The revised strategy draws lessons from events and trends in the past dozen years, from which it is clear that economic growth alone is not enough to make a dent in poverty. While East Asia achieved a steep fall in numbers of indigent people between 1987 and 1998, South Asia and other regions saw increases, despite years of growth. Even economic liberalization and restructuring can be pernicious. By contrast, big business interests, local and foreign, use their clout to get themselves bailed out, even though they are usually the main cause and beneficiary of excesses that lead to economic debacles. Hence, while the rich and powerful have been happy to heed World Bank calls for robust expansion, don't expect them to blithely cede more clout to the poor and weak, whether on the international, regional, national, local or household level.
Empowerment is a struggle even within families.
Moreover, the WDR takes issue with the policy paradigm propagated by the IMF and the United States, which has stressed rapid economic liberalization and ruthless industrial restructuring. But it deserves to be said. By contrast, China's measured pace of reform, often criticized as too slow, lifted 200 million of its people out of poverty and helped it escape the Crisis. However the WDR is received, there are, happily, powerful forces helping liberate the poor. Despite the pain it brings, especially when implemented too rapidly, economic reform has been loosening the grip of bureaucracy and big business on resources and opportunities.