Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76dd75c94c-lntk7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T08:53:46.350Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter One - The First Half-Century: From Bretton Woods to India's Liberalization Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2012

Get access

Summary

Policy was not “formulated.” It was formed. It evolved. It resulted from events.

Leonard Rist, head of the World Bank's Economic Department, 1961

India was the Jewel in the Crown of the World Bank […] The reputation of the Bank tended to be measured in terms of what it could do for India.

A senior World Bank official, ca. 1995 (Caufield 1996: 23)

The India Department has one job – to lend money to India. Of course, every country department pushes its own country, but for years, during the Cold War, India held a special position as the largest nonaligned democracy. The donor community treated it with kid gloves for years – and the India department still thinks that way.

A World Bank staff member, ca. 1995 (ibid., 23)

India has always been a reluctant partner.

Edwin Lim,World Bank Country Director for India, 1996–2002 (2005: 108)

India and the Bank have grown up together. Edward Mason and Robert Asher, in a history of the Bank's first three decades, say simply, “It is no exaggeration to say that India has influenced the Bank as much as the Bank has influenced India” (1973: 675). Catherine Caufield, writing in the mid-1990s, remarked of the then half-century that the Bank and India had traveled together, “As greater and greater sums of money passed between them, the Bank succeeded in putting its imprint on India, but India's imprint on the Bank is just as deep” (1996: 23).

Type
Chapter
Information
India and the World Bank
The Politics of Aid and Influence
, pp. 1 - 40
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×