WASHINGTON, Jan 16: The World Bank is checking out if religion could be an opiate for development. After half a century of fairly agnostic existence, the Bank is taking the extraordinary step of interacting with religion by calling a meeting of worlds major faiths in London next month. Leaders from nine religions, including the main sects within the faiths, have been invited to participate. They include Bahai, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Taoist leaders.Bank sources said the main aim of the meeting is to help the Bank and the faiths to reach a better mutual understanding of each other's ideas about approaches to development and possible obstacles in the way of achieving desirable development aims. The full program is still being developed for the February 18-19 meeting at Lambeth Palace, but sources said ``global poverty and how to eliminate it'' would be a central theme of discussion. The World Bank has never directly dealt with religion or religious leaders before. Bank historians say the nearest it came to this was in the 1970s when then President Robert McNamara sent a couple of senior managers to meet the Pope, and later met the Pontiff himself, to discuss the Vatican views on family planning.But even this was not done in the public eye. The London meeting is being co-hosted by the Bank President James Wolfensohn and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Bank insiders say the move is typical of the several innovative ideas Wolfensohn has thrown up. The Australia-born President, who raced across much of the developing world in his first year as the Bank's chief executive, is known to have an aesthetic edge to him, having headed the prestigious Kennedy Center.But there is no record of him having a religious bent. However, Bank analysts say with decreasing aid from wealthy countries and a rising sentiment against aid, Wolfensohn is looking to widen the coalition to fight global poverty. For years the Bank was a para state-owned enterprise that avoided being a soup kitchen and tried to combat poverty by creating assets. Now it appears to be courting big business and religion in its fight, says Devesh Kapoor, who worked on the Banks history project and now teaches political economy at Harvard.
