Let’s get the house in order first at WB and the World be the Jury!

Today, I heard the news Satyam, Wipro and Megasoft has been black listed by WB. I couldn’t stop laughing at myself aloud. I was reminded of a person – Babu (name changed), a house driver in one of the posh localities in Bangalore. He appeared very emotional. As he was sacked by his employer last night. I asked him, why was he sacked? He told me something though very unconvincing to me. And I thought he must be a black-sheep and need to be black-listed. Anyway, this is a black list era, I hummed to myself!

After a 15 minutes conversation, we parted ways.

The next day, after much eulogizing, he told me about the healthy relationship between the house-maid and owner’s daughter. In effect, daughter was using house-maid to get green signal to wander around in the outskirts of Bangalore in this expensive Honda City, which he was a driver.

I still couldn’t get it. But I realized, that house is not in order! It needs some shakeup and there is some Wolfowitz (Ex-President WB) kind of people allowing illegal transactions to takes place at the cost of the driver and the values of this house is at stake. I bemoaned! The owner should do some soul-searching before he points his fingers at someone.

So, when I heard this news about black listing, I asked myself, who is this World Bank to Black list other companies when they can’t control the grease-palm culture at their own premise? Is it not a question of their own integrity? Is WB, a bunch of learned folks, liked to be grease palmed whenever a contract need to be awarded? What’s it?

Before you raise your eye brows to question my credibility, let’s get the facts straight!

On 23rd April, 07, the Financial Times published a letter signed by 42 former top World Bank executives calling for Wolfowitz's (Ex-President WB) resignation. “We believe he can no longer be an effective leader," the letter read. "He has lost the trust…damaged his own credibility on good governance”. Documents released just over a week ago showed that Wolfowitz played a direct hand in ….having his girlfriend work for the World Bank. …and Wolfowitz secured a significant raise for her before she left to work at the State Department, taking her annual pay from $133,000 (€97,750) per year to $193,590. The revelations led to cries of nepotism and calls around the world for Wolfowitz's resignation - Spiegel Online, April, 23-07

From the WB board. It appears Mr. Wolfowitz has drafted his resignation letter but it has the wrong date. The President of the World Bank writing a letter with a wrong date? Don’t ask. The same apprehension persisted in the board as well. “Can he not even date a letter correctly?" asked one board member in despair. “I guess he needs that bonus of $400K” another member opined.

Now, just imagine, the President of an organization to the size of World Bank, using his energy, position and power to get a promotion and salary raise to his girl friend, what would be the fate of such companies? No wonder, you have Wolfowitz subordinates working his agenda even after his resignation.

Now you know, what’s going on there! But before you imagine further and allow your thoughts wander around, let’s get back home.

On Sept ’08, A World Bank Tribunal http://www.worldbanktribunal.org/jury-findings.html

consisting of a 13 member panel - Indian and international jurists, economists, scientists, retired government officials, and social and religious leaders have found the World Bank guilty of harming the environment and lowering the standard of living for most Indians. Charges in the final report include: failure in its mission to reduce poverty, advocacy of policies which contribute to increased hunger, contributing to the agricultural crisis, and deliberate posting of former staff in the Indian bureaucracy in order to influence policy, and diluting Indian environmental legislation. You have similar reports coming from Singapore , Indonesia (Mining) and Africa (Water), and so on.

This Tribunal process quickly inspired similar processes in The Hague, Netherlands and in Dhaka, Bangladesh and I’m sure, more countries would join and we will collectively re-phrase WB to represent “World Blacklist”.

By the way, this is not to support the filthy behavior of our corporate Giants. I’m sure, there is enough scope for us to improve our corporate governance practices and we have a long way to go. But this Sheep in a wolf skin need not be the jury! Let the world be the jury!