Poor fielding

Former Chief Economic Advisor and current World Bank Chief Economist Kaushik Basu wouldn’t have thought his new job could come in for strong criticism back home. But that’s exactly what happened at a session he was moderating at the Delhi Economics Conclave last week. When the floor was thrown open for questions, a man from the audience launched into a diatribe against multilateral institutions. People at agencies like World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, he said, sat in their offices like clerks, without any knowledge of the field. Basu interrupted and asked him to keep the question short. “You are embarrassed by my question,” the questioner commented before continuing, “Economists working there don’t have any technical knowledge other than economics, so they can’t tackle inflation.” This unexpectedly opened the tap to similar questions from several others in the audience. But Basu declined to answer directly, and requested Columbia University Professor Arvind Panagariya to do so instead.