Pointless meetings

Any self-congratulations on the part of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that the 2000 Spring Meetings of the two organizations did not go the way of the 1999 Seattle conference of the World Trade Organization would be misplaced. True, unlike in Seattle the protesters against the Bretton Wood twins in particular and against globalization in general could not prevent even a temporary postponement of the meetings in Washington.

But the deliberations themselves failed to result in any meaningful attempt to make the IMF and the World Bank more responsive to the criticisms on the streets. The Ministers and central bankers gathered in Washington did acknowledge that the benefits of globalization are being unequally distributed. But neither the tone nor the outcome of the Spring Meetings gave any indication of a more sensitive approach.

While India currently does not participate in any lending program of the IMF, it remains one of the largest borrowers from the World Bank. However, new lending to India has turned into a trickle because of the unstated sanctions imposed after the nuclear tests of May 1998. The only new loans that are being processed are for the social sector because they are supposed to be humanitarian in nature (though structural adjustment loans to States have also been approved).

The Union Finance Minister, Mr. Yashwant Sinha, who participated in the Spring Meetings and met senior World Bank officials on this issue, has returned from Washington satisfied that the World Bank will soon resume its full lending operations, apparently because the U.S. has expressed its willingness to lift its unstated veto. But there is no real satisfaction in this because India, a share-holder of the World Bank, has to depend on a change of heart in another share-holder, the U.S., over a patently wrong decision that has been in place for almost two years.

-- The Hindu, New Delhi