OPP's Dialogue on Global Financial Institutions

Take, for example, IMF and the World Bank, and their interventions in developing countries. The imposition of neo-liberal “reforms” has ended up in disaster.

If anything, they have benefitted the rich, weakened the Governments, helped multinational corporations, exposed the local industry to market failure, triggered hyperinflation and increased poverty. Pakistan knows it too well.

Of course, developing countries are not fully free of responsibility for their economic and political malaise.

Using real-life examples, this Online Dialogue will address issues like - how global financial institutions are structured, funded, operated, exert control over countries and factually damage the economies, pushing millions below the poverty line.

Our speaker:

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar is a teacher, left-wing politician and columnist. He is an associate professor of political economy at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad and has previously taught at LUMS. He is among the founders of the Awami Workers Party (AWP). He served as the president of the AWP executive committee and now is the deputy general secretary.

Akhtar completed his PhD in political sociology in 2008 from SOAS, University of London at the South Asia Institute. His thesis was titled The Overdeveloping State: The Politics of Common Sense in Pakistan, 1971-2007.

His research focuses on colonial theory and history, state theory, sociology, imperialism, comparative politics, political economy, the rise of the middle classes, South Asian politics, identity formation, informal economy and social movements in Pakistan. Akhtar is an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), a research institute at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Akhtar was a coordinator of the People's Rights Movement (PRM) from 2002 to 2012.

He was a strong supporter of Okara's peasant movement and Anjuman Mazarin Punjab, (AMP).

He organised rallies under the banner of PRM along with members of different trade unions against anti-worker policies and privatization of public utilities.

Akhtar served as chairman of the All-Pakistan Alliance for Katchi Abadis (informal settlements or slums) which was an association of slum-dwellers from across Pakistan, formed in 1999 to protect the rights of the millions of slum residents across the country against forced evictions and homelessness.