Russia campaigns to keep an Indian from running World Bank

File it under bizarre politics or Russia operating in an alternative reality.

Just a week after US President Joe Biden announced an Indian-born business executive, Ajay Banga, as his nominee to run the World Bank, Russia’s state-owned news agency TASS reported that Russia has launched a campaign to keep an Indian from taking the top job of the 189-member organisation.

In a report datelined Washington, TASS said Russian officials at the bank were in talks with “colleagues from friendly countries” to find an alternative to Banga, who would be the first World Bank president born and raised in India. The agency quoted Roman Marshavin, Russia’s representative on the board of the World Bank group.

Ajay Banga was born to Sikh parents, raised and educated in India. He had a stellar career as a business executive working for US corporations in India, including Nestle, PepsiCo and Citigroup, before moving to the United States where he became CEO of Mastercard and a US citizen.

Marshavin did not mention a specific candidate his country had in mind but said there were already 15 names on a list that included “authoritative Russian financiers and world-famous economists, including former heads of international organisations and several ex-ministers of finance and heads of central banks of countries friendly to Russia.”

Also Read | Ajay Banga, who's set to be World Bank's head, used to earn over Rs 5 million per day?

The list of “countries friendly to Russia” has shrunk significantly since Russia invaded Ukraine a little more than a year ago in what the Kremlin called a “special military operation.” In two United Nations General Assembly votes since then, more than two-thirds of UN members have condemned the unprovoked war, which has laid waste to large parts of Ukraine and killed tens of thousands.

India abstained from the votes and ignored appeals from a string of countries, including the United States and Britain, to join in calling on Russia to end its assault.

Marshavin told TASS that Russian officials at the bank had been flooded with requests from bank employees and NGOs from various countries to help end “the monopoly that Washington has held over the appointment of the head of the World Bank.”

Under an agreement that goes back to the creation of the bank in Bretton Woods in 1944, the US has chosen the president of the World Bank while the leadership of the International Monetary Fund, created at the same time, went to a European.

Also Read | Everything about Ajay Banga, Indian-American executive nominated to lead the World Bank

According to Marshavin, about half the 25 members of the Bank’s board favour elections in which Banga, Washington’s nominee, would run against candidates reflecting the voice of borrowing countries.

The timing of the Russian campaign to keep Banga from the top World Bank job is almost as odd as the move itself. The TASS report came almost exactly a year to the date when the World Bank announced it had stopped all programmes in Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

That decision prompted questions on the possibility of suspending Russia’s membership of the World Bank to hold the Kremlin, already under severe sanctions from the United States and European countries, accountable for the destruction of Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. The debate remained academic.

Other countries have until March 29 to nominate an alternative candidate but a challenger would have almost no chance of succeeding, given the warm reception Banga has received from the US, Europe and a number of emerging countries.

A contested election would merely be a symbolic protest against what many countries consider a non-transparent election process stacked in Washington’s favour.

But raising the prospect appears, in my eyes, a demonstration that the Russian leadership is engaged in magical thinking and operates in an alternative reality. A reflection of this came at the end of last year from former prime minister Dmitry Medvedev.

In a Twitter thread, he predicted not only that the World Bank and IMF would crash but also that civil war would break out in the United States and California and Texas would emerge as independent states once the fighting was over.

And after that, Twitter CEO Elon Musk would become US President.

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