Anu Muhammad on World Bank
Translated excerpt:
২০১০: বিশ্বব্যাংকের কান্ট্রি ডিরেক্টর অ্যালেন গোল্ডস্টেইন, অর্থমন্ত্রী আবুল মাল আবদুল মুহিত এবং প্রধানমন্ত্রীর অর্থনৈতিক উপদেষ্টা ও পদ্মা সেতু প্রকল্পের ইন্টেগ্রিটি অ্যাডভাইজার মসিউর রহমান
“The accusation by World Bank of corruption by our Ministers and Secretaries is most likely true. We are used to seeing this all the time. Sometimes entire projects get digested. But the World Bank group that is linked at the heart with Suharto, Mobuto, Yahya, Pinochet, Shahansha and all the other corrupt autocrats, greedy looters, ministers, bureaucrats and consultants, why is that World Bank suddenly concerned with corruption?”
“Current Finance Minister [M A Muhith] worked as a bureaucrat by World Bank rules for many years. While a minister for the Ershad regime, he began the program of economic reforms under World Bank directions. Thus the 1980s saw the all-detroying reach of World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programs… and now Finance Advisor is another former bueraucrat Mashiur Rahman. It is his initiative that made the WB the main partner on this project, and he was appointed as ‘Integrity Advisor’>”
“Magurchara in 1997 and Tengratila in 2005: the amount of our gas resources destroyed because of American and Canadian company’s incompetence, the reimbursement of that loss would be minimum 45 thousand crore taka. Enough to build two Padma bridges and have money left over. World Bank never talked about that reimbursement. No government even dared raise that demand in world court. I have reviewed our governments’ letters to the World Bank over this loan. There is no lack of pleading and begging in those letters. Those who are morally defeated because of their own corruption, whose only resource is a slave mentality and spinelessness, how can their voices be strong? For these people, Bangladesh’s 160 million people, repeatedly are humiliated on the world stage.”
Conflating WB with Niko is exactly the kind of logic for which I stopped taking Anu Muhammad seriously. Filed under Irrelevant Leftists.
Thank god, we have one ‘irrelevant’ leftist who walks miles to protest against coal mining projects in phulbari, teaches at a public university and produces new generation of activist/engaged students.
And the conflation/relation between WB and Naiko! The line that differentiate WB from multinationals also connects them, binds them together. Why would making that connection turn Anu Mohammad’s position irrelevant. I am not suggesting that his conventional marxist/leftist analytical strategy is the only way to challenge WB. However, there arent many public intellectual in BD who has been persistently trying to keep these questions alive.
Please provide us with your more relevant, nunanced criticism of WB. Otherwise, terming his work “irrelevant” may sound like taking up govt. position about Anu Mohammad, “he is just one irrelevant, isolated marxist, he doesnt count (his words doesnt count).”
For the work he did against open-pit coal mining in Phulbari, I have nothing but respect. For his work as a teacher, I have nothing but respect even when I might disagree with his teachings.
Please could you elaborate on the relationship between Niko and other western MNCs and World Bank.
I have no relevant, nuanced criticism of WB. I take a dim view of it as a slow-moving bureaucracy that does a better job of providing jobs for washed out bureaucrats like Zoellick than any meaningful development in any part of the world. A direct transfer of wealth from Western governments into the pockets of the world’s poorest people without these incompetent middle-men would have been far, far better.
I am not taking the government line. I think Anu Muhammad lost a lot of credibility with his anti-Yunus stance back in 2011 when HE took the government line against an “irrelevant, isolated” fellow teacher. My sentiments are somewhat echoed by this blogger here if you have the time: http://jrahman.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/rendering-unto-caesar-who-trusts-anu-muhammads-judgment/
I agree with the above that he will be against anything as long as the Americans do it. That’s old style Marxism. You may as well be against Wall Street and Occupy at one and the same time because they’re both American. You may well argue that the Bank is closer to Wall Street than Occupy, but even then, they are not the same thing though I await your elaboration on that.
AM said:
DS replied:
But AM did not say the US superpower’s fate hinged on the outcome of microcredit. He was suggesting instead that if MF model falls apart, there will be a ripple effect on all the countries where MF is practiced. This would impact southern countries primarily. But that would in turn effect the global stability order the US is trying to maintain. If that order erodes (any more than it already has) yes the effects would be disastrous.
Sure, AM could have made his point with more complexity (I also note it’s an excerpt, I have not read the full article), but DS refuted him by attacking a strawman AM did not erect (US fate hinges on MF).
conflation, or relation?
Conflation definitely. Those two are as related as Anu Muhammad is to nizami. Both hate the world bank though just as both niko and wb are western.
Maulana Nizama and Anu Muhammad probably have the same goals regarding the promotion of national expertise. I would dearly love to focus them that way. Do you work for or have any friends/family working in the world bank?
Heard a (non WB) researcher remark the other day, how the indigenous folks in rainforests see both the loggers and the conservationists as the same in kind, commodifying the frees as timber or carbon sinks and natural exotica.
Brother Fug, as a card carrying (neo)liberal with a reasonable exposure to Jamaat, I have some bad news for you. Jamaat (and their ideological fellow travellers in Turkey or Egypt) are very welcoming of foreign capital, and prefer a minimalist approach when it comes to the state\’s role in the economy. Quite aside from their social views, Nizami and Anu Muhammad would have very, very different views about the World Bank\’s involvement in building the bridge (or multinationals\’ involvement in developing the coal sector).
Oh poor naive little me.
I look forward to the debate within nonsecular circles on such a matter. AKP may be privatising their lakes and streams but i hope that the Egyptians can get it together not to be so lame.
Having interviewed jamaat and party political leaders on matters relating the world bank and sociotechnical negotiations I’d beg to differ wrt bridge building. Although there is a visible bepsha wallah bias that you see in all the medium to large parties and the opportunism that defines our body politic, given a free creative choice both streams would give the WB the finger. The conditionalities and consultants are screwy and subordinative.
post Mubarak interview with rockstar anthropologist Saba Mahmood on her work in Cairo, she compared the islamic movement there with that of her country of origin, Pakistan http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/2460/religious-liberty-minorities-and-islam_an-intervie
I dont see why this is relevant but here is the answer : neither I nor anyone in my family works for wb or imf or miga or what have you. I use the deshi definition of family to include uncles aunts and first cousins. Have you or anyone in your family ever burnt a US flag? I feel like I have a right to ask an impertinent question of my own.
Back to substantial topics you have identified one point of agreement between nizami and anu m. I hope to see them put their numerous differences aside and work together on this issue which is very close to my own heart as well. The day they do that I will look upon anu m as a great sage who was right all along.
Should that day never come I shall continue to regard the world as more complex than anu m makes it out to be. I think acknowledging this complex picture is more likely to help grow national expertise than childish over simplification.
I dont think so, though burning an american flag is a simple one of thing, the experience of working for the world bank is probably more useful for my purposes however. I did have the unfortunate responsibility of stopping some rightly angered young men, a few amongst more than a million, from burning an american (occupation) flag as they prepared to rain death and neoliberalism on iraq.
If the US and USSR had annihilated eachother in the thanda judho, we’d probably be having a much more interesting conversation.
What I glean from the statement of Anu M is that yes the Gob is very corrupt, however the sudden interest in corruption from the world bank is funny. To me thats a little bit more ballsy that the development industry back slappers i read from bangladesh, who hog must of the civil society aren,, and I await more nuanced contributions to learn about how to run the IFIs into town whilst mobilising a closer more trustworthy politics.
I think he’s right about jamaat. Muslim brotherhood and Turkish refah party are years ahead of them ideological curve. Jamaats influence stems more from Saudi so while they may like foreign investment in coal mines not sure how they view the wb investment. Any literature to share re this ?
Fug, we were probably talking to different people, and of course we can agree to disagree. But consider a couple of things.
1. ‘given a free creative choice’ is a very strong assumption. Any government led by Jamaat (or similar party) will face concerted acrimony of the secular establishment and their foreign allies. As such, Jamaat will go out of its way to accommodate any ally from any corner, and will try to avoid as many fights as possible. They would not tell the WB to shove it, because a WB certificate validating their ‘shot loker shashon’ will go in implementing ‘Allah’r ain’.
2. We don’t need to look at Turkey or Egypt, or wonder about what Jamaat might do. We can look at its behaviour in power. Between 2001 and 2006, Jamaat ran three ministries — agriculture, industry, and social welfare. In the first two, Motiur Rahman Nizami pursued, quite competently, the neoliberal, Washington Consensus based agenda of Saifur Rahman. If you recall, it was that government which shut down Adamjee. In contrast, under Mujahid, Jamaat pursued its own agenda in the social welfare ministry. If Jamaat has the chance to run ministries in the future, I suspect they will do exactly the same thing again — follow the neoliberal line on economic stuff and win vanilla points from you-know-who, and pursue their agenda on social stuff.
PP, I don’t have any literature on Bangladeshi Jamaat. The points above are based on my observation and analysis. Vali Nasr and Timur Kuran have written on the interaction between Islam-based politics and capitalism.
Well politics is the art of making the impossible possible. The political formation that is successful in integrating nonsecular and secular ecologies with decolonial mojo, and obliterating the development industry wont be the kind to deploy playground capitulations raising finance.
Playing eachother’s developmentors against competitor developmentee leads to this rather rubbish neoliberalism of last resort, not intent. It doesnt essentially mean anything other than ‘We have a Moronarchy’.
True, deshi islamism’s social hue did not shine brightly in economic policy over that period. They are not associated with alternate poitical economy. Am reading Timur Kuran quite a bit these days on bismillah foo finance and failings.
Moving on, it looks like the govt is going to go all ‘Ethiopian great renaissance dam’ and self finance the bridge. http://in.news.yahoo.com/bangladesh-fund-padma-bridge-project-115806142–finance.html