[mgj-discuss] *great* piece on bank/fund in indian pub

[Debi Kar]

http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/oct/16ash.htm

Rediff.com
October 16, 2002

Ashwin Mahesh

A convenient naivete, or a guilty connivance?

It's autumn in Washington, DC. That time of the year when crowds of 
people descend on the downtown district, reminding the world that the 
rhetoric about globalisation doesn't stand up to the evidence. They are 
a motley bunch -- environmentalists, labour groups, representatives of 
Third World civil society initiatives, and even some otherwise 
well-ensconced progressives with fading memories of their Berkeley and 
Cornell roots. The city puts all its police force on overtime, and 
recruits a couple of thousand more officers from neighbouring 
jurisdictions. Employers in the downtown area tell their employees to 
stay home. Huge barricades cordon off several blocks. Fortress Big Money 
-- namely, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund -- is 
holding its annual meeting of the minds.

There are those who argue that laying the economic ills of the world at 
the doorstep of these institutions is unfair. Bank and Fund officials 
are trying their hardest, they insist, to bring transparency, reform and 
accountability to some very difficult places in poor economic shape. 
That's not easy, and the process of getting there is fraught with 
political pitfalls and even short-term economic hardship. It takes 
courage to make this defense. After all, the 'political pitfalls' 
include countless protestors outside the doors of power with signs that 
read 'blood money bought your suit,' or something to that effect, 
usually in font size 53. The 'short-term hardship,' similarly, refers to 
the roughly 3 billion humans living on a dollar or two a day since 
approximately forever.

The thing is, it's quite likely that thousands of the people behind the 
tinted glass are fairly decent folks, who care honestly about the plight 
of the world's poor. The trouble is that their professional standing and 
personal fortune are both tied to the status quo, and for the most part 
their plaintive assertions of good intent are made to themselves as much 
as to others. Satinath Sarangi, the well-known Bhopal activist who has 
led the pursuit of just compensation from Union Carbide and Dow 
Chemical, once wrote of an encounter with executives from the company, 
describing them as 'regular guys with normal careers, [who] probably 
even sleep well each night,' quite unmindful of the ghosts of their 
corporate conduct.

A little like Becir Onarsal, I imagine. Dr Onarsal is a mild-mannered 
bank employee, and on the occasion of our meeting, he happened to hold 
chief responsibility for the design of something known as a Common 
Effluents Treatment Plant. The CETP is a fairly straightforward idea; 
you take the horrible stuff that a few chemical plants put out, and pipe 
them all into a single treatment facility, thereby distributing much of 
the capital and operational costs of treating effluents among multiple 
manufacturers. There's the small question of not being able to tell 
which of the plants is actually putting out poison beyond the permitted 
levels every so often, but that, he pointed out, was outside his 
expertise.

It was in the spring last year that I met him. One of his CETP schemes 
had gone awry in Gujarat's industrial corridor, and something smelling 
fouler than rotten eggs and looking a little redder than the Chinese 
flag happened to float into streams neighbouring the treatment plant. 
The local people had tried getting the industrialists to be more 
responsible, but hadn't made much headway on that front. Michael 
Mazgaonkar, who lived around those parts, happened to be visiting 
Washington, and decided this would be a good opportunity to talk to some 
of the people funding these plants. Perhaps, he said, they could be made 
to understand how the lives of ordinary people are destroyed by the 
poisons in their neighbourhood.

The World Bank can be an intimidating place. As you walk in the door -- 
and this is especially true if like Michael's or mine, your dress sense 
is a little short of the attire that typically waltzes in and out -- a 
stern African face with a badge asks politely if you have any business 
being there. Resisting the temptation to say that we had mistakenly 
wandered in, we explained that we were looking to meet people who could 
explain to us how the Bank is involved in supporting certain economic 
schemes in western India. Michael is an enthusiastic person, quite wont 
to say "you see, it's like this. We're from India, and in our 
neighbourhood, there is this little stream ..." The African face is 
unimpressed. Do we have an appointment? Certainly not. Then perhaps we 
would care to stand over there while he asks around.

'Over there' is a behind some very large posters in German talking about 
the Bank's remarkable work in a forgotten corner of the world. While we 
wait, the African face has located one Richard Beardmore, who will be 
happy to see us.

Mr Beardmore has been around, you can see that straightaway. He will be 
glad to explain to us anything we'd like to know that he can help with. 
We pull up a few chairs in a meeting area outside his office. There's a 
bit of an awkward moment while the visitors pull out notebooks and 
pencils, with Beardmore maintaining a studious silence, but soon we are 
into the thick of it.

The gist of it is this -- we'd like to look through project reports 
relating to various schemes in Gujarat that the World Bank is funding, 
and to figure out if the loans being made (the $400 million following 
the earthquake, for instance) are really on generous financial terms to 
promote development. This is an especially difficult time for Gujarat, 
and we'd like to follow the money trail to be sure that none of it goes 
elsewhere than intended. This, the good Mr Beardmore hasn't quite 
anticipated, but he's sure that some document explaining the whyfors and 
hows should exist. We'd like a copy of the proposals and the terms under 
which the loans were made, we explain. But here things begin to get a 
little shaky. Beardmore isn't really the person in the know of these 
things, he's merely willing to talk to us for a little while, he 
explains.

Actually, no one could have explained it, it turns out. With a little 
probing, it becomes clear that there is in fact no loan approved 
specifically for earthquake relief. The Bank and our good prime minister 
have merely redirected monies intended for some other projects in India 
to be diverted to the earthquake relief work instead. And what about the 
funds that would have gone into those projects? "Not to worry", says 
Beardmore, "those will be replenished with future loans." Naturally, but 
at what rates of interest, we ask? Well, the usual rates for such 
projects. Michael quickly has a question - "wouldn't that mean that even 
earthquake relief, which is in response to dire need, is being funded 
through loans at interest rates that would apply to infrastructure 
projects? Couldn't India get an interest-free loan when a gazillion 
people are homeless and tens of thousands are dead?"

To cut a long story short, Mr Beardmore has few answers. He reverts to 
his earlier stand, insisting that there is a project specifically 
outlining the terms of earthquake relief, but he cannot find it. He 
could look on his computer, but that isn't where he actually searches. 
Instead, every time he turns to his file cabinet, he's always looking 
amid documents that look older than Hammurabi, for a loan document that 
was allegedly created less than a month back. It's evident he doesn't 
want us peering over his shoulder at the computer screen, and he's more 
certain as the conversation proceeds that he really isn't the person we 
should be talking to. The New Delhi office will have all we need, he 
insists.

Somewhere near this point, I gave him my business card and told him it 
was nice talking to him, and I look forward to being able to write about 
my visit with him. He definitely had to leave at that point, but he gave 
us his card in return and an assurance of all cooperation should we have 
any questions in the future.

And then we went to see Dr Onarsal. Since no one had escorted us back 
out to the front of the building, we looked around the phone book, and 
located the gentleman and asked if he'd be willing to talk to us for a 
bit too. We were inside the Bank, yes, and we didn't need his permission 
to enter; we'd already done that, thank you. Were we activists, he 
wanted to know. I'm not sure -- we're a little concerned that an odious 
fluid looking like the innards of a tiger shark was flowing into the 
taps around Vapi 15,000 miles away. How active do you have to be to be 
alarmed by something like that? I reminded the good doctor that his 
professional opinion shouldn't really depend on our professions. Upon 
which compelling argument our conversation began.

He's quite a scholar, Dr Becir Onarsal, there's no denying that. Polite, 
willing to explain the science of his work patiently. A common effluents 
treatment plant, on paper, is the sort of everybody-wins economic idea 
that one can be rightly proud of, and he identified himself with it 
immediately. That enthusiasm for his achievement, though, faded in short 
order, as Michael produced an envelope full of images of 'treated' 
effluents being released into local streams. Many showed the streams to 
be various shades of orange and red, much like the setting sun, and 
frothing in places. It is unimaginable that any person's drinking water 
could safely contain the muck that was being poured into it by these 
plants -- 'death-inducing' would be a good way to describe the process 
of consuming the revolting stuff.

To understand how the uber-planner behaved at this juncture, you have to 
remember that this is a man clearly proud of what he believes is a 
significant economic achievement. He simply couldn't believe that the 
filth in front of him could really be emanating from his plants. His 
immediate response was to put out a barrage of questions, essentially 
defensive posers: Were these really taken at the discharge sites? Yes. 
Did you have permission to be there, doesn't the company have guards to 
keep people away from the site? Yes, but they're not very watchful, we 
even have some samples we'd like to send to a laboratory sometime.

When the most ready explanations in his unbelieving mind couldn't 
explain the facts, Onarsal turned to the most incredulous one he could 
imagine -- "but you mustn't assume this is bad for people. You know, 
Coca-Cola is red too, but you can drink that quite safely."

It is possible to feel pity for a person and still laugh at him. He was 
clearly clutching at straws, but even this wouldn't hold up. The people 
around these facilities can see for themselves the health effects that 
coincide with hazardous discharges, their cancers and pains aren't from 
drinking perfectly potable beverages. The companies don't deny access by 
independent chemical analysts because they are certain of their own 
regard for public safety, they know instead that the stuff they spew 
kills, and that any reasonable investigation of their activity will 
clearly expose their criminal enterprise. There's a reason why the 
Gujarat Pollution Control Board regularly holds public hearings far away 
from the affected communities -- because in those communities the 
connivance of the authorities in the crimes is well known.

"But why are you telling me all these things?" Onarsal had by now moved 
from denial to powerlessness. He was at best a faraway economic adviser 
with a valid engineering idea, and the crooked implementation of it 
could hardly be laid at his feet. This is par for the course; the Bank's 
own policy is that its employees must not be corrupt, but cannot take 
any responsibility for the corruption they know occurs with the use of 
the Bank's money. Moreover, Onarsal assured us, the CETPs were dead and 
the Bank was moving away from funding them. Really? The brilliant idea 
he had taken such pride in only moments before, apparently wasn't.

"We're telling you," said Michael, "because we want you to know that 
your decisions and actions have impacts on people's lives. The 
difference that you call colour, they see as the separation between life 
and death. What you call faulty implementation, they call crime. And the 
powerlessness that you now profess isn't really credible, because you 
haven't bothered to check how your schemes actually work. If you had a 
greater interest in that, than in meeting the chairman of the pollution 
board who you say is your friend, then you might view these schemes in a 
different light. I'm telling you because I think that you need to know, 
and you need to be accountable for what you know, just as the local 
officials are accountable for their actions."

I don't believe that Becir Onarsal imagined in his wildest dreams that 
an actual Gujarati would show up in his office, complaining of 
negligence and hinting of complicity in the deliberate disregard for the 
health of the poor. He just lost it, and in one splendid moment of 
eventual honesty, the unrestrained dissonance of his own mind came 
spilling out.

"You fellows are always whining, and blaming the World Bank for every 
little thing that is wrong with your country. You elect a bunch of 
crooks to your government offices, your oversight mechanisms are all 
clearly full of loopholes and corruption, and when those things create 
chaos in India, you come begging to us to stop funding these projects, 
as though all the corruption is the fault of the World Bank. We are not 
your saviours, that you can come and ask to rescue you from all your 
troubles."

In hindsight, I believe "begging" and "saviour" were terrible words to 
have chosen. Michael fairly leaped out of his chair and bellowed at the 
scientist, and when he was done, one could be forgiven for thinking that 
the cowering Onarsal had shrunk in size about 50 per cent. He was 
exposed as either naively unbelieving and unsuspecting of the reality of 
the operations he took such pride in, or fairly red-handedly caught at 
being complicit in them. He took the only recourse left to him. He 
insisted that the meeting was over, and escorted us out, taking the 
precaution -- which Beardmore did not -- of ensuring that we were beyond 
the security perimeter before he bade us farewell. He stomped away, 
muttering to himself.

As another round of protests against the policies of the multilateral 
lending agencies and their global trading rules winds down, I am 
reminded of a crucial distinction. From behind institutional facades, 
these organisations exert tremendous political and economic force, the 
consequences of which are felt in the far corners of the planet. But 
when this veneer is removed, and the individuals who administer the 
policies are called to account for them, the insincerity of their 
defence is galling. The unwillingness to confront that truth is best 
understood as denial. Thousands of 'honest-to-goodness' folks have spent 
much of their lives of 'accomplishment' certain that they would never be 
party to such depravity, and assuring themselves that if ever the 
knowledge of it came to them, they would stand up against it.

But they do know. They cannot profess on the one hand the great 
intellect to solve complex socio-economic problems, and on the other 
hand deny any awareness that the rich-poor divide is perpetuated by the 
rules of their game. They cannot proclaim loudly the efficiency of 
competitive markets, and fail to notice that thousands of farmers have 
ended their lives precisely because the markets they have erected aren't 
really competitive. Ultimately, the great lie of the neo-classical 
economists is that the prestige with which they see their personal 
success in the world of businessmen, trade negotiators, and others of 
the profession and class, isn't real. Their economic idea, it appears, 
is so strong it needs police protection! And the pride of their learning 
is quickly defeated by one of two truths -- either an obvious ineptitude 
in applying their scholarship, or the selective application of it to 
favour the already privileged.

Each protest is a reminder of this judgement.

Ashwin Mahesh



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