Bangkok IMF-World Bank meetings: New reports put India's debt, climate, accountability crisis in focus
The meetings, held from Oct. 12–18, focused on familiar themes of debt, growth, and "reform," but the two publications — the Asia Regional People's Declaration 2026 and a special issue by the Bretton Woods Project titled The Bretton Woods Institutions in Asia: Exploitation, path dependencies and persistent contradictions — painted a starkly different picture of the institutions' role in the region.
A Region in Crisis
The Asia Regional People's Declaration, adopted by 30 civil society networks and organizations representing over 116 community members and academics, detailed the severe consequences of the current global economic system for Asian nations.
"The external debt of developing countries has grown to $12.3 trillion with debt servicing becoming a major problem," the declaration states, noting that 46 countries with a combined population of 3.4 billion people spend more on debt servicing than on health or education, with several allocating around 50 percent of their budgets to debt payments.
The declaration, coordinated by the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), highlighted that private creditors now hold approximately 59 percent of the external public and publicly guaranteed debt of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), up from about 41 percent in the early 2000s. This shift exposes nations to volatile global interest rates and makes debt restructuring more complex.
"Several Asian countries are under debt crisis like Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Lao PDR and others which has affected their investment in social protection," the document states. "As a result, vast populations are vulnerable to poverty, inequality, economic crises, health emergencies, and climate change."
India: Climate Vulnerability and Civic Space Concerns
India features prominently in the Asia Regional People's Declaration, both as a victim of climate-induced disasters and as a site of shrinking democratic space.
On the climate front, the declaration lists India among countries facing severe climate impacts: "Sea level rise and salinity are already reducing crop yields, and countries like India, China, Nepal, Pakistan, Cambodia, Bangladesh and even some parts of Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan) have faced severe droughts, long term flood, cyclones, drinkable water crisis and extreme heat, with South Asia sometimes reaching the limits of human survivability."
The declaration also warns that "man-made disasters are a primary driver of internal and cross-border labour migration, as farmers and fishers lose their livelihoods increasing risks of exploitation and trafficking" — a concern particularly relevant to India's large agricultural population and internal migrant workforce.
On governance, the document flags "democratic backsliding, centralization of power, shrinking civic space, restrictions on freedom of expression and association and growing surveillance" across several Asian countries, resulting in "increasing marginalization and exclusion of civil society, social movements, workers, women, youth, Dalit, historically marginalized and excluded communities." While India is not named explicitly in this passage, the reference to Dalit communities and the endorsement of the declaration by the Asia Dalit Rights Forum (ADRF) and Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (WNTA), India — a major Indian civil society network — signal that these concerns are understood to apply to the country.
The declaration's demand for "Parliamentary debates to understand the impact of different agreements signed by a nation with the World Bank and IMF on a country's economy and its citizens" and for "progressive taxation systems... including the wealth tax and inheritance tax" also resonate with ongoing policy debates in India.
India: The World Bank's Largest Borrower, Diminishing Accountability
The Bretton Woods Project publication includes a dedicated chapter on India by Joe Athialy and Asmi Sharma of the Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA), a New Delhi-based organization. Titled "Increasing influence, diminishing accountability: The World Bank in India," the chapter argues that the Bank's role in India has expanded even as its accountability mechanisms have weakened.
"The World Bank Group's engagement with India is among its largest and longest running country programmes. Its current portfolio as of December 2025 comprises 75 active lending projects with commitments of around $17.8 billion, making India the Bank's largest borrower," the authors write. "However, the significance of this historic relationship cannot be measured through lending volumes alone. It must be understood by the far-reaching impacts of the Bank, its prescriptions and investments."
The authors trace the Bank's evolution in India from direct infrastructure lending in the early decades after independence to what is now called the "Finance+" approach, through which "the Bank has exercised immense influence over India's development trajectory, national policies and governance structures."
They argue that the 1991 balance-of-payments crisis and the associated IMF loan were used as an "opportunity" to restructure the Indian economy in favor of markets and global finance. "Although the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) were eventually phased out, they left behind a lasting template that continues in different guises but operates through similar conditionalities that continue to limit state sovereignty and policy space," they write.
The chapter highlights the World Bank's role in promoting privatization of essential services in India. "In the last two decades, the private sector has come to dominate these sectors in India. This model of development, encouraged by the Bank and the IMF, has allowed the Indian state to dilute its responsibility to provide universal, accessible and affordable basic services and arguably to avoid its legally binding human rights obligations."
The authors also note that India is the International Finance Corporation's (IFC) largest client country, with "over 250 projects and $8.9 billion in investments across infrastructure, energy, housing, technology and finance."
On accountability, the chapter documents a long history of resistance, from protests that prevented then-Bank President Robert McNamara from leaving Kolkata airport in the late 1960s, to the Narmada dam campaign that forced the Bank to establish its Inspection Panel in 1993, to the Tata Mundra case in which fisher communities sued the IFC and won a US Supreme Court ruling that the World Bank Group does not enjoy absolute immunity.
"In India, attempts at this were pushed throughout the 1980s by easing import restrictions, industrial delicensing, etc., before finding full expression in 1991 when a balance of payments crisis and related IMF loan forced the country to accept adjustment as the price of assistance was dependent on restructuring the economy through the New Economic Policies."
The authors argue that the Bank's "Finance+" model "does not just weaken accountability in practice; it actively reorganises financial flows in ways that systematically diffuse it." They warn that the proposed consolidation of the World Bank Group's independent accountability mechanisms "risks weakening the few avenues currently available to impacted communities."
"Ultimately, the Bank's policies and the accountability debate must be located within its fundamentally unequal structure, where dominant shareholders, largely from the Global North, shape development trajectories in line with their economic and geopolitical interests and those of private investors, forming a part of a wider neocolonial structure," they conclude.
The publication also features a chapter by Sharanya Nayak, a RITES Forum member of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, titled "Neoliberalism, mining and corporate capture in Odisha." The chapter examines how neoliberal policies have facilitated corporate capture of mining resources in the eastern Indian state, with likely consequences for local communities, Indigenous peoples, and the environment.
Odisha, rich in minerals such as iron ore, bauxite, and coal, has seen significant conflicts over land, displacement, and environmental degradation linked to mining operations. The chapter's inclusion in the Bretton Woods Project publication suggests that the authors view the World Bank's policy prescriptions as enabling or exacerbating these dynamics.
India's Role in the Broader Critique
India's presence in both documents extends beyond specific chapters. The Bretton Woods Project introduction notes that "23 of 46 Asian countries are already commodity-dependent," a category that includes India's significant agricultural and mineral exports. It also cites the World Bank's historical support for the Green Revolution, which "demolished domestic agriculture and degraded the soil and water quality, especially in Asia" — a reference that implicitly includes India, where the Green Revolution transformed farming practices in the 1960s and 1970s.
The introduction further criticizes the Bank's "market-assisted" land reform model, which it says "consolidated land monopolies of both landlords and corporations" — a critique that resonates with land governance debates in India.
The Bretton Woods Legacy
The Bretton Woods Project's special publication provided historical context and sharp analysis of the World Bank and IMF's role in Asia, arguing that the institutions have long prioritized market-driven policies over people-centered development.
In the introduction, authors Rodolfo Lahoy, Jennifer del Rosario-Malonzo, and Iggy Sandrino of IBON International argued that the road to Bangkok "is paved with imperialist intentions." They traced the institutions' history from the Cold War, when they "weakened rival transformation-focused economic models," to the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, which they said was "to a significant extent the result of policies strongly supported by the World Bank and IMF."
C.P. Chandrasekhar of International Development Associates (IDEAs) contributed a detailed analysis of the 1997 crisis, noting that the IMF's response — imposing procyclical austerity policies, cutting public spending, and raising interest rates — "only worsened the recession and deflation." He contrasted this with Malaysia, which "chose to keep out the IMF and eventually achieved at least a basic stability of its currency and retained a modicum of autonomy in policymaking."
Chandrasekhar concluded that the crisis "paved the way for a prolonged period of muted growth in economies that were among the most dynamic in the pre-crisis era," and noted that in South Korea, the income share of the bottom 50 percent shrank from 27 percent in 1995 to 18 percent in 2024.
Middle-Income Trap or Neoliberal Trap?
Satyaki Roy of the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development (ISID) challenged the conventional "middle-income trap" narrative, arguing that Southeast Asia's second-tier newly industrialized economies — Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines — were trapped not by inherent limitations but by "IMF and World Bank inspired neoliberal policies that restricted the autonomy of these economies in building cumulative industrial capacities."
Roy noted that these countries, which experienced rapid growth in the 1970s and 1980s, faltered after the Asian Financial Crisis "with a declining share of manufacturing in GDP and premature hollowing out of industries." He criticized the World Bank's neoclassical prescriptions, arguing that "reliance on FDI and technology transfer created 'lazy capitalism' due to path dependence."
Energy and Climate: Wrong Direction
Nazareth Del Pilar of the NGO Forum on ADB critiqued the multilateral development banks' response to the US-Iran war and resulting energy crisis, arguing that their "emergency support" largely finances continued fossil fuel dependence.
"Five months into the US-Iran war, oil and gas disruptions have driven higher fuel prices, inflation and economic distress across Asia," Del Pilar wrote. "In response, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have offered 'emergency support' that largely finances continued fossil fuel dependence."
The article noted that the ADB reopened oil-import financing through its Trade and Supply Chain Finance Program, "a facility it had reportedly stopped using for oil in 2023 for climate reasons," while the World Bank approved country-specific packages including $1.1 billion to Bangladesh, with $713 million for "emergency cash transfers and fuel and energy imports."
Del Pilar also criticized the institutions' pivot toward nuclear power and critical minerals extraction, warning that this "directs scarce concessional financing and institutional attention toward large, capital-intensive, slow-to-build nuclear projects, at the expense of the community-scale, faster-to-deploy renewable energy solutions that a genuine just transition should prioritise."
The article highlights positive alternatives, citing "Australia's rooftop solar boom, now 40 per cent of the residential market" and a community solar initiative in Labo, Camarines Norte, Philippines — examples of distributed, community-led renewable energy that contrast with the MDBs' large-scale, debt-creating approach.
America First, People Last?
The Bretton Woods Project introduction also addressed the current geopolitical context, arguing that the BWIs now operate "in this context of rising US militarism, attempts to maintain hegemony, and extract minerals and labour power for the monopoly capitalist system."
The authors cited a G7 official who said in April 2026 that the BWIs "can't make a squeak" that can be construed as unsupportive of US efforts. They also noted the World Bank's support for the US-led "Board of Peace" for Gaza, which "civil society and UN Special Rapporteurs condemned" as deepening "the Israeli occupation and violations of Palestinian right to self-determination."
On the IMF's role, they wrote that the Fund "has maintained a 'suspicious silence' when Iran faced unprovoked US offensive actions, and the world an oil shock, in contrast to its uproar and provision of billions to the Ukraine government, a NATO ally."
The People's Demands
The Asia Regional People's Declaration concluded with 27 key demands, including:
- Overhaul of debt architecture and the international financial architecture "for debt justice, climate justice and social justice"
- Unconditional cancellation of external debts of low- and lower-middle-income countries
- An end to austerity measures and rejection of "the increasing privatization of essential services for health, education, housing, sanitation"
- A UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt with meaningful civil society participation
- Progressive taxation systems, including wealth and inheritance taxes
- A rapid, equitable shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy systems "under public and community control"
- An immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the siege
- Accountable and democratic governance that protects civic freedoms
The declaration also called on the United Nations General Assembly to "formally declare recent Nepal avalanche as a Global Climate Emergency" and demanded that "ODA commitment by the wealthy nations must be met to fund social protection and climate adaptation measures in southern nations."
A Different Path
The Bretton Woods Project publication concluded with a call for "sovereign and sustainable industrialisation" as an alternative to the current model.
"A sovereign and sustainable industrialisation and the use of industrial policy are emerging as key areas for economic, ecological and climate justice," the authors wrote. "Such an agenda requires breaking from the IMF and World Bank, and their development model."
They argued that "the relationship between public and private actors will have to shift to organise economies for people's rights and ecological priorities instead of profit," and suggested that "it may be time for countries to review and evaluate their membership in the IMF and World Bank and the net effects of BWI policy regimes on sovereign development."
The Asia Regional People's Declaration was endorsed by organizations including GCAP, the Asia Dalit Rights Forum, the Asia Civil Society Partnership for Sustainable Development, ActionAid International - Asia Region, the NGO Federation of Nepal, the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement, and the Pakistan Development Alliance, among others. Indian endorsers include Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (WNTA), India and the Foundation for Sustainable Development and Climate Action (FSDCA), India.
As the Annual Meetings drew to a close, the message from civil society was clear: the Bretton Woods institutions must fundamentally change course or face growing resistance from the people of Asia and the Global South.
"Together, we build a better Asia," the declaration concluded.
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