Is "inclusive growth" a meaningless phrase? World Bank thinks so. Is "food buffer" a useless policy? Well, who else but the World Bank can think so

A man is known by the company he keeps. Similarly, an institution is known by the people it employs. I have never understood why does the World Bank continue to employ stupid economists. If you appoint economists who are simply going by the textbooks, and have rarely spent some time in the villages or interacting with the poor and marginalised, you will continue to produce faulty recommendations. Since the World Bank does not only make recommendations but turns them into conditionality's that the country receiving the finances must adhere to, it ends up doing more damage than can be envisaged.

I thought the ex-chief economist Nicholas Stern was the last of the breed. Travelling through India sometimes back, he had said: "I agree it is a sin to provide the kind of subsidies the US provides to its farmers .. but developing countries must remove their trade barriers regardless of what is happening in the developed countries." Look at the brazenness with which he approved the wrong being perpetuated by the rich countries. Just because he was on the payroll of the World Bank (in which US holds the majority share), he defended the great injustice in the name of economics. When one country (or a group of countries) bullies its way through, how can it be termed as market economics?

Interestingly, Nicholas Stern has now co-edited a book with NK Singh: "The New Bihar"

Kaushik Basu is the new chief economist for the World Bank. He was earlier the chief economic adviser to India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He is on leave from the Cornell University where he is the C.Marks Professor of International Studies and a Professor of Economics. Influenced probably more by the column he used to write for India Today magazine, Manmohan Singh invited him to be his chief adviser. Well, the crisis that the Indian economy is faced with certainly has surely something to do with the advise the chief economic adviser must be rendering to the government.

One of the radical suggestions he made in his individual capacity was to legalise bribe giving (Kaushik Basu says make bribe giving legal. WSJ http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2011/03/30/kaushik-basu-says-make-bribe-giving-legal/). I think this speaks volumes of the kind of thinking the economist has. Some called it a radical thought, but I always thought nothing could have been more stupid. And coming from an economist from the Cornell University, I wonder why do we continue to rate these university so high?

While he was advising the Indian Prime Minister he always talked of 'inclusive growth'. In fact, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has time and again stressed on the need to make economic reforms more inclusive. The Indian media continues to chant the mantra of 'inclusive growth'. Now that he has moved on to the World Bank, he probably realised the futility of using 'inclusive growth' as the hallmark of development. On July 31st, he tweeted: Sustainable growth, inclusive growth, and growth have all had their time in the sun. I propose we make way now for "intelligent growth."

Look at this statement. Does it not mean that the World Bank (or the mainline economists who work for it, or who espouse the cause) do not know what actually works for development? He says that the time is up for inclusive growth or sustainable growth. So he is now looking for another catchy phrase. The best that he can think of it is: "intelligent growth". If the only objective is to delude the educated class with yet another phrase, I suggest the World bank employ a better copy writer. And that brings me to another question. Why does the World Bank need the services of economists when the job can be better done by a copy writer?

If there is no such thing as sustainable growth and inclusive growth, isn't it time to have an urgent re-look at the entire economic growth model? The International Panel on Climate Change has been telling us for several years now that the world has reached a tripping point, and since the growth paradigm is not sustainable, does it not require a complete overhaul? Bringing a new phrase of "intelligent growth" will not address the monumental crisis of survival that the Earth finds itself in.

He has come out with another gem. His tweet today says: "For a nation to have a minimum food buffer stock requirement for all times is useless policy. An inviolable buffer is as good as no buffer." He is obviously referring to India's huge buffer stocks. In the light of the proposed Food Security Act, Kaushik Basu has now made public his displeasure. Reading what his fellow colleagues from the Columbia University -- Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya -- have been relentlessly harping, I am not the least surprised. Such stupid and dangerous statements can only come from mainline economists who are pushing for commercial interests of the multinationals. 

India's food buffer is one of the best policy initiatives that have come up in the recent past. If India has survived the spate of famines it used to face before the British left the shores, food buffer has played an important role. If India has never experienced the kind of food inflation that many countries across the globe have witnessed (Brazil was faced with 440 per cent food inflation in early 1980s) it is because of the food buffer that was created. If India escaped the 2007 Global Food Crisis that resulted in food riots in 37 countries across the globe, it is because of the food buffer. If India has escaped the likes of Arab Spring and also the disintegration and collapse that Soviet Union suffered, it is primarily because of the comforts of food security ensured through a sizable and operative food buffer. 

To suggest the dismantling or dissolution of the food buffer can be the outcome of an unintelligent and insane mind. World Bank is full of them.