The Balance Sheet, scripted and directed by Joe Athialy, presents a much-needed lucid and accessible explanation of the economic injustices of our times. The documentary film situates some of the most urgent contemporary challenges – extreme inequality, crony capitalism, jobless growth, authoritarian governance, suppression of dissent, and so on – within the long-term structural trajectory of liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation (LPG). 

The film foregrounds peoples’ voices: social movements, community organisations, grassroots leaders, and civil society actors. This is in sharp contrast to the prevalent marginalisation of their voices in mainstream policy debates, and the frequent criminalisation of their work. 

A decade of majoritarian cultural politics intertwined with crony capitalism may have has eroded critical public discourses on the economy. However, India’s current economic woes cannot be addressed without discussing the mechanisms and outcome of the LPG policies. This understanding forms the heart of the film. 

The 1980s and 1990s had marked a shift towards the market economy in the whole world, including in erstwhile socialist economies and left-democratic post-colonial economies. While India’s structural adjustment in 1991 were part of the global trend, the precise contours of LPG have been matters of debate ever since. The Balance Sheet delves deep into the background and trajectory of the LPG reforms.

It focuses on two key institutions which mediated the reforms: the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As the 20th century socialist economies faltered during the 1980s, the World Bank model based on free markets, an expansive private sector, and unrestricted global flow of capital, was presented to the world as the only alternative. 

We learn from the film how the World Bank, already in existence for three decades by that point, cleverly seized the moment. It adopted the language of development, equality and prosperity. It promised people economic outcomes that would outshine the socialist and left-democratic models.

Notwithstanding the economic growth that India witnessed since the 1990s, the World Bank’s promise of prosperity was misleading. The prosperity wasn’t meant for all, not even for the majority. The film demonstrates how the World Bank model fuelled displacement, inequality, fossil dependence, and propped up authoritarian regimes. The normalisation of the World Bank’s one size fits all economic model also robbed people of the language of resistance. It made resistance to such models appear exceptional, misplaced or misinformed. 

Rupturing this narrative of normalisation of LPG, the film examines two World Bank sponsored projects in India – the Sardar Sarovar Project and the Tata Mundhra Project – through the voices of the affected communities. This sharply contrasts with the attitude of those holding political power today. Be it Adivasi and peasant resistance to mineral extraction by corporates, or trade union protests against the labour law reforms, affected peoples’ complaints are often looked upon as disruptive to development and as conspiracies against the nation.

The film provides a sharp riposte to such lopsided developmental narratives by foregrounding the experiences of grassroots leaders, their movements, and their organisations, such as the Narmada Bachao Andolan and the Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh Sangathan. This helps the director highlight the role of grassroots campaigns and organic leaders in envisioning economic justice and democracy.

The film draws lucid connections between the micro stories of the Sardar Sarovar and the Tata Mundhra projects to the macro story of exploitative economic development. It emphasises the underside of the LPG economic model. LPG policies indeed built new industries and power plants. At the same time, it led to the privatisation of essential public services like health and education, reduced transparency in decision making, heightened state surveillance, and ushered in unabashed philanthro-capitalism under the pretext of charity. 

The macroeconomics of exploitative development becomes evident in the pattern of loans given by Indian banks before and after 1991. Thomas Franco, former General Secretary of the All-India Bank Officers’ Federation, points out in the film that following the LPG reforms, priority sector lending declined from 95% to 70%. More loans were given to corporates at cheap interest rates while education and employment generating activities were subjected to higher interest rates. 

Drawing upon Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data, Franco shares that in 2024, while 449 corporations got loans of over 100 crores at less than 5 % interest, education loans were given out at 12% interest. Self Help Groups (SHGs) and Medium and Small-Scale Enterprises (MSME) too got loans at 11-12% interest.

The World Bank/IMF mediated reforms thus sowed the seeds of crony capitalism, monopolies and oligopolies: problems that are crushing the Indian economy today. While India tops the charts for billionaires, its position in Global Hunger Index and Human Development Index remains abysmal.

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We learn from the film that India is not an exception. Over the last 80 years, public arms of the World Bank alone have financed more than 300 projects in around 180 countries -mostly situated in the Global South. 165 trillion dollars have been given out in loans and 100 billion dollars in grants. This package has drawn several countries into a debt trap, and systematically carried out what Andre Gunder Frank called the development of underdevelopment.

Exploitative economic development is bound to generate resistance. It is impossible to push through without suppressing peoples’ voices and undermining democratic rights. The film demonstrates how the World Bank has supported dictatorial and right-wing authoritarian regimes the world over. Current political realities in India seem to fit this pattern. 

The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) regime – which is as authoritarian as it is majoritarian – has genuflected to the ‘colonisers’ club’ dominating the World Bank more than any regime before. The same regime has brought about an intensification of crony capitalism, and suppressed rights of workers, of indigenous people and of farmers. The film underscores why the opposition to authoritarianism today must intersect with the opposition to exploitative global financial arrangements. 

The current state of extreme inequality, joblessness and crony capitalism is increasingly a shared concern among the political opposition to the BJP. The Indian National Congress (INC) – the leading opposition party and the architect of the 1991 reforms – called for an economic reset in its 2024 Lok Sabha election manifesto. Its promise of a Nav Sankalp economic policy is focussed on work, wealth, and welfare. It declares a strong opposition to crony capitalism, monopolies and oligopolies. The Balance Sheet suggests that any meaningful economic reset must perforce rework India’s entanglements with exploitative international financial arrangements.

As Greek economist and politician Yanis Varoufakis warned economic justice is impossible unless people take economics into their own hands and mobilise themselves, Joe Athialy’s film not only celebrates the democratic economic vision emanating from peoples’ struggles, but also makes complex economic policies accessible to the masses. Films like this are much needed if we are to successfully reinsert critical economic ideas into India’s communally charged political landscape.

Akash Bhattacharya is a historian and a labour rights’ activist affiliated to the All-India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU). 

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