All in the family: Growth and the IMF

By Gamini Seneviratne

(This article was first published in The Island in 2001. It is reproduced, today, given its relevance to the present situation.)

That heading should not be taken to refer to the political micro-families in this and other parts of the world, although within the IMF’s grand design, such ‘families’ do matter. ‘The IMF’ here refers to the entire complex of global predators which it orchestrates.

For those who can laugh at larceny on a grand scale, the growth of such post-regnal family-trees of a much lower order in South Asia is a bit of a joke. From the Bhuttos et al in the west, the Ranas in the north, the Zias et al in the east, the lesser Gandhis, from chemicals, dams, power plants, etc., in the centre, to cement, steel, airlines, ports, arms, peace deals and so on in the south, the tale of treason has many twists to it. The main strand of the rope that binds them all together is provided by the IMF and its relatively poor relative, the World Bank and, its associate banks which do some of the dirty work for it. What matters to us is that the rope is being used to throttle the people in our countries.

It is a pity that Dr. Kumari Jayawardena did not extend her researches to cover those who have become “somebodies” – ugly word – overnight in the past few years, because such an account could not fail to illustrate vividly what is being said here.

The following lines from an old Rugby Song encapsulate the nexus between the IMF/WB, MNCs, and the military power of the west. The money they roll in is from us, but it cannot be extracted without the help of corrupt Presidents, Prime Ministers, other, self-confessed military rulers and their henchmen.

My father manufactures

French Letters,

My sister makes holes with a pin.

My uncle arranges abortions,

My god, how the money rolls in,

rolls in,

My god how the money rolls in!

How does the IMF set about putting into force its programme for destabilising the socio-economic foundation of our people and their manner of living? Dr. Nadeem Ul Haque, the IMF boss in this country and the effective decision maker, (regardless of the World Bank man styling himself ‘Country Manager’), for the apology of a government that has foisted itself on us, has spelt it out in an address to the National Chamber of Exporters last week [The Island, 26th December, 2000].

I have reason to believe that Dr. Haque is a civilized person, and these comments are not directed personally at him. As a South Asian and a national of Pakistan, which we have long regarded as a friend, I have no doubt that he would be ready to be as accommodating towards us as Washington is prepared to permit him to be. It may be taken as read, though, that he has no such leeway. Willy-nilly he is part of the system of extraction globally.

In his talk, Dr. Haque has obviously been conscious that his audience had somewhat limited interests and he has addressed those as any good speaker should do. However, he has, en passant, touched on more vital matters. I comment on those.

They relate to “governance”, trade unions, and “smallness”. Also “imagination”, which is the distinguishing marker of such self-serving constructs as “economic efficiency” which the larger family of the imperial pillagers continues to present to our astonished gaze.

Let us take the matter of “smallness”. Dr. Haque had told our imaginative and hopeful exporters that it has to do with the size of a country or of its population. He has said that small countries must have small governments or government agencies. What he has not said is that they should have small cabinets of ministers: when he refers to the cost of ‘governance’ he has in mind the public services.

What he means is that governments should be put out of business, except in the matter of using its clout to remove “subsidies” on, say, public health, farming, education and the administration of the law and to deliver “incentives” to the oh so efficient! “private sector”.

What Dr. Haque has taken off on is the antipathy of would-be monopolists to “big government”, which means a system of regulation of economic activity in the public interest. The desired end of “reform” is that “big business” is favoured at the cost of the social responsibilities of the institutions that have been set up by the people to act in their behalf.

The IMF has no word at all about “big business” and what one might call, if one were in an especially benign mood this season, its inefficiencies. In fact, you’d have to be pretty sozzled and non compos mentis to buy that shoddy and very private ‘good’.

The cynical exploitation of the consumer by big business following the ‘privatization’, which the IMF has the temerity to come over here and advocate to us yakkos, has long been known in the USA and, more recently, in the UK.

How have those societies dealt with this abomination? In the USA, the remissness of any private centre for medical care or any primary or secondary educational institution [yes, parents do tend to lose interest after their ‘kids’ reach a certain age] could lead to demands for ‘compensation’ in often hefty monetary terms. Lawyers grow rich and enter the league of the ‘big businessman’. So is it with their public services, such as private transport. The internal airlines, all private, in the USA have the worst safety record anywhere in the world. Not to mention the inconvenience they subject their customers to, the baggage they ‘lose’ or the lousy food they serve. Such little things make for an increase in ‘profit’ which, after all, is all that private business is about.

In the UK, we have had quite recently, graphic examples of the outcome of Big Business taking over from Big Government. To give a current example, the common people of that country are crying out for the re-nationalisation of the rail system. Cost-cutting has resulted in the neglect of essential safety procedures and led to horrible accidents. ‘The IMF’ would no doubt point to ‘the bottom line’ on a ledger as proof of the efficiency of private management of that mode of public transport.

And it is not only in those countries, but everywhere, including ‘small’ Sri Lanka, that we have had mass resistance to GMO foods that are being peddled by MNCs, whom it is the IMF’s mandate to support.

And, predictably, we have here the IMF demanding that the government “sheds” itself of its responsibilities by the people. Dr. Haque [I am sorry that I have to keep on referring to him by name, but it is a relatively common name, such as is mine here, and am sure that his namesake, the late Dr. Mahbub Ul Haq, would not have taken offence], asserts that in most “advanced countries” [big] business would consider the need to conform to national laws “a waste”, presumably, of time – and profit. Sure, sure, in the most “advanced” of those countries, [big] business has all the necessary short-cuts to profit opened through ‘lobbyists’, most of them former senators, congressmen or other high officials in the aforementioned ‘big government’

We have Dr. Haque talking about a “labour aristocracy”. Maybe some such phenomenon exists in Australia. We do know however how the labour unions have been manipulated in the USA; for example, the lumber workers have been ‘employed’ to provide a rationale for the continued felling of the old growth forest of over a thousand years of age in Washington and Oregon. The identical motivation occurred when port workers in New York and New Orleans were paid to shove wheat that had been paid for into the sea rather than ship it to you-know-who. In the USA, when the term ‘labour aristocracy’ does acquire meaning, its members are being employed right now to shut out imports of manufactures from the third world. This is in the teeth of the agreements which the USA herself thrust down our throats via the WTO. If the IMF is looking for ‘governance’ it should look to such acts that promote ‘economic efficiency’.

The attempts to emasculate trade unions is a part of that ploy. Here we have the USA arguing strenuously against “low-cost labour” from Asia that compromises the livelihoods of its citizens. And here we have the IMF urging our governments to destroy a supposed “labour aristocracy”. Our organized working class has, largely through the dictates of the IMF, endorsed by servile governments compounded by the actions of an incompetent and utterly corrupt administration [which the IMF has done nothing to bring down – as they cannot until a suitably subservient alternative is found/built up], been compelled to survive a budget that has reduced their own to a shoe-string on one shoe. How would they respond? What, if any, more attacks on them does the IMF have to offer them?

Dr. Haque has also spoken about ‘pampering constituencies’. His, i.e. the IMF’s, gripe is about the ‘constituencies’ that are of no use to them, – in fact, those which get in the way of the larger and the lesser ‘families’ mentioned above. What the IMF has directed its ‘reforms’ towards is the pampering of big business. In South Asia, as elsewhere, the incumbent claimants to state power are the instrument through whom the IMF family operates. The less representative they are of the people, and the more securely armed against the people they are, the better.

The term “reform” should raise hackles, especially among South Asians. We have had so much of it. In this country we had the “Colebrook-Cameron Reforms” a hundred and sixty-seven years ago. They were designed to break down the traditional socio-economic foundations of this country and to use those elements in it which would give, not ‘cheap’ but costless labour for their marauders. The use of that term by the IMF has no connotations other than those of a century and a half ago. Except that the ‘stakes’, as in the betting game, are much higher now.

The primary question that Dr. Haque has raised is “Why has South Asia not grown?” He has also spoken of Singapore et al having looked to us for guidance on “agendas” that we in South Asia, Sri Lanka in particular, had initiated. His thesis is that the winner is the one who crosses the line, – not the one who’s fastest off the mark. It is not possible to countenance such convoluted logic. We have had loads of ‘theory’ on how various countries that were targeted by big business have responded to the ‘windows of opportunity’ that were advanced in the language of the camel seeking refuge. East Asia is held to have ‘developed’ on the rails of a ‘Confucian ethic’ [a matter that I was quizzed on at a ‘brown-bag’ seminar at Cornell ten years ago, long before I was aware of any family connection with that institution]. Does the IMF [or Dr. Haque] have a corresponding culture-based theory about India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka? – a Hindu / Islamic rate of growth, a Christian rate of profligacy, a Theravada level of tolerance and a Mahayana mode of mayhem together bringing about a Buddhist condition of stagnation?

And, finally, lest we forget, a South Asian scale of corruption?

Dr. Haque has spoken of the need to indoctrinate our children towards supporting the education ‘reforms’ that he advocates. Perhaps, he should take some time out to read “The Pearl of Great Price”, the Lalith Athulathmudali memorial oration delivered by the Vice Chancellor of the University of Colombo, Prof. Savithri Goonesekera. The agenda that we set ourselves fifty years ago resulted in a relatively high growth in the life chances of our people. It was precisely the kind of growth that the great family that the IMF speaks for, cannot abide. And that is why those gains have been eroded through ‘market reforms’. The agenda for the control of resources globally is impeded by manifestations of self-sufficiency anywhere. The substance of Dr. Haque’s complaint is that South Asia has not “grown” in the directions desired by transnational capital. With the goals we set ourselves, the money cannot roll in.