Since Robert S. McNamara left the Pentagon six months ago to become president of the World Bank, he has obeyed a self-imposed rule of silence on matters concerning the bank.* He refused all on-the-record interviews, turned down scores of invitations to make public speeches. Instead, McNamara quietly set about learning the ins and outs of his new job, studying the role of the World Bank and planning new ways of enhancing its importance. First off, he appointed task forces of bank specialists to survey present international economic problems and future possibilities. While the task forces worked, McNamara logged more than 60,000 flight miles to visit bank subscribers in West Germany and Switzerland, likely customers in the United Arab Republic and Indonesia and a possible new member, Rumania.
This week, most of his groundwork completed, McNamara broke his silence. The occasion was the 23rd annual meeting, in Washington, of the board of governors who represent the bank's 110 member nations. Delivering the keynote speech, McNamara outlined one of the most ambitious plans for overseas development since George Marshall delivered his Marshall Plan speech at Harvard in 1947. Not only does McNamara want to double the bank's lending capacity, but he also intends to spread the loans in new directions. More should go, he said, to projects that directly benefit ordinary people in poorer nations. Instead of concentrating on Asian development, the bank should increase its help to emerging nations in Latin America and Africa.
Worth a Risk. Since he took office, McNamara said, "I have been determined on one thing: that the bank can and will act. It will not share in the general paralysis afflicting aid efforts in so many parts of the world." Using an industrial term that harks back to his days as a Ford Whiz Kid, McNamara proposed that the bank increase its "throughput"—the total amount of money that the bank borrows from private lenders or gets from governments and then doles out in loans—to $10 billion in the next five years. Of that sum, large chunks would go to improve education, wipe out illiteracy and modernize agriculture. McNamara insisted that the time has come for the bank to invest more money in family planning. Unless checked, he said, overpopulation will add 3 billion people to the world before the century ends, and this crush of humans could undo most projected benefits of aid.
Helping poorer nations who need help most, admitted McNamara, involves risks. But he emphatically turned down the notion "that the utter avoidance of risks is the path of prudence or wisdom." The bank's governors will undoubtedly agree; they have little choice, if McNamara's first six months as president are any indication. The former Defense Secretary is more available to aides than his predecessors but becomes impatient if they are fuddy-duddy. He stresses the organization's role as a development agency. "If I had wanted to join a bank, I'd have done so," he admonishes.