Opinion Just another meeting
India has experienced a painful storm in the past few years on a swathe of economic issues
India has experienced a painful storm in the past few years on a swathe of economic issues. Some of them are still playing out while the results of several are shaping up policies for the respective sectors.
The issues were joined by several agencies but a notable omission among them is that of the multilateral agencies. The financial strength of the intervention by these agencies compared to the requirements of the Indian economy even when combined is of course puny compared to the needs of the Indian economy but that is not germane here. So while private and public sector entities could approach them,the salience of these agencies is the cornucopia of global technical knowledge and best management practices they bring on the table. In recent episodes however this has rarely been in evidence.
During this time India has wrestled with serious conflicts between exploiting natural resources and the livelihood concerns of the affected population; tried to figure out appropriate pricing of scarce resources and even how to create an attractive bidding model for private sector companies in say the road sector when faced with an economic downturn.
The Asian Development Bank for instance,has been involved in road programmes for a long time,yet any commentary on aspects of the public-private partnership seems to be missing in their input to the government as a guide to overarching policy making in India. This is significant as in the first stage of economic reform some of them like the World Bank had a lot to contribute to sectors like the power sector and later on about water management. Indias audit reports which were at the centre of many of these dialogues do not seem to have got the attention from any of these bodies as key economic literature.
The absence has now been taken in stride in economic policy making in India. Several ministries plus the Prime Ministers Office and the Economic Advisory Council are now working on pricing of coal and of natural gas. The periodic reports which have emerged from them have few lessons from these agencies to draw upon.
Yet there is no doubt that the partnerships with these agencies have produced strong value addition for the economy. But as they have abdicated space in large projects for a host of reasons,this opportunity has gone missing.
Of late India has begun to host meeting of the boards of some of the leading financial institutions of the globe. Goldman Sachs for instance was one of those. The Asian Development Bank board of governors too will be in India this week. How does one differentiate between the two?
Subhomoy is a Deputy Editor based in New Delhi.
subhomoy.bhattacharjee@expressindia.com
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