11 minute read
The World Bank takes a wrong turn
BIDEN’S FIRING OF BANK PRESIDENT PUTS A QUESTION MARK OVER ITS FUTURE from manmade sources, including fossil fuels, “so we’re working hard to change that.”) Indeed, in a recent tweet thread, climate scientist Roger Pielke Jr. finds no increasing trends of extreme weather events – if anything, we’re seeing a reversal. nowadays, not offering an opinion on climate change is tantamount to an admission of being guilty of wrong-think. against them and also incarcerating some of them, courtesy the compromised nAB Chairman. It is pertinent to point out that during the hearing of those cases, the High Courts and Supreme Court repeatedly observed that nAB was being used for political engineering. no wonder then that most of the leaders against whom corruption cases were made, have been acquitted by the courts of law for lack of any corroborative evidence.
His government also failed to stabilize the economy notwithstanding the fact that it resorted to unprecedented borrowing. His claims and pledges for eliminating corruption also proved hollow as the Amnesty International in its annual report revealed that corruption, instead of decreasing, had increased during his rule. It was probably in the backdrop of his dismal performance that the establishment decided to remain apolitical and not to support him in his confrontation with the PDM. The parties in the alliance after having been pushed to the wall decided to hit back and ousted him through noconfidence motion as per the procedure laid down in the constitution.
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After having failed to thwart the no-confidence motion through unconstitutional means he came up with a false narrative of conspiracy against his government orchestrated by the USA and the establishment. However as usual he took a somersault on US involvement but kept blaming General Bajwa for the debacle that he had to face and he still continues in the same vein. realclearenergy rupert dArwAll
Instead of remaining part of the national Assembly and playing a role as opposition leader he chose to resign en masse from the national Assembly and later also retracted that. To build further pressure on the government and force it to hold immediate general elections, he also dissolved the Punjab and KPK Assemblies without any justification, except for assuaging his false ego. Countries are not run on the whims and in conformity with the egos of leaders. His false ego and obstinate child-like pursuits continue to further deteriorate the situation.
Of late President Alvi, acting on his wish– amidst controversy in regards to elections in KPK and Punjab—- has announced April 9 as the date for elections in the two provinces in spite of the fact that he did not have the power to announce elections in the provinces. The matter is now before the Supreme Court on suo motu notice. However on the first day of hearing four judges pulled out of the nine-member bench constituted to hear the case.Mr Justice Athar Minnalah rightly remarked that first of all there was a need to deliberate on the constitutionality of the dissolution of the two assemblies. Mr Justice Mandokhel observed that he saw no justification for suo motu notice of the issue under Article 184 of the Constitution.
These are very pertinent observations.What will be the outcome of the hearing cannot be predicted. However, it is hoped that the bench would give due consideration to the observations of Mr Justice Athar Minallah and Mr Justice Mandokhel before deliberating on the issue of the date of elections. The assemblies were dissolved on the insistence of a man who was not actually a stakeholder in regards to the tenure of the provincial assemblies. It would have been advisable for the CJP to have constituted a full court bench to hear such a crucial issue as demanded by all political parties except PTI, so that nobody could dispute the verdict of the court.In my view determining the constitutionality of the move to dissolve the provincial assemblies is more important than resolving the date issue. It is a secondary issue. If the court as a result of its deliberations arrives at a conclusion that the assemblies were dissolved in conformity with the constitution; it could then consider the validity of the order of the President to fix the date.
Malik Muhammad Ashraf is an academic. He can be contacted at:ashpak10@gmail.com.
PReSIDenT Biden’s nomination of Ajay Banga, the former CeO of Mastercard, to succeed David Malpass as World Bank president suggests that the Biden administration is prioritizing climate change over the World Bank’s founding mission of poverty eradication and economic development. This was made clear in the president’s statement singling out climate change as the most urgent challenge of our time.
Banga’s nomination turns the clock back four years, to the end of the tenure of Dr. Jim yong Kim, who had been nominated by President Obama in 2012. Under Kim, the World Bank became an anti-development bank, allowing itself to be captured by climate activists at the expense of the world’s poorest people.
A year after Kim’s appointment, the World Bank adopted a blanket ban on financing new coal-fired power stations – this despite coal being, for many developing nations, the cheapest and most reliable fuel for generating capacity. In 2017, on the second anniversary of the Paris agreement, Kim announced that the World Bank would extend its financing ban to the development of upstream oil and gas.
Keeping fossil fuels in the ground might be gratifying for rich europeans, but for many developing countries, it is little short of a death sentence. Over two billion people burn biomass – wood or animal dung – for cooking and heating, causing hazardous indoor pollution responsible for an estimated two million deaths annually. To anyone other than a green ideologue, preventing poor countries from developing their own natural resources retards these nations’ economic development and constrains their ability to lift people out of poverty.
Malpass had been chosen by the Trump administration to return the World Bank to its original mission – though without overturning the constraints on the bank’s energy policies that he’d inherited. nonetheless, that wasn’t good enough for the likes of Al Gore. During a new york Times event last September, Gore denounced Malpass as a climate denier. “For God’s sake, this is ridiculous to have a climate denier as the head of the World Bank,” Gore bellowed. “We need to get rid of that leadership, put new leadership in, and I hope President Biden will take that initiative.” It was something that John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, had also been pushing for.
Speaking later at the same event as Gore, Malpass declined to comment as to whether human greenhouse gas emissions were causing a rapid and dangerous warming of the planet.
(Afterward, though, Malpass told Cnn that it’s clear that greenhouse gas emissions are coming
The beneficiaries of Gore’s hit job won’t be the world’s poor. They consume far too little energy, and the extra greenhouse gas emissions that would result from their gaining access to reliable energy wouldn’t make any difference to the trajectory of overall emissions. In 2021, Africa’s population of 1.4 billion people consumed a total of 897.5 Terra Watt hours of electricity, amounting to only 3.2 percent of global electricity consumption and equivalent to an average of 644 Kilowatt hours per head annually – about what American households use on average every three weeks. Inducing developing nations to rely almost exclusively on intermittent energy sources like wind and solar, when advanced nations haven’t solved the inherent intermittency problem of renewables, condemns the world’s poor to indefinite servitude. From their perspective, the developed world is pulling a con. It promises $100 billion a year in climate finance and is now helping itself to development finance – all the while telling developing nations, “Here’s the climate aid we promised you.” The winners: Wall Street and China. Typically, World Bank funding is used in project-finance structures so that the bank takes the first hit if projects fail to generate anticipated revenues, thus shielding private finance from risk, which is presumably why Gore helped engineer Malpass’s ouster. China benefits, as it has used coal-based energy and Uighur slave labor to dominate the global supply of solar photovoltaic panels and holds a commanding position in the production of rareearth elements used in wind turbines. Better still, from China’s point of view, all this will be subsidized by the American taxpayer, as the United States is the World Bank’s largest funder, with 2.7 times as many subscription rights as China.
It’s hard to see a future Republican administration tolerating this. As the Biden administration’s nominee, Banga has been given a climate script that he will be compelled to follow. The situation raises an existential question about the World Bank and its purpose. In a 1998 paper, Anne Krueger, a former vice president for research at the bank, argued that after the opening up of global capital markets to most countries outside Africa, the World Bank faced three choices: it could be a development bank focused solely on poor countries; it could continue to operate in all developing countries, but focus on “soft issues” like the environment; or it could close down.
Republican administrations favor the first option and Democrats the second. The economist Deepak Lal, who also served as a research administrator at the bank, argued that the second option is not viable, as it leads the bank to support “highly contentious issues on which there is limited agreement about either ends or means.” Lal concluded that this left only Krueger’s shutdown option. Malpass’s departure and Banga’s nomination bring closure a step closer.
Rupert Darwall is a senior fellow of the RealClear Foundation and author of The Antidevelopment Bank: The World Bank’s regressive energy policies.
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Abanti Sankaranarayanan, who worked for many years with Diageo India, shares an anecdote from her time with the company. A few years ago, a trade magazine representative asked her, “Madam, do you drink (alcohol)?” As a senior woman leader in the liquor industry, this is a stereotype she often had to deal with. Shrugging this off, she remarked that, “He must be thinking that it’s bad enough that I work in the industry. I don’t think he would have asked the same question of a man.”
Given that leadership is gender-agnostic, the way one builds trust and credibility would be similar across genders. But because women often tend to be scrutinised differently, they may need to be more mindful of how others see them and of the messages communicated through their actions and words. The incident above, although in a lighter spirit – pun intended – indicates that when it comes to establishing their credibility, women are often seen through a different lens. This chapter takes a look at the prejudices common to many workplaces and cultures with regard to how competence in a woman is perceived. We also discuss some aspects that build or derail trust and credibility.
As a baseline, credibility is gained through one’s work being consistently good and delivering agreed-upon outcomes.
Someone who epitomises this is Indra nooyi, former chairperson and CeO of PepsiCo. A leader who worked closely with her when he was heading PepsiCo South Asia, Shiv Shivakumar shares his view of her leadership style.
HOW INDRA NOOYI BUILT TRUST: A PERSPEC-
TIVE: “Indra was in PepsiCo for more than 20 years; when you spend that length of time, there is an in-built trust and credibility from rank and file, because people see long-serving people as inherently “one of them”. Indra assiduously built trust with all stakeholders, from customers to captains of industry to country heads. Her unique position gave her access, and she built on that with her personal charm. Indra would work very hard and always came very well prepared for meetings. She never took a pass whether it was family commitments or travel. In the four years that I worked at PepsiCo, she was always very well prepared for at least 80 per cent of the meetings, which is saying a lot. The gap between her preparation and that of others in her senior leadership team was a mile, so that is a standout feature. Indra had a good ability to ask the right questions and dissect a problem. She could also judge if people were giving her the party line or knew their stuff. She was generous and would send all her male subordinates a tie every year. I still have mine.”
Shiv Shivakumar’s account above of Indra nooyi’s way of working is a great example of what it takes to build trust and credibility. nooyi’s sense of purpose, commitment and pursuit of excellence were instrumental in her earning respect and success. It is amazing to hear how despite being in the top rungs of leadership, she continued to work hard and prepare for meetings. This goes to the point often made, that women have to work much harder to be noticed and recognised. That seems to be the case universally although it may be a bit different for leaders in senior positions compared to those in middle management.
As Senela Jayasuriya, founder of Women empowered Global and 1 Million Women in Power, points out, “Women who hit the 5 per cent mark are different and are respected dif- ferently. That’s not to say that they are out of trouble – there is scrutiny, but it’s at a different level. There is respect because they’ve gone through the mill!”
When it comes to establishing credibility, what happens when one doesn’t have the credentials? In the absence of the coveted degree or pedigree of education, how can you still make it work? Pavitra Singh didn’t have a human resources degree from a premier institute in India, and her first job wasn’t at one of the well-regarded multinational companies. yet she is CHRO of PepsiCo India today, and her journey is an inspiration for anyone who believes that one always needs the required degree or pedigree of education to build credibility and a super career.
As a woman, it may not have been tougher, but it certainly wasn’t easier. How did she fit in and shine? This is what she says: you have to bring that differentiated value in your role. The most important traits are to believe in yourself and not to put yourself down. Be consistent, deliver on your promises, be very good at your work and use your strengths. Because if you are good at your job, no one will ask you “Which college do you come from?” or “What degree do you have?” And now when people ask me if I’m from one of the top-tier colleges, I take pride and say, “Actually, I’m not from them!”
The value one brings to his or her role does not emanate only from a good degree or college. That said, one has to have the content and substance – there’s no substitute for that. Across the board, credibility is earned by bringing that differentiated value in one’s role, by being outstanding at one’s work and by delivering on promises. Consistency is a muchvalued trait that helps build trust in a leader, as evident amongst some leaders I spoke with: n Chris says that “I build trust by being consistently open and direct – I don’t change just because I have a bad day.” n Rohini leads with integrity, which is about being fair, consistent, and transparent. As a leader especially in the large teams she has led at IBM and at Fidelity, it is “the ability to consistently show people that ‘she’s saying what she does and she does what she says, she’s fair when she has to make some trade-offs, and she shares why she is making those decisions.” n According to Bonita, “People have got to trust you, and that comes through reliability and seeing people through. It comes through communication and giving some of yourself so that people know who you are and can relate to you.”
