Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us?
by Deepa Narayan, World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2000, 343 pp.

Reviewed by Kevin Danaher, Global Exchange

Don't be fooled by the title of this new book from the World Bank. It contains useful documentation of the symptoms of global poverty, but it fails to address the causal roots of inequality: a market-based economy dominated by large corporations. Because markets respond only to money, it is understandable that inequality gets worse every year as market redistribute wealth and resources toward those who already have money. How else to explain the simple fact that inequality ˜ the distance between the ruling elites and the majority who are poor ˜ is worse than ever and keeps getting more obscene every day?

Over the past 50 years the globalization of the economy ˜ led by the World Bank, the IMF and transnational corporations ˜ has proceeded at a quickening pace. This globalization of market forces has greatly increased inequality. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reports in its 1998 Human Development Report that the richest 20 percent of the world‚s population consumes 86% of the world‚s resources, and the poorest 80% of the world‚s people account for just 14% of global consumption spending.

The book also fails to address the role of the World Bank (and its sister institutions, the IMF and World Trade Organization) in promoting this economic model that puts profits of corporations ahead of people and the environment.

Voices of the Poor comes in response to intensified criticism from grassroots organizations which have pointed out that transferring large sums of money from first world elites to third world elites does far more to cement the transnational alliance of elites than to promote balanced development. The book ˜ along with recent rhetoric lamenting poverty by World Bank President James Wolfensohn and other top officials is a sure sign that we in the movement are winning moral and ideological battle. When your opponent starts mouthing your ideology, it's a sure sign you've got him on the ropes.

The book does affirm things the opposition movement has known for years, such as: "Development assistance is geared to move large amounts of money through inefficient and frequently corrupt bureaucratic systems with little flexibility." (p. 282) But the Bank makes it seem as if "corruption" is a psychological flaw of third world elites, rather than a structural feature of the global political economy in which third world elites are more beholden and accountable to elites in Washington and Wall Street than to their own people. Evidence from dozens of countries shows that the policies promoted by the World Bank are disastrous. Structural adjustment policies may help countries make payments on their foreign debts but the majority of the population suffers lower wages, reduced social services and less democratic access to the policy-making process.

Brazil is a huge country with every natural resource you can imagine. Yet there are between 7 million and 10 million abandoned children, living on the streets with no adult supervision. Although the Brazilian government has been collaborating with IMF and World Bank officials in making payments on the foreign debt, Brazil is deeper in debt now than it was twenty years ago. The commercialization of agriculture has pushed millions of family farmers off the land into crowded urban slums. Brazil ranks as one of the most unequal societies in the world.

Mexico is well endowed with petroleum, good farmland, an abundant labor supply, mineral resources and forests. Yet despite some years of high GNP growth rates, the standard of living of most Mexicans is worse now than it was twenty years ago. More than half the population is either unemployed or underemployed; family farmers are being forced off their farms; environmental destruction is mounting; poverty-driven crime has soared; and the corruption of Mexican elites (more beholden to outside money than to their own people) is legendary.

Across Africa there are dozens of countries that have been under the tutelage of the free-market pushers for decades, and what has it gotten them? Great amounts of wealth have been extracted from the continent, external debt and interest payments have skyrocketed, real wages have declined, social services have deteriorated, the environment has been decimated, and hopelessness is spreading.

Until the World Bank changes its policies in profound ways, no amount of "listening to the poor" will fix what's wrong with the world.

* Kevin Danaher‚s latest book is Globalize This!: The Battle Against the World Trade Organization and Corporate Rule. (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press )