FIFTH COLUMN

Sovereignty

By C K Lal

The World Bank is behaving balefully. It abstained from a meeting organised to solicit donors’ support for Melamchi. It engineered to postpone Aid-Nepal Group’s meeting that was scheduled to be held after a gap of four years. All this belligerence to show its displeasure over the exit of Hon. Mahesh Acharya from the cabinet.

Hon. Acharya may not have been an ideal finance minister, but the guy was sincere and was making as honest an effort to run the economy as is possible under the circumstances. He bore the ire of the civil servants, but didn’t budge from his position of not granting any significant pay-hikes to them.

He resisted all pressures to loosen the purse-strings of the treasury for the benefit of the police-brass asking astronomical sums to fight the Maoist insurgents. He had a difficult job and was trying hard to do it somehow. Acceptance of his resignation by the Prime Minister on the issue of an appointment was perhaps unwarranted, even though his obstinacy was equally uncalled for.

Meanwhile, there is something sinister in the way Dr. Tilak Rawal went for the appointment that he so desired. For all one knows, he may even be qualified enough for the job, but if he had to force a head count of elected representatives to bolster his case, then apparently his qualifications aren’t all that exceptional. Political lobbying, raising the bogey of regionalism media campaign, canvassing by the businessmen; it’s difficult to think of a technique from the book of tricks that wasn’t employed by the ‘well-wishers’ of Dr. Rawal to get him into the coveted post. Perhaps these instances did deserve the attention of the World Bank.

It’s sad reality, but a reality nevertheless, that our sovereignty in running our economy is severely limited. In the new world economic order, the World Bank and the IMF don’t suggest, they dictate terms upon the poor countries to serve the interests of the Transnational Corporations. These institutions aren’t there to uplift the poor, they are there, as agents of global capital, merely to maintain the status quo.

A former executive director for Canada at the World Bank had testified, “The rate and manner of growth and related societal objectives of the recipient countries are the very stuff of that elusive but important concept called sovereignty.” By directing these parameters, the bank effectively controls sovereignty. Indeed, it’s as simple as that.

Despite all that, the extent that the bank has gone to flex its muscles is highly deplorable. Interfering in routine appointments and making faces at changes in the cabinet is taking the right to meddle too seriously. Hon. Ram Sharan Mahat will do well to face this challenge once and for all. If the lenders have duties and responsibilities, so do the borrowers; and while arm-twisting can be borne with some humiliation, neck-twisting needs a more appropriate response.