The Rajpal Abeynayake Column

The Rajpal Abeynayake Column By Rajpal Abeynayake

Courtesy World Bank - hungrier and poorer than 1990: The proof
When this column takes contentious stands on various issues, people often ask ''why?'' Therefore, the best that can be said most of the time in answer to this question is that this column has often been right. The UNDP Human Development Index that was released last week proves this column right again.

But, to begin by way of anecdote, World Bank officials met media representatives a few years back to ascertain their views on issues that pertain to Sri Lanka. Halfway through the proceedings, the World Bank representative in Sri Lanka at that time asked those present one very clear and pointed question. He asked: "In your opinion, what is holding the Sri Lankan economy back?''

There were different answers. Mine was probably the simplest of them all. "If you want to know what's holding the Sri Lankan economy back,'' I said, "you need to look in the mirror.'' Another World Bank representative, a lady, then asked me the reason for this answer. My reply was that 'it will require a two hour lecture on the deleterious effect of World Bank and IMF policies on this nation.''

Last week, the head of the United Nations Development Program, UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch-Brown said just that - only many years later. He said a "guerrilla assault" is needed on the so-called "Washington Consensus" that sets out the general policies used by the IMF and the World Bank. He said these policies are keeping the World's poor countries poor -- and are making them poorer. He said emphatically that a "total reliance on market forces and increased trade to achieve development will not succeed.'

Along with his comments was released the Human Development Index for the year 2003. This is basically a "livability index" which lists the World's countries on the 'level of human development, '' ie: on how good these countries are to live in.

Norway, our peace sponsor (...come to that later) was rated the "most liveable country'' in the world for the second year in succession. Sri Lanka was ranked 98th in a ranking of 175 countries ahead of India and China. The top ten most liveable countries in the world are Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Australia, Netherlands, Belgium, United States, Canada, Japan and Switzerland, in that order. The bottom ten (in order from the last -- which is Sierra Leone - upwards) are all sub-Saharan African countries including Sierra Leone, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Burundi, Mozambique, Ethiopia, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The World Bank and the IMF mandarins should hear the report and hide their faces somewhere. The report states: Despite a widespread assumption that all countries are slowly getting richer, 54 are poorer now than they were in 1990, while life expectancy fell in 34 countries -- primarily because of the HIV/AIDS epidemic -- and 21 countries are hungrier than they were in 1990 (!!) (Exclamation marks mine.)
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Chief Author of the report deadpanned "Public interventions are necessary to set the preconditions for market-led economic growth."

Basically it is a very blunt indictment on IMF and World Bank policies, which have been accused directly of keeping the world's poor countries poor and in fact of making them poorer by insisting on implementing so called 'neo liberal" economic polices which presuppose that the poor countries can get rich the way the rich countries got rich ie: with ''less subsidies, less public interventions and untrammeled free market economics.''

This presumption about free market policies, of course, ignores the basic fact that the rich countries to a great extent got richer by exploiting the poor in the international marketplace, but that's another matter.

Norway is the most livable country, so is it merely coincidence that Norway is pushing the neo-liberal economic solution for Sri Lanka's conflict ravaged North and the East? (…see last week's column in this space.) "For many countries, the 1990s were a decade of despair," said the UNDP report. How does that square with the pictures painted by the IMF and World Bank about their policies making every country richer?

All it shows is that all World Bank and IMF aided and abetted programmes in countries such as ours need to be viewed with heavy skepticism, if not suspicion. This goes for the programme lined up for the so called reconstruction of the North and the East, using the neo-liberal free market economic agenda promoted by these two bodies.

There was another news item this week that made interesting reading, especially to those who follow the economics of politics, and the politics of economics. This was the breaking news about the go-ahead given to Indian firms to prospect for oil off the shores of Mannar. Excellent, but incidentally an oil-driven economy will make Sri Lanka more coveted by key international players. When looking at Iraq's fate today -- there will be quite a few international analysts who wouldn't say "pity they had oil."

Many skeptics baulked when this column and others like it pointed out that the war in Iraq was about oil and not about Weapons of Mass Destruction - the discovery of which has now been ruled out. Such skeptics said similar things when this column discussed the issue of the neo-liberal agenda making countries such as ours poorer. But, there seems to be no answer that skeptics have in the face of the report released by the UNDP last week in its Human Development Index.

There is one suggestion by Mr. Malloch-Brown of the UNDP, which is that the richer countries should help the poorer to reach their goals by helping to mobilize the needed additional assistance. It is payback time probably for the countries that have constantly led us up the garden path -- but maybe that's another story for another time.

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