Dear List members,

As a member of the NGO community in The Gambia I cannot resist the temptation to
comment on this write-up by Mr. Wolf on Prof. Kanbur´s resignation . I think the
statement made by Mr. Wolf implying that there exists NGOs that are "anti
-growth" is  not only  unfounded but tendentious and not very objective. Perhaps
it had better remained in the factional pamphleteering that currently rages
within the bank and other Breton Wood institutions. No NGO committed to
development can fail to see the interrelationship between growth and development.
There can be growth without development, but there can't be any development
without growth. So the exclusivity is not necessarily mutual! It is just a
question of emphasis here, mark you.  Because growth does not necessarily lead to
development, pro-growth "hares" tend to forget about development. And because
development necessarily implies growth, the pro-development "hounds" tend to
forget about growth. To make matters more difficult, while growth is quantifiable
and an easily measured quantity, "development" is a more philosophical
phenomenon, difficult to define, somehow rooted in the formulator's vision, or
perhaps we can say, a calculus with indeterminable variables. Even Mr. Wolf
himself does not seem to be free from his "own" perception of development that is
also rooted in a certain vision,  a world view, I dare say, even a  way of life .

Read him writing that the bank cannot be fence-sitting:  "It does mean that the
Bank is a component part of the western system of market-oriented institutions
and ideas. It must not cut itself off from these roots."

This is where the problem lies. The assumption of a papal role by a western
institution, armed with the magic wand of market fundamentalism, convinced of the
belief that only its own single totalitarian model of social organisation is
right and universally applicable; and that it alone can salvage humankind, are
only too apparent. The standardized prescription peddled by the bank and IMF the
world over for decades, is  in fact not only a programme of economic
reorganisation , but more fundamentally, it is an onslaught on the forms of
social organisation and the way of life of non-western peoples. It is an attack
aimed at breaking the solidarity-web of closely knitted communities, in order to
promote egoism that will keep the fire burning under the "lazy niggers" and
hoping that when they jump, some profit, somehow, somewhere, will be made. Or in
other words, strip man of all his social ethos, let go his animalistic instincts,
and there will suddenly be competition just before development. What could be
more neanderthal-like than this?

Sections of the world NGO-community do not agree with Mr. Wolf on this.
Development, we say, does not necessarily have to take the western model. One of
the greatest illusions of the past century, or the last millennium, I dare say,
has been the belief in a uni-linear pattern of historical evolution for all human
communities under the sun . All the great orthodoxies of the past centuries have
insisted on this. It is about time, we begin to revisit this precept.  The
opinion-builders of the West and their banks are yet to sober up from the
hang-over from their victory of the cold war. Though that war was essentially a
long fought war between two geographic zones raging since the break up of the
church to its orthodox and catholic factions in the middle ages, it had for the
most of the 20th century appeared as one of modes of social and economic
organisation. The contention has succeeded in impressing an overdue emphasis  and
preoccupation with forms of ownership in even current economic thinking. The West
has simply picked up one of the icons of the Cold War to toot as a magic wand of
timeless and universal applicat ion. Privatisation for privatisation's sake,
seems to be the song.

Look at Liberia of the 1950s and and 1960s and you will see a premonition of
latter-day thatcherism. Even the fire services, prisons and police department ran
as enterprises. It is not only the state-owned economies that failed in Africa
but even the private-owned ones. The cause has to lie deeper than the harangues
of the Cold War.

Look at the recent season of groundnut trading in The Gambia, representatives of
western donor countries had, through the Agric Business Plan Agency, insisted on
absolute government non-involvement. Even the newly created Federation Of
Agricultural Cooperatives (FACS), legally the owners of all the infrastructure
related to groundnut trading in The Gambia, were barred from directly
participating in the trade through the use of the threat of the STABEX withdrawal
due to suspicions of being close to government.. This, even though, the three
so-called private operators had little capital of their own to invest in the
groundnut trade. A timid government, arms twisted,  had to use public funds to
finance the three. A reported D113 million of public funds was used for a venture
that everyone was going to even pay off.That is what I call fundamentalism.

Members of the NGO community, the world over, are for growth, but we are not for
growth that will annihilate half of the population to keep the other half
prosperous. Yes, we are for growth , but we are not for growth that will
unavoidably impose alien lifestyles on all the peoples of the world. The more
globalised the world becomes, the more we must learn to share each others joy and
sorrows in a globalised  world rich with various ways of  living and life-forms.
This may sound idealistic, but which isn't.


NB: Please note that the above are wholly and solely the opinion of the writer
and not the organisation.
Thanks for taking your time.
Ous

Mr. Wolf has left us with no doubt


Hamjatta Kanteh wrote:

> Folks,
>     Sorry for flooding your mail boxes with these stuff but this one is just
> too good for me not to forward it on. It is a brilliant piece by the FT's
> Martin Wolf. If it clutters your mail box, please excuse my enthusiasm.
> Hamjatta Kanteh
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> The World Bank is not Oxfam. If the resignation of Ravi Kanbur, head of this
> year's team for the World Development Report, serves any purpose it is to
> underline that fact. The World Bank must represent the views of its
> shareholders, not those of non-governmental organisations that are suspicious
> of economic growth, the market and globalisation.
>
> The institution's dilemma is that too many of those who support aid dislike
> development, just as too many of those who like development oppose aid. Yet
> the Bank must be in favour of both development and aid. James Wolfensohn, its
> president, has done his best to create the largest possible constituency for
> this middle ground. But, with this resignation, the strains are beginning to
> show.
>
> Prof Kanbur is an excellent economist and an honourable man. It is a great
> pity that he has felt unable to complete his work. Senior people at the Bank
> insist that he was mistaken: the report's themes of "opportunity, security
> and empowerment" do, they argue, remain intact.
>
> Yet there have been fierce debates, both within the Bank and outside it, on
> the relative weight to be placed on "opportunity" - for which read economic
> liberalisation and growth - and "empowerment" - for which read redistribution
> of income and other interventions to assist the poor. Presumably, Prof Kanbur
> felt he was being asked to shift the emphasis too far towards the former.
>
> Whatever the truth, this dispute demonstrates that the Bank cannot run with
> both the pro-growth, pro-market hares and the anti-growth, anti-market
> hounds. It has to choose between them. This does not mean it has to adopt
> what opponents condemn as "free market fundamentalism" - far from it. It does
> mean that the Bank is a component part of the western system of
> market-oriented institutions and ideas. It must not cut itself off from these
> roots.
>
> Is it likely to do so? There have been moments in recent years when one had
> to wonder. The draft of this year's WDR certainly downplayed the benefits of
> rapid growth.* Equally, it questioned the benefits of market-oriented
> liberalisation. In short, it came closer than is either right or sensible to
> the anti-development, anti-liberalisation position espoused by many NGOs.
>
> Since some in the NGO community saw this as the crowning success of a long
> and successful campaign of entryism into the Bank's inner sanctum, they view
> Prof Kanbur's resignation as a sign of betrayal. Kevin Watkins of Oxfam
> stated, for example, that the resignation "marked the ultimate triumph for
> the Neanderthal tendency within the World Bank group". His departure was, he
> said, "a clear signal to developing country governments that they should go
> for growth above all else".
>
> This is absurd. Watkins is senior spokesman of an organisation based in a
> country with average incomes per head, at purchasing power parity, of more
> than $20,000. The vast majority of the world's poor live in low-income
> countries with average incomes of $2,000 a head. Imagine what would happen to
> a party that told the British people that it placed little weight on greater
> prosperity. Yet western NGOs, which have no chance of making their
> anti-growth policies acceptable at home, feel entitled to impose them on
> poorer countries abroad. Worse, they expect the Bank to help them.
>
> This is, alas, not at all unprecedented. Over the half-century of official
> development policy, western advisers have repeatedly persuaded developing
> countries to follow policies they had no chance of implementing at home.
> Quantitative planning, autarky and comprehensive nationalisation - developing
> countries tried them all. It took almost four decades of disaster to persuade
> governments - not excluding communist China and long-socialist India - of the
> errors of their ways. Now, alas, many NGOs wish to push them back into the
> trap from which they have only begun to escape.
>
> The governments of the world's poorest countries must "go for growth above
> all else". It is no accident that east Asia saw the biggest reductions in the
> number of people with incomes below a dollar a head (at PPP) between 1988 and
> 1997 (see chart). That, after all, was the region with the fastest growth.
> Moreover, as the paper by David Dollar and Aart Kray of the World Bank, cited
> here on April 12, noted, the incomes of the poor tend to rise in the same
> proportion as those of the population as a whole.**
>
> Growth means more goods and services, greater choice and more resources for
> governments. Discussions of poverty alleviation that do not lay primary
> emphasis on growth are, therefore, "like Hamlet without the prince", as Larry
> Summers, US Treasury secretary, has said.
>
> This does not mean either that growth should be the sole objective, or that
> it is easily achieved. On the contrary, as is shown in a paper by Paul
> Collier, David Dollar and Nick Stern, all now or soon to be at the Bank, we
> have a far more nuanced view of how to achieve development and poverty
> alleviation than previously.***
>
> The paper presents four central lessons of experience. First, growth can
> unleash poverty reduction, though it is neither necessary nor sufficient on
> its own. Second, macro-economic stability, open trade regimes and a vibrant
> private sector facilitate growth. Third, good governance and good policy have
> a central role. "With weak institutions, poor governance and unsound
> policies, market reforms can go badly awry with great costs, particularly for
> the poor." Finally, combating poverty requires more than fostering
> market-oriented growth. It involves enhancing the capabilities, particularly
> the education and health, of poor people; it means increasing the ability of
> poor people to influence their environment; and it includes reducing their
> vulnerability to disaster.
>
> This is sensibly balanced. If the World Bank is to secure the support it
> needs not from anti-growth NGOs, but from the governments of its principal
> shareholders, it can only be around such a broad agenda.
>
> What is impossible is to expect governments of rich countries that promote
> growth at home to support the opposite abroad or, even if the rich were
> persuaded, to expect poor countries to embrace perpetual poverty. Oxfam can
> support whatever it likes. But the Bank has to start from market-based
> growth. It has no acceptable alternative.
>
> * Attacking Poverty, www.worldbank.org/poverty/wdrpoverty/
> ** "Growth is good for the poor", March 2000, mimeo
> *** Fifty Years of Development, mimeo
>
> A forum on the subject of this column is open at
> www.ft.com/forums/martinwolf/.
>
> Contact Martin Wolf
>
> hkanteh
>
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