India, Oct. 29 -- I have attended nearly every International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Annual Meeting since 1991, when they had an iconic place in the economic calendar. It was a great congregation of policymakers and bankers trading ideas, technical insights, and getting enriched with the prevailing economic ethos. 2025 broke that tradition. The meeting came, and the meeting went. This mirrors a profound transition in the global multilateral development bank landscape. The US and the EU are divided by competing visions, while institutions such as the Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, African Development Bank, and New Development Bank are gaining prominence. The lack of fanfare reflected a fragmented view on key issues: The development committee's spring agenda - Jobs: The Path to Prosperity - barely evolved into the annual meeting's Foundations for Growth and Jobs, leaving both institutions in a cautious wait-and-watch stance as the world races ahead. The 52nd Meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committee saw divergent ministerial statements. Yet members endorsed the October 2025 World Economic Outlook (WEO)'s assessment of the global economy. Global growth is now projected at 3.2% in 2025, compared with 3.3% in 2024. Inflation in advanced economies is projected to moderate to 2.5%, while emerging markets average 5.3%, underscoring uneven disinflation. Real interest rates remain above pre-pandemic levels in over 60% of advanced economies, showing monetary tightening's lingering bite. As far as India is concerned, the IMF's February 2025 Article IV Consultation projects growth at 6.5% for 2024-25 and 2025-26. Headline inflation is expected to converge with the 4% target as food shocks wane and current-account deficit stabilises near 1.3% of GDP in 2025-26. These assessments, though reassuring, raise questions about whether one-size-fits-all policies fully account for India's public-investment push, services exports, and domestic supply response. India's nominal GDP growth continues to exceed 10%, surpassing the yield on government bonds, and services exports reached a record $325 billion in 2025. Yet, these factors are often underweighted in standard debt-sustainability analysis. The irony of such divisions lies in the rigidity of the institutions themselves. The most enduring critique of the IMF remains its ideological predisposition, rooted in the Washington Consensus. Critics have long argued that IMF and World Bank prescriptions often reflect a one-size-fits-all approach. The WEO's endorsement of austerity measures after the 2008 global financial crisis and euro crisis came under heavy criticism for being both economically damaging and analytically flawed. Recently, at the Kautilya Economic Conclave, Andres Velasco unveiled a magnum opus of essays by 50 leading economists and policy experts, titled the "London Consensus". London is incidental; what matters is its call for stronger national ownership of policy and more capable public institutions. The Washington Consensus was based on the premise that it's the economy, stupid. Today, it's clearer than ever: It's the politics, stupid, and the old playbook too often ignored the distributional and political fallout of technocratic fixes imposed from outside. These ideological contours were shaped by the IMF's governance structure itself. Voting shares remain skewed toward advanced economies. The US holds a de facto veto power (with over 16% of votes, major decisions require 85% majority). Advanced economies together hold about 57% of the voting share, leaving developing countries underrepresented. This power imbalance inevitably influences institutional priorities and the tone of surveillance. Recent developments illustrate this tension. After accusing the IMF and World Bank of "mission creep", US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, commended the Fund for folding its climate and gender units. Yet, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva, in her Global Policy Agenda 2025, reaffirmed the centrality of climate transition as one of the transformative forces of our time. Beyond ideology, there are also persistent technical shortcomings. The IMF's own internal evaluations have acknowledged a systematic tendency for forecasts to overestimate GDP growth in industrial economies, with prediction errors correlated with business cycles. The Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) concluded that the Fund's surveillance leading up to the 2008 crisis failed to issue credible warnings. It attributed the lapse to groupthink, an excessive reliance on market orthodoxy, and an inability to integrate financial-sector risks into macroeconomic assessments. Despite the emphasis on job growth in the agenda, their policy prescriptions could do with greater specificity and operational detail. The World Bank's Global Economic Prospects (GEP), published this June, recognises India as South Asia's growth engine. It forecasted 6.3% growth in FY25, supported by services resilience and an agricultural rebound. Yet it offers limited insight into how India might expand employment and attract investment amid tightening global trade conditions and evolving standards. The concept note of the World Development Report (WDR) 2025 takes standards as a universal lever of development but underestimates the asymmetric challenges faced by developing economies. It calls for substantial investment in "quality infrastructure" but overlooks the fact that many countries remain excluded from global standard-setting processes, thus risking a shift of responsibility onto those least able to influence the system. We must first accept that the institutional gaps will require a re-imagining of how the WEO and its companion reports are conceived. The more transparent the projections, the greater will be its modelling credibility. Publishing the key assumptions and sensitivities behind baseline projections would allow external validation. For economies like India and Indonesia, sectoral heterogeneities can be addressed better. Breakdowns spanning manufacturing, construction, and services, could enable domestic institutions to refine analyses with national data. A second reform should aim for greater regional and country-level granularity. Aggregates like "emerging Asia" obscure deep divergences. Dashboards linking public investment efficiency and productivity have already been piloted in the GEP. This could provide policymakers with more actionable insights. Third, these reports must become more accessible and actionable for policymakers. Interactive comparisons, such as India's capex-led growth versus Latin America's commodity cycles, could democratise understanding. Aligning the WDR's standards framework with WEO annexes through pilot "standards scorecards" could integrate macro forecasting with institutional capacity assessments. In some ways, the WEO remains significant because it compels nations to situate themselves within the global mosaic. The GEP and WDR widen that aperture by connecting growth prospects to policy frameworks and institutional standards. Last year's Economics Nobel reminded us that progress depends on reinventing institutions. This year's laureates emphasised that disruption is not a threat, but a catalyst. The Bretton Woods system is a classic case of an institution that must internalise both lessons. Otherwise, it risks being left behind by the very dynamism it seeks to measure....