Prime Minister Narendra Modi has delivered a stinging message to the world community recently about the shrinking credibility of global institutions like the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Health Organisation. Although he did not name any institution or any country, the prime minister decided to draw the world’s attention to the conduct of WHO and China vis-a-vis the Covid-19 crisis and the scandal surrounding the World Bank report on ease of doing business and the involvement of the bank’s officials in fudging the figures to appease China.
For close to 18 months now, the world has been debating the source of the Covid-19 virus and the possibility of it having been a product of horrendous mischief by China in one of its laboratories. What lent credence to the initial suspicions was the unwillingness of the Chinese authorities to open the suspected laboratories in Wuhan to inspection by global scientists and virologists. Added to this was the open talk in the global community that the WHO was not behaving in a responsible manner because its Director-General Tedros Adhanom owes his job to the Chinese. These suspicions grew further when the world watched the strange manner in which China treated the WHO team that went to Wuhan to investigate the source of the virus and the obvious pussy-footing by Adhanom.
Those watching from the sidelines could glean the strange reluctance of Adhanom to protect the rights of his own team and organisation. Also, probably at China’s behest, WHO is yet to certify Covaxin. That is how the WHO and its activities are under the cloud in the last two years.
Modi has not said any of this but conveyed a lot when he told the UN that the credibility of institutions of global governance, which was built over decades, stands damaged with regard to dealing with the origin of Covid and the Ease of Doing Business rankings. “All kinds of questions are being raised about the conduct of global governance institutions,” he said. The controversy over Ease of Doing Business rankings data tells us a lot about how these institutions work. This must truly be one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the World Bank.
Economist and commentator S Gurumurthy, who shared his extensive research of the working of the World Bank, has this to say about what is going on: “This is a rude awakening which calls for a probe and audit of the ranking business, the actors who do this lucrative business, who funds them, what are their motives and what are the norms they employ to rank nations on such abstract and semi-abstract subjects as good country, soft power, transparency, freedom, fragile states, human development, human happiness, social progress and so on.”
He says the audit of these rankings by WilmerHale, mandated by the World Bank, revealed the role of the World Bank’s senior management in contriving data for pleasing China and Saudi Arabia. The rankings for the years 2018 and 2020, it now emerges, was manipulated at the instance of Kristalina Georgieva, who served as the bank’s CEO from 2017 to 2019. She applied “pressure” to have China ranked more favourably. Quoting the report, Gurumurthy said “Georgieva became directly involved in efforts to improve China’s ranking. This included her encouraging changes to the methodology used for
the ranking.”
Strangely, despite this damning indictment, the lady is now the managing director of the International Monetary Fund. The conduct of these two institutions — the World Bank and the WHO — tells us a lot but how global institutions can be manipulated or even arm-twisted by powerful nations. It was generally believed that the US and other western powers influenced them in subtle ways. With the arrival of China as a major economic player and challenger to the US and the more prosperous European nations, the equations have changed rather dramatically and for the worse. The subtle manoeuvres of the Western world are now a thing of the past. There is now a certain brazenness with which China controls and exploits these institutions to serve its political and economic agenda.
If this is the plight of the World Bank or WHO, how credible are the ratings and other assessments put out by institutions in the West like V-Dem, Reporters Without Borders and the many think tanks vis-a-vis democracy, media freedom and such other indices. The prime minister did some straight talking the other day while addressing the UN General Assembly when he said that if the UN is to be relevant, it must improve its effectiveness and reliability.
This Modi can do because whether it is Ease of Doing Business or any other rankings, India prefers to play by the rules of the game. He quoted Chanakya, who said, “If the right task is not accomplished at the right time, then time itself wrecks the chances of success.” The UN must take note. If it allows unscrupulous nations and individuals to manoeuvre global institutions away from the straight and narrow path of diligence and good governance, a time may come when serious concerns may emerge about its relevance and efficacy.
A SURYA PRAKASH
Former chairman of Prasar Bharati and Scholar, Democracy Studies suryamedia@gmail.com