The Hindu Business Line : World Bank's changing role

For an institution that efficiently marketed liberalisation and globalisation in the 1980s and the 1990s, in what later come to be called the Washington Consensus, the World Bank appears to have come afull circle with its advocacy of causes that are the concerns of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil societies. Stung by the criticism that its prescriptive lending had landed most borrowing countries in trouble, the Bank had begun to tone down its evangelical zeal the last couple of years.

Change of heart

It began focussing attention on poverty reduction programmes, funding social infrastructure for education, health and removal of scourges such as blindness, leprosy and tuberculosis, and instituting outreach programmes to help people survive the fallout of its lending programmes.

The Bank is financing 71 development projects in India worth $14 billion. Besides, over the past five years, it has provided nearly $1billion to bolster broad reform programmes in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh. That the Bank should be trying to endear itself to stakeholders at the risk of displeasing its shareholders was least expected of an institution that has been in the development business since the post-War reconstruction began in the late 1940s. Yet, a visit to the Bank's country-site demonstrates its desire to grapple with the problems at the grassroots.

Focus on education

A recent World Bank survey found that 25 per cent of government primary school teachers in India were absent from work. Only 50 per cent of teachers actually teach, according to the author, Mr Hasley Rogers, Senior Economist with the Bank's Development Research Group. This joint study by the World Bank and Harvard University found absenteeism all too common among teachers in developing countries.

"The range is quite big. We have as few as 11 per cent of teachers absent in Peru and, at the other end of the spectrum, we have 40 per cent of health workers absent in India and Indonesia," Mr Rogers said.

Stating that part of the problem was monitoring, the author added that while official rules provide for punitive action in cases of absenteeism, disciplinary action is rare. Teachers and health workers are never fined. Even as local communities monitor poor performance by teachers and health workers, they lack the power to make them perform better, the Bank survey revealed. But this raises the relevant query of transferring both funds and powers to the local bodies by the State governments.

In any case, the Bank has done a good job in highlighting the deficiency in the delivery system of public goods to the needy, even as funds do not pose any constraint to the authorities.

Mumbai Urban Transport Project

In yet another instance of its changing role, the Bank held a meeting of its Board of Executive Directors in Washington on March 28 and also of its independent inspection panel to discuss the latter's comprehensive report concerning problems that arose in the planning and implementation of the World Bank-Mumbai Urban Transport Project. The $945-million project, including a $542-million loan from the Bank and which began in 2002, was designed as the first step towards improving physical infrastructure in rail and road transportation. A part of the project was the resettlement of more than a lakh of people.

Since the project began, some 70,000 people have been re-settled. The resettlement has improved rail traffic, reducing commuter times.

But the planned road construction under the project will affect a large number of poor people and shopkeepers living along those roads. Hence, acting on their complaints, the Bank suspended disbursement on the road and resettlement components of the project on March 1 and despatched its investigation panel. The panel found that the shopkeepers had valid and serious concerns which required attention.

The panel also found that the Bank did not comply with a number of requirements under its own policies. The Bank had failed to identify major resettlement risks at the outset and overestimated the capacity of the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA) and the NGO contracted to support project implementation.

The Board supported the panel's Action Plan which entailed improved databases, improvements in services to the resettlement sites, including adequate water supply, better supply connectivity and establishment of a funded maintenance infrastructure and defective functioning of the grievance redress mechanism.

This effort by the World Bank holds a lot of lessons for civic authorities and the State government of Delhi as they go about demolishing shops and human settlements to implement the apex court order.

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