Tough guys pursue profit
The poor are paying to keep the World Bank rich
On arrival in Bangkok, we were tagged and assigned seats in a
fleet of new Volvos driven by men in white icecream suits, white
shoes and white peak caps. In the back of my volvo were two men in
pinstripes; one of them arranged debt equity swaps, the other
owned a third of a bank in Ecuador. With lights flashing and
police outriders going ahead - and looking terrific in their ice-
cream suits, reflecting sunglasses, parachutist wings and
decorative holsters - we headed into Bangkok's famous traffic,
which had vanished, past Bangkok's famous street vendors, most of
whom had vanished, through an underpass were people have scratched
for a living since I have been coming here; and they, too, had
gone. In their place were teams of women in blue smocks waiting to
catch anything, a leaf, before it sullied the ground.
Along the way, Coke, Pepsi, IBM, Nissan and a large massage
parlour welcomed us to the World Bank/International Monetary Fund
conference ...everything 50 percent off for you delegates and
participants . On arrival at the Holiday Inn, people in white
coats and tails ran at us, bowing low. We were thanked for
everything; one of them got into the lift and thanked us for going
up and down. Thais are polite and gracious people but do not
normally engage in this sort of spectacular deference for which
the door-openers of Tokyo department stores are famous.
Once in room 2436, things were becoming clearer. There was much to
look at, including a picture of Margaret Thatcher and the words:
You don't have to be rich and powerful...When the daughter of a
humble grocery shop owner went on to become prime minister of
Britain, she proved it ! Now we are proving it again ! The we
is a computer firm.
Next to this was a profile of World Bank president Lewis T
Preston. He is, first of all, a Marine, it said. However, an
intimate family friend swore that he and his wife are warm and
hospitable ...but no one fails to mention that Lew Preston is one
tough hombre !
Next to Lewis T Preston was a form for me to fill in my blood
group. A Thailand Health Guide advised against sharing a
toothbrush, due to the prevalence of Aids. Under Emotional
Health it warned that some of us world bankers might have
difficulty adapting to our new environment and find ourself
feeling depressed. This stage is not unusual, it reassured us,
nor is it a sign of failure.
Do tough hombres like Lewis T Preston get these depressions too ?
Surely not. The World Bank seldom has a surplus of less than a
billion dollars and everyone wants to borrow from it - everyone
being those very poor countries whose economies have been
structurally adjusted by the World Bank and the IMF so that they
can compete with othr very poor countries for ever-diminishing
export markets in order to acquire hard currency, in order to pay
back the World Bank and IMF the interest charges on loans they
have repaid several times over.
The consequences of this system are striking. In Senegal, 40
percent of the fertile land is given over to growing peanuts for
western margarine, in Ghana half the arable land is devoted to
cocoa for western chocolate bars, and in Colombia cut flowers are
grown on farmland for export to the American rich. In all these
countries, the corollary is widespread, increasing malnutrition.
Remember Live Aid ? In 1985, the 29 poorest countries of Sub-
Saharan Africa paid back to the World Bank, the IMF and western
commercial banks a total of US$6.7 billion - more than twice as
much as they received in emergency aid from governments and the
good-hearted.
These facts are known here as unmentionables . The original aim
of the World Bank, says Lewis T Preston, was and remains the
eradication of poverty . The original aims as enshrined in the
1947 Bretton Woods charter was, in so many words, to provide
markets for the rich world and to control the resources of the
poor. Indeed, in these triumphant days, it is clearly difficult
for the corporate do-gooders to restrain themselves. We should
not be afraid, Norman Lamont (British Chancellor of the
Exchequer) told the conference, to say that what we are extolling
here are the virtues of capitalism !And the driving force of
capitalism is the pursuit of profit ! No blah about eradicating
poverty from Norman, whom a Bangkok radio station calls
Chancellor of the Excesser, Norm Lament .
The World Bank usually holds its annual conference in Washington,
where the Bank has its headquarters close by its principal
sponsor. The last conference held in Asia was in Manila in 1976
soon after the IMF had given the dictator Ferdinand Marcos US$4.5
billion: or about a third of the amount he is now believed to have
had stashed away when he died. In return for this largesse, Marcos
built a number of luxury hotels to accomodate the World Bankers in
a manner to which they are accustomed when deliberating about the
poor. The poor, of course, were kept well away. Marcos sent the
bill to the city authorities, who passed it on in taxes; the poor
are still paying it off.
Something not dissimilar has happened here. A vast conference
centre, with gilded lacquer and other adornments, was completed
just in time for the conference, and at great cost. In a country
where rural children still die from malnutrition and preventable
disease, and where low wages, bonded child labour, prostitution
and illegal sweatshops help to support a growing economy, the
poor will, of course, end up paying indirectly.
The display of wealth has been unrelenting. A three-star chef has
been flown in from Paris, reported the Bangkok Nation, accompanied
by succulent turkeys from the famous Bresse region...Belgian
caviar from Iran, smoked salmon from Norway and rpime rib from the
US . Following the seminar on the conversion of socialism and
capitalism and the lessons learned , delegates headed off to a
party where, said the Bangkok Nation, they must have been
surprised and delighted that something very appropriate to their
status was in store for them...a display of gems consisting of an
89-karat diamond, a 100-karat emerald and a 336-karat opal.
It is just not acceptable, says Lewis T Preston, that so many
people in the world have to live on less than a dollar a day. The
6000 employees of the World Bank are unlikely to find themselves
in such straits. Middle-ranking civil servants earn 300 times the
per capita income of half of humanity. According to a former
executive, their perks include first-class air travel, which has
cost up to US$85 million in a year.
As part of Bangkok's beautification for the conference, an iron
wall was built opposite the convention centre, painted in bright
murals and draped with a Welcome to Thailand sign. Alas, during
a heavy downpour the sign fell down, revealing to the delegates a
large number of poor people behind the wall. These are the slum
people of Klong Toey. To most of them beautification has meant
eviction to places where it is often impossible for them to resume
work as street vendors, or keep their jobs as day labourers and
domestics.
The Machim community were moved from their shacks beside a railway
line to wasteland well out of sight of the to-ing and fro-ing
Volvos, though still beside the railway line. Each was given 90
pounds as removal expenses . They have no electricity and running
water, and the army says it wants its tents back once the
conference is over. When the Miss Universe circus comes to Bangkok
next year, another 5000 people are likely to be evicted.
The beautifiers and bankers have not had it all their way. Forty-
three countries have sent representatives to an International
People's Forum at Chulalongkorn University. People who have been
both victims and opponents of development have spoken, often
movingly, about the effects of World Bank capital projects, and
IMF austerity programmes in their countries. Vandana Shiva from
India described how hundreds of thousands of people had been made
homeless all over India by flooding caused by World Bank dams and
irrigation schemes, which have taken little account of the
environmental impact. They see only new markets and new
investment zones that come with the dams, she said. They cause
these environmental disasters because it is assumed that
'development' must come from outside. They think they bear a kind
of White Man's Burden; but they do not really study life.
According to American economist Patricia Adams, World Bank-
sponsored Hydro projects have flooded a million and a half people
off their land; and another million and a half are about to
follow. One of the themes of the World Bank conferences hs been
the Bank's new green image as it emphasises the need to protect
the environment. But as Michael Phillips of the International
Institute for Energy Conservation has pointed out, the World Bank
spends just 1 percent of its average 1.8billion pound budget on
energy projects to promote conservation and efficiency. Phillips
is the author of a report covering 18 developing countries, in
which he demonstrates the potential of a World Bank dedeicated to
help genuine development . The reports says that if the bank
promoted energy efficiency in industry, transport and power
stations, poor countries could save more than 1.2 trillion pounds.
In selecting Thailand for the venue of its conference this year,
the bank is said to be making a point that the Thai economy, with
the Thai growth rate, should serve as an example to others. In
fact, Thailand is an environmental disaster; its forests have been
virtually wiped out by uncontrolled logging and profiteering.
I put several of these unmentionables to senior officials of the
World Bank and the IMF, in particular the conclusions of a Unicef
study that half a million children died every year partly as a
result of high grwoth rate and austerity policies imposed by the
institutions. The officials sought to discredit the Unicef figures
- oh that one's got suspect data . Surprisingly, they offered no
evidence to support their criticism.
There have been numerous sideshows. The most demeaning was a press
conference called by the Russians to announce that they were more
pro-market than anyone. One of them said, Comrade Yavlinsky
wants to express his views on... He was interrupted by his
colleague, who said What's this comrade stuff ? To which the
first Russian replied, My God ! Sorry. Old habits die hard.
The saddest are the Vietnamese, who fought for half a century to
free their country from colonialism and establish a national
health-care system, remarkable by Third World standards, as well
as free education and a minimum wage. In Bangkok, the Vietnamese
have been promising to do almost anything to get the US to lift
its embargo so that the IMF can structurally adjust them and
impose more austerity, if that's possible. They say that they have
no choice but to sell off much of the forests not destroyed by
American defoliants; and they announced that they had abolished
the minimum wage. Their labour force will now be the cheapest in
Asia, which means that people must work in free-enterprise zones
for a pittance. Yet Washington still says no; the embargo stands
and the punishment goes on. Some things transcend even the
virtues of capitalism , as Norm Lament would surely agree.
>From: The New Statesman and Society, London, 25 October 1991