Patriot games

The controversy over 'foreign consultants' (Indian nationals mostly) on the consultative committees of the Planning Commission has reached ridiculous proportions, with Jyoti Basu calling Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia a "World Bank man", a clear slur on his patriotism.

Mr Basu needs reminding that the finance minister in the Left Front government that he led in West Bengal from 1977, Ashok Mitra, was also a "World Bank man", having worked with the Bank in the mid-1970s immediately before he became finance minister.

His successor and the present finance minister in the state, Ashim Dasgupta, has also been a World Bank consultant. The list of "World Bank men" doesn't stop there.

Dr A.Vaidyanathan, the former member of the Planning Commission who has now resigned from the consultative committees over the presence of foreign experts on the same committees, has himself worked with/for the World Bank. So it is difficult to figure out who is protesting about what and the real reasons why.

If "World Bank men" are to be feared and kept at arm's length, there are many more around. The chief economic advisor in the finance ministry, Ashok Lahiri, has spent a good bit of time in the World Bank. His predecessor, Rakesh Mohan, now deputy governor in the Reserve Bank and reported to be the government's choice as the next finance secretary, is also a former employee of the World Bank.

Looking further afield, the tax reforms that India has pursued since the early 1990s, and the switch now being attempted to a VAT system, are based on reports submitted by Raja Chelliah, who spent long years in the fiscal division of the World Bank's twin, the IMF.

Indeed, another report on tax reform/fiscal management was authored by Parthasarthi Shome, another IMF man who is reported to have been chosen as the new advisor to the finance minister.

This list can go further back, to Shankar Acharya (now, among other things, a columnist with this newspaper), Bimal Jalan (now a member of the Rajya Sabha and therefore a lawmaker for the country), Arjun Sengupta and many others, all the way back in time to IG Patel. Why even Arun Shourie, minister in the very nationalist and patriotic NDA government, was a "World Bank man".

All these are experts in their fields, public-spirited men who have contributed to India's economic policy-making, even if they may have made mistakes, and the country has benefited from their international experience and connections.

The Left may not be happy about this, and indeed criticised the reforms programme in 1991 for being inspired or dictated by the World Bank-IMF twins. There were dire predictions from the same set of protestors that these reforms would lead to the economic enslavement of the country, its de-industrialisation, and many other terrible consequences.

In the end, they were all wrong and the reforms have freed India from the need for IMF and World Bank money, and therefore free from the need to follow their advice, if that be the wish.

Indeed, the World Bank has been so concerned about India's lack of interest in taking its money in recent years that it has modified its lending policies in the hope that India will borrow more as a result. All of which helps make the somewhat obvious point that if the "World Bank men" have helped India get free from the need for money from the IMF and the World Bank, they couldn't be either unpatriotic or incompetent.

It bears pointing out that if India had adopted the views of the Left, we would still be running to these two bodies for financial salvation. The country owes more to some World Bank men that it does to their critics from the Left.