Interests in conflict

World Bank president James Wolfensohn has spent an unprecedented amount of time and energy reaching out to civil society. The Bank’s management, however, now faces a difficult, if not impossible balancing act as a result.

Shankar Acharya, a Harvard-trained economist who recently served for eight years as chief economic adviser to India’s finance ministry, puts it this way: “It’s my sense that the World Bank is trying too much to be all things to all people.