Can this outlying rapper fix the World Bank’s woes?

President Barack Obama’s surprise nomination of Korean-American physician Jim Yong Kim as the next World Bank  head has had two instant results: it has given both the World Bank and the name Kim a huge buzz. Barely had  financiers and international bureaucrats had time to get used to the idea of a Bretton Woods institution being led  by a Korean-American activist medical doctor than the news spread about the good doctor’s rapping prowess. If you don’t think that is a big deal, try imagining our Reserve Bank governor or the planning commission boss  dressed up as an astronaut with glowsticks around the wrist belting out a remixed version of  ‘The Time of My Life’, that hugely popular track from the 1987 blockbuster Dirty Dancing. That is exactly what Kim, 52, did at the Dartmouth Idol Finals 2011. He is currently the president of the Ivy League Dartmouth College.

Only time will tell whether Kim will have the time of his life at the World Bank if he gets onto the hot seat. But one thing is sure: the nomination has raised an important question. In today’s world, when both development and finance face huge challenges, should the World Bank boss be necessarily from the world of finance or is development finance too important to be left to financiers alone?

Seoul-born Kim came to the US with his family at the age of five. He has picked up degrees in medicine and anthropology from Brown University and Harvard, headed the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, served as director of the World Health Organisation’s HIV/AIDS department and received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, popularly called a ‘genius’ award, in 2003. Many of his formative years were spent at the grassroots. All this makes Kim a rockstar in the world of development, but can he sway the world of finance?

Many are convinced he can’t. Lant Pritchett, who teaches international development at the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and who has worked at the World Bank for nearly 20 years, is scathing. ‘There’s no question that Kim has done terrific things, but I wouldn’t nominate Mother Teresa to head the World Bank if she were still alive,’ he told Forbes. At the time of writing, officially, there are two other candidates in the fray: Jose Antonio Ocampo, a former Colombian finance minister, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Nigerian finance minister. 

Despite his glittering track record, Jim Yong Kim is patently the outsider. But perhaps that is the reason he can dare to lead the World Bank in a way others can’t or won’t.

To its critics in India and other parts of the developing world, the World Bank is another top-heavy international bureaucracy that does not live up to its goal of reducing poverty. Many have written at length about the adverse impacts of some of its policies. Others argue that the institution is trying to reinvent itself, and can be a key player in development if it really listens to the voices of those it claims to work for.

This is a crucial time for the World Bank. Its next president will have to decide how best to use resources in a budget-slashing environment in which large bank shareholders like the US are demanding ‘results-based development,’ more transparent  procedures and efforts to tackle corruption on the ground.

Recently, the World Bank offered a $500 million interest-free loan to India to improve secondary education standards. The money will be used for setting up libraries, computer laboratories, upgrading primary schools to secondary schools and training to teachers. Outgoing World Bank president Robert Zoellick is expected this week in India.

The big question: at a time when the world economy is shifting gears, can an outlier do what regulars can’t? It is worth recalling an interesting facet to grassroots man Jim Yong Kim. His greatest feat has been negotiating the bureaucracy.  Kim was key to persuading the World Health Organisation to reclassify ‘second-line’ tuberculosis drugs as ‘essential medicines.’ In the 1990s, second-line drugs, used when drug-resistant disease foils basic treatments, were very costly. Kim mobilised drug executives and argued that the markets for such drugs could be far larger than they were, particularly, if the WHO would reclassify them as ‘essential drugs.’ By 2000, the costs of such drugs had sharply fallen. This did not come out of just working the charitable impulse. It required working both in and outside the system, persuading pharma companies and the WHO to do something which didn’t appeal to them instantly.

The author is a Delhi-based writer