The event is sponsored by three thematic groups including WB History, Economics, Agriculture & Rural Development, and the WBG Library.
India was the founding member of the Bretton Woods institutions and has been the largest borrower of World Bank/IDA loans and credits, although these have been small in per capita terms, given India’s 1.34 billion population. Six distinguished scholars and development practitioners will discuss this partnership. The panel (in alphabetical order) consists of Shankar Acharya, Montek Ahluwalia, Poonam Gupta, Devesh Kapur, Nicholas Stern, and Martin Wolf. A link to brief bios of each is at the end of this announcement.
The panel will be moderated by Uma Lele, former Senior Advisor, Operations Evaluation Department, now called Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) and currently President, International Association of Agricultural Economists. Building on the South Asia region’s recent such effort [click here], the panel will address four sets of issues. In the first half of a two-hour discussion, the panel will explore the questions:
- What if there had been no World Bank in India’s development effort?
- What difference did the World Bank make?
- What did India contribute to the World Bank’s development mission?
In the second half, the discussion will focus on the future of the partnership. India is now a low-middle-income emerging country and has graduated from IDA. Climate change, pandemics, conflicts, and globalization have increased global uncertainty but also made the partnership more important. How can both contribute to addressing these future challenges?
A Q&A session will follow the panel discussion.
Please click here to open the Panelists’ bios page.
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