5 A. The World Bank Group

• The institutions: IBRD (the bank proper) + IDA (the soft-loan window — Nepal's main channel: interest-free, long-maturity credits), IFC (private-sector finance), MIGA (investment guarantees), ICSID (the investment-dispute arbitration centre — the law student's institution: investor-state arbitration's home);• The roles: long-term project and programme finance (roads, power, education, health — Nepal's decades of IDA-funded infrastructure and reform programmes); knowledge (the data, the reports, the doing-business and poverty surveys); policy advice;• The critiques: the structural-adjustment era's conditionality record (the 1980s–90s debates), the governance arithmetic (vote shares favour the rich — the standing legitimacy critique), project-displacement histories — the honest balance against the concessional billions and the pandemic-era support.