IMF’s advice to India unsolicited

THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently advised India “to remove restrictions on the export of a certain category of rice”, stating that the curbs would have an adverse impact on global inflation. The IMF, an international organisation headquartered in Washington, does have a stipulated charter of duties. However, does the IMF’s charter include an unsolicited advice to a particular country on a non-monetary and non-financial issue which is beyond its purview and core professional competence?

The IMF should have carefully considered the history of starvation deaths in India before making an intervention.

What’s the IMF, which formally came into existence soon after World War II, meant for? Black’s Law Dictionary (published in the US) succinctly describes it as “a United Nations’ (UN) specialised agency to stabilise international exchange rates and promote balanced trade”. Being a “central pillar of post-war economic order, it’s designed to oversee global rules governing money in general and adherence to orderly currency relations among industrial countries in particular”. It’s also intended to be a ‘last resort’ lender to both rich and poor countries.

However, uncharitable words have been used against the IMF across the world because it has found itself thrust into roles that were neither planned nor expected. Thus, its primary role today is to “minister prescriptions to financially distressed economies, especially among developing countries”.

Consequently, it has acquired immense influence over the economic destinies of many nations, earning the status of an unrelenting disciplinarian, resulting in “economic austerity, social unrest and political instability”. Interestingly, the harshest assessment of the IMF comes from the West itself. In The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World, political economist Don Babai writes: “In its proclivity for becoming enmeshed in controversy, the IMF indeed is without peer among international organisations. According to one claim, the IMF has overthrown more governments than Marx and Lenin combined.”

That said, one needs to remember that it’s unbecoming of the IMF to criticise and advise India, the most populous nation in the world, on food (in)security. Let it be clearly understood by all and sundry and some self-appointed moral policemen and sentinels of global food security that no 21st-century government of India, irrespective of the political party in power, can afford to have drought or starvation ravage any part of the country. Let it also be understood that considering what British merchants, Viceroys and demonic Prime Minister Winston Churchill had done to India (inflicting man-made misery, starvation, mass murder and famines, wiping out millions of Indians), history cannot be allowed to repeat itself.

The mass starvation deaths, as recorded in official records and pages of history books, are like India’s open wounds. The IMF should have carefully considered and scrutinised the recorded, recurring starvation deaths in India before giving an unsolicited, unwarranted and unsavoury advice. Is it the job of the IMF or the Rome-headquartered Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to aid and advise on foodgrains?

Before encouraging/advising India, why didn’t the IMF offer suggestions to the western countries of the US-led NATO and European Union, besides warring Russia and Ukraine, who have collectively exacerbated the food crisis? Why couldn’t the IMF, the US, NATO and EU salvage the Black Sea Grain Initiative for the global distribution and supply system? Instead, they are encouraging enterprises to make profit from the supply of weapons. Why are they constantly instigating both Moscow and Kyiv to prolong the bloody and savage war? Why fight a proxy war and criticise the rest of the world, particularly the neutral actors?

Indeed, when oil supply is choked from time to time through a reduction in production, and the prices thereof spike on a day-to-day basis, impeding Indian economy and affecting a population of 1.4 billion, not a word is uttered on India’s distress. However, a concerted assault is a familiar sight now, even when it’s known that India is heading for a serious foodgrain production deficit which could pose a serious challenge this year itself as reportedly both rice and wheat production are likely to fall.

The adverse international media focus on India, therefore, appears to be a diversionary tactic intended to distract attention from the West’s own all-round folly and failure — from Africa to Europe to China. Take the example of Tunisia: on the verge of economic collapse, it sought a $1.9-billion IMF bailout package. All in vain, it appears, owing to a ‘comprehensive economic reform programme’ imposed by the IMF, and rejected by Tunis as ‘foreign diktats leading to more poverty’.

To cut a long story short, India today cannot export rice to 80-100 countries, which otherwise too is of little use to the country’s farmers to whom goes the credit of making India self-sufficient in terms of food. Farmers don’t export their own products. It’s a few trading cartels which make millions of dollars, being seasonal birds of opportunism.

To an empty stomach, food is God. Hence, this God is worshipped every day by 1.4 billion Indians. And to ensure that it happens is the bounden duty and responsibility of the government of the day. Hence, the critical views of a section of the foreign media need to be ignored for the sake of the fundamental right to life, which depends on two square meals a day. The Government of India, at least on this point, cannot be faulted. Hope it doesn’t succumb to lobbies and pressure groups with vested interests to harm both farmers and consumers.