JAMES Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, will be leaving his office on May 31, 205 after the completion of his two terms. He will be remembered and missed by developing countries and those elsewhere committed to fight poverty. Unabashedly, I have been an admirer of Jim. I could have been his unforgiving detractor. With his strong personality, Jim arouses extremely positive or negative reactions. This is understandable because he has not been a lacklustre and anaemic international civil servant with iced water running in his veins.

One either greatly admires him or unreservedly dislikes him. With his somewhat abrasive style and tendency to occasionally lose his cool, he does alienate people including members of the board. But James Wolfensohn is human like all of us and is entitled to be judged as such.

My assessment of Jim Wolfensohn is not based on hearsay but is firmly anchored on my frequent interaction with him during my four and a half years as a member of the World Bank Board. I joined as the Executive Director, World Bank in 1998. I was at that time doubtful about the utility of the World Bank for developing countries. I thought its policies were at times detrimental to their interests.

By 2002, when I left the bank, my views about it and James Wolfensohn had undergone a complete change. I became fully convinced of the relevance of the bank for poor of the world and the invaluable role played in this regard by its president.

This marked change had taken place because I found that a profound transformation of the bank has occurred during the 10 years of Wolfensohn’s stewardship. He firmly refocused the goal of the bank on fighting poverty with “passion and professionalism.” No other President since Robert Mac Namara focused on the issue of poverty with a burning intensity and singular commitment.

In this context, in my farewell statement to the board of the bank I said: “From studying the history of this institution (World Bank) one would observe that commitment to overcome poverty has not been steadfast or constant. There have been periods when poverty eradication was pushed to the margin, other priorities claimed time, attention and energy of the Bank. The credit goes to you, Mr Chairman (Jim Wolfensohn) to place it at the centre of the work which the bank does today. You have firmly fixed it as the pivot, made it the central rationale for existence of the bank and the focal point for its efforts.”

As aptly put by Sebastian Mallaby, Wolfensohn struck the bank like, “a whirlwind determined to reinvent the institution.” He succeeded, to a large extent, in doing so. The bank today is much different from the institution which he joined in 1995.

A number of extremely significant policy initiatives have been taken during his presidency including the debt relief for the highly indebted poor countries (HIPC), attention to governance and anti-corruption efforts in developing countries, legal and judicial reforms, protection of the environment, post-conflict reconstruction and fight against HIV/AIDS.

Efforts made by the bank to reduce poverty have been widely acknowledged even by a sedate magazine like the Economist which stated recently that the institution today, “does more to fight poverty than any other public body.”

A very significant change that has occurred in policies and processes of the bank is conscious adoption of a holistic approach termed as, “comprehensive development framework’ CDF) which accords central priority and importance to the home-grown plans of developing countries and seeks to give them a real sense of ownership.

There is no doubt nothing new about the concept of the CDF. Wolfensohn, however, can be credited with inviting attention at a very high strategic level to the fundamental comprehensiveness of developmental process. Some development experts thought CDF failed to recognize the importance of selectivity at the national level.

To be fair to him, he took pains to emphasize that the CDF was not a blue print or a straight jacket but only a process. Hence, such criticism was not really tenable. An outsider passing a judgment on Wolfensohn can not really appreciate the way he has been coping up with pressures from rich shareholders. His is a highly politicized assignment. To remain objective and adopt professionally correct course of action requires both courage and skill.

One instance that comes to my mind is that of the two proposals for extending loans to Iran (after an interval of several years) that came up before the board. Wolfensohn did not yield to the extremely strong pressure and both the loans were approved.

James Wolfensohn has the wisdom to discern the close link between alleviating poverty and stability and peace in the world. He fully recognizes that in the present turbulent time we have become preoccupied with issues of security. However, he aptly points out “It is absolutely right that, together, we fight terror. We must.”

The danger, however, is that in our preoccupation with immediate threats, we lose sight of the longer-term and equally urgent causes of our insecure world: poverty, frustration, and lack of hope. If we want stability on our planet, we must fight to end poverty.”

James Wolfensohn has been a very good friend of Pakistan. He has been consistently showing understanding of our problems and been trying to help us out. He has been always supportive of initiatives to fight poverty in Pakistan.

During my stay in the World Bank, I have seen Jim always showing genuine compassion for the poor. He will be leaving a wonderful legacy behind him. I sincerely hope that his legacy will be carried forward by his successor.

(The writer is a former executive director, the World Bank Group.)