital as cheap labour, benefitting from poor countries’ strategic & geographical location in long run.

2). Everything is relative in this world. Ugly people make other people look beautiful. Rich is a relative term too, it has no meaning without poor, same holds true in this case too. Western countries will not be rich if other nations are not poor. Rich need poverty in this world to retain its superiority. This is precisely what World Bank seems to doing keeping poor nations poor.

3). Rich countries pretend to help poor countries & project their 'We care' image & enhance their brand.

Genuine efforts to reduce world poverty are missing. Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen. Can someone explain me why?

These are the things which attract me to Communism sometimes