The voice-over for a Jain Studios video entitled The Making of a Chief Minister addresses potential political clients interested in marketing themselves with confident lines such as: ‘If your target is victory, then your medium is VOW!’ Equally, in my conversations with J K Jain and other employees of Jain Studios, the BJP's victories in Parliamentary and Assembly Elections were frequently attributed to the power of the Studios’ facilities, in terms of both production and distribution.

These brief examples indicate the hopes and desires shared among several BJP representatives that political transformation could be successfully enhanced with the help of new media technologies, and that the videos produced by Jain Studios could have a strong impact on the audiences. As discussed in the previous chapter, it was in this way that the party sought to exploit new media technologies that had thus far been restricted through state monopolization. In the prologue to his work, The Rise of Network Society, Manuel Castells speaks of a similar interaction of technology, politics and society in the context of identity constitution and focuses on the question of the actual impact of media on social change.

The introductory scene of the video God Manifests Himself (hereafter, also referred to as GMH), produced in early 1990 by Jain Studios, opens with a speech by J K Jain, who appears on screen against the backdrop of a white temple and blue skies. The temple is a model of the proposed Ram temple due to be ‘rebuilt’ at the disputed site of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya in order, according to spokespeople of the Hindu Right, to honour Lord Ram's birth and reinstall national integrity and justice to the Hindu majority. The site is particularly well known to us because of the mosque's demolition by supporters of the Hindutva movement on December 6, 1992, and because of the riots between Hindus and Muslims that swept across the subcontinent in the subsequent months. In the video, J K Jain addresses the viewers like this:

There then follows a montage of different calendar prints of Lord Ram, one of the main gods of the Hindu pantheon, referred to as the beholder of supreme authority.

This chapter explores Hindutva spokespeople's attempts to exploit the video media in the context of nation building with respect to the notion of history. The key argument is that Jain Studios’ videos were used to create consensus in the viewers that India's history had to be rewritten by re-making it. The new media technology was one tool through which Hindutva spokespeople strove to persuade audiences to get personally involved in what was referred to as an unavoidable ‘turning point in history’, and another step to Hindu people's self-empowerment. The idea behind this was that those who hold the past control the future.

This statement by one of the BJP's media experts is representative of the ‘New BJP’, ‘the party with a difference’, as the political wing of Hindutva promoted itself from the late 1990s onwards. To some extent, in projecting a new national confidence, Kulkarni's comment is reflective of the international recognition that India has gained in recent years on the basis of her software expertise, thereby changing the dominant image of India as an economically backward country into that of an equal player “in the new world order”. Information technology thus became the flagship, or synonym, for the scientific and rational spirit of the ‘new BJP's’ claim to nationality; like video, it ties the power of political representation to economic and technological development.

Made in 1990, From the Sea to the Saryu (Sagar se saryu tak, Hindi; hereafter From the Sea …) presents the ‘patriotic pilgrimage’ (deshbhakti ki teerth yatra) of BJP president L K Advani from Somnath, a town by the Indian Ocean in Gujarat, to Ayodhya in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Abstract

1. Introduction

An important aspect of governance at the IMF relates to the cost of running the institution and the sharing of that cost between the industrial countries (the IMF's principal creditors) and low-income countries and emerging market economies (primarily borrowers). Much larger issues of equity are involved with respect to the distribution of quotas (or capital shares) and of voting power in the IMF. This subject has attracted growing attention in recent years. A contribution to the literature by a former Secretary of the IMF from 1977 through 1996 concludes that:

Abstract

Introduction

Conditionality is perhaps the most controversial of the IMF's policies. Among the traditional criticisms of Fund conditionality are that it is short-run oriented, too focused on demand management, and does not pay adequate attention to its impact on growth and the effects of the programs it supports on social spending and income distribution.

The research program of the Group of 24 is the world's only research effort devoted to evaluating the international economic system from the perspective of developing nations’ needs. Multilateral development banks and other research organizations may put out a larger volume of studies, but their mandate and intended audience are not as clearly defined as the G24’s. This makes the papers produced under the auspices of the G24 very special. Nowhere is the voice of the developing nations expressed as cogently and powerfully as in these papers.

This volume continues a tradition of dissemination that has long been part of the G24 agenda. It includes chapters on some of the most burning issues on the agenda: reform of the IMF and its conditionality, debt workouts and restructuring, management of capital flows, efficacy of self-insurance against crises, debt sustainability in the HIPC countries, poverty-reduction strategy papers (PRSP), international public goods, and the Millennium Development Goals and the ‘global partnership for development’. Readers will find fresh and controversial perspectives in each of these chapters.

Separating hype from fact and promise from reality has always been a hallmark of the G24 research tradition. If you are doubtful that there exist effective mechanisms for improving the governance of the IMF and its conditionality, read the chapters by Buira. If you believe that the HIPC initiative has a solid chance of placing poor countries on the path of debt sustainability, read the chapter by Gunter. If you think the World Bank's PRSP approach is based on solid economic and statistical reasoning, read the chapter by Levinsohn. If you think financial markets have become so integrated that prudential controls on capital flows have become unfeasible, read the chapter by Epstein, Grabel and Jomo. If you are of the view that the IMF's proposal of a Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism (SDRM) is harmful to ‘emerging’ economies, read the amended version that is offered in the chapter by Herman.

I hope the reader will not stop with individual chapters but take the volume in its entirety. It is a gripping reminder of the long road we need to travel before the governance of the world economy becomes truly hospitable to the aspirations of the developing world.

Abstract

1. Introduction

The origins of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) lie in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which was adopted by all 189 UN Member States on 8 September 2000. The Declaration embodies many commitments for improving the lot of humanity in the new century. Subsequently, the UN Secretariat drew up a list of eight MDGs, each accompanied by specific targets and indicators. This paper addresses Goal 8, which is to ‘develop a global partnership for development’. As of November 2002, seven targets were listed under Goal 8, as well as 17 indicators. The selection of indicators is subject to further refinement. Goal 8 covers a wide range of issues but this chapter focuses on only some aspects of the global economic system, and mainly on international trade and multilateral rules under the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Goal 8 is crucial, as it is the only development goal that generally and specifically covers international relations. As is generally accepted, successful development efforts require appropriate policies at both the domestic and international levels. International factors have become increasingly important in recent years as a result of globalization. Developing countries have generally become more integrated in the world economy and their development prospects and performance are thus more dependent on global economic structures and trends.

Abstract

What is the nature and purpose of IMF conditionality, and is it required to safeguard Fund resources? This chapter reviews these issues and then poses some key questions. For example, can program ownership by a country be made compatible with externally imposed conditionality? To what extent is conditionality of the international financial institutions (IFIs) power without responsibility? What, if any, are the consequences for the IMF of imposing programs that fail more often than not? It looks into the reasons for increased conditionality during the 1980s and 1990s and reviews the recent debate on conditionality. As the number of conditions – in particular structural ones – grew rapidly during the 1980s and the 1990s, the rate of compliance with IMF-supported programs saw a parallel and sharp decline. The chapter also presents an analysis that distinguishes between different types of external crises: short-term imbalances that result from excess demand and expansionary policies; mediumterm structural disequilibria such as those resulting from time lags in production (future supply) from investment spending (current demand); and currency and external crises resulting from sudden reversals of capital flows, noting that different types of underlying causes of imbal-ances call for different sets of policy conditionality.

Abstract

1. Introduction

Achieving long-term debt sustainability is a complex and challenging task that requires a combination of appropriate macroeconomic, structural, investment and debt management policies. In poor countries, long-term debt sustainability is also heavily influenced by such external factors as terms of trade, donor financing, and the provision of debt relief. Debt sustainability, however, can be defined in a variety of ways. As EURODAD, Northover and Sachs et al. illustrate, if debt sustainability is approached from a human and social development perspective, most of the poorest countries have an unsustainable debt regardless of their debt levels. The rationale of such a definition of debt sustainability is that countries with large proportions of their populations living below the poverty line have a more urgent need to spend their resources on poverty reduction than on debt service.

Abstract

The chapter reviews the elements that constitute the power structure (basic votes, quotas and the qualified majorities) by which the IMF is governed, following the commitment made by all participants in the Monterrey Consensus to increase the voice and participation of the developing countries and transition economies in the Bretton Woods institutions.

It finds that the small economies have been marginalized as a result of the relative erosion of basic votes and that quotas are far from representative of the size of members' economies. As a result, developing economies are under-represented while certain industrial countries, notably those in Europe, are over-represented. It finds that the governance of the IMF does not meet the standards of transparency and accountability needed to ensure the legitimacy of its decisions and the proper use of the resources at its disposal.

Finally, the question is addressed of how the decision-making process can be reformed to attain political legitimacy without weakening the credibility in financial markets.

Introduction

Following the commitment of all participants in the Monterrey Consensus to increase the voice and participation of developing countries and transition economies in the Bretton Woods Institutions, the issue of governance has come to the fore of the IMF and World Bank. The Monterrey commitment was renewed in the IMFC and Development Committee communiqués of 12–13 April 2003, and has been reflected in recent administrative steps to strengthen the capacity of African constituencies.