Position Statement of
Civil Society Organisations in India on
the Draft Country
Assistance Strategy (2004) of the World Bank
Aug. 14 2004
WE, the civil society
organisations in India, national alliances and movements, reject the present World
Bank CAS 2004 draft and concur on the following position with regard to the
draft CAS.
KEY CONCERNS
Inadequate
Consultation and Lack of Transparency
The process leading up to the drafting of the CAS in
consultation with and participation of the Government of India has not been
transparent and inclusive. The civil society in India has been kept in dark
while the Members of Parliament and State legislatures, the elected people’s
representatives, have not been informed or consulted.
The access to the draft CAS was severely restricted since
the draft was put only on the Bank website and unilaterally withdrawn after 30
days. None of the Annexures as mentioned in the draft, constituting important
policy directives have been released to the public. Thus whatever access
provided was also for an incomplete document.
The World Bank India Office unilaterally decided the
so-called Consultation dates within India and these were organised a mere two months before the draft CAS goes
to the Bank Board on August 26, 2004. The participants were invited with only one
working day prior notice. Prominent civil society organisations in India
working on Bank’s past record and accountability were not invited and
deliberately left out of the Consultation process along with many others.
The Consultation process for the draft CAS does not include
Members of Parliament and State Legislatures, the elected representatives of
the Indian people and thus violates and undermines the basic tenets of Indian
democracy that the people of this country and its institutions stand for.
CAS does not reflect
lessons learnt from Bank’s previous engagement
CAS does not reflect critically on the Bank’s previous
engagement in India – abysmal failure in sectors such as power, dams including
large hydro project, forestry, poverty reduction, environmental and social
mitigation measures, especially in the States of Orissa, Andhra Pradesh,
Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh, which the bank has lauded as its model
investment and intervention State in India, today records among the worst human
development indicators in the country. The previous chief minister whom the
Bank held up as an ally who best understood and implemented the Bank’s policy
thrust was overwhelmingly defeated at the polls in the national and state elections.
Earlier Orissa was the Bank’s show piece, but the experience there is not
reflected in CAS.
The draft CAS is pushing for investments in hydroelectric
generation capacity ‘that can be developed with limited social and
environmental impacts’. This is a very ambiguous statement at best. Will a
submergence of 3000 Ha – 4000 Ha of land including substantial portion of
biodiversity rich forest land be considered limited? The draft CAS says, “While
for many years the hydropower business in India had a poor reputation, some
major actors including the NHPC have started to improve their environmental and
social safeguards practices”. There is nothing in the CAS that shows what
prompted the Bank to arrive at this startling and unjustifiable conclusion. How
has the social and environmental performance of large hydro in India in general
and those of NHPC in particular has improved ever since they withdrew from the
Sardar Sarovar project in 1993? On the contrary, NHPC has, in fact, consistently
and flagrantly violated Indian and international human rights in Indira Sagar and
Omkareshwar (Madhya Pradesh) and Koel Karo (Jharkhand) projects, among others.
People have been forcibly removed by police and Rapid Action Force,
rehabilitation and compensation to the PAFS remain incomplete, tribal and
indigenous protesters have been fired at and killed. World Bank financed Nathpa
Jhakri and NHPC constructed Parbati are reeling under sever environmental
impacts. Violations have been reported from almost all the on going hydro
projects of NHPC – from Jammu & Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh, the latest
being Middle Siang hydro project in Arunachal where at the second public
hearing held on August 3, 2004, many of the people present were not allowed to
speak.
As a matter of fact the CAS needs to include a component to
make sure that Bank addresses the outstanding social and environmental issues
of its past projects.
The projects and propositions in the CAS do not seem to have
come out with any process to select least cost option among the various available
in India. To give an example, the CAS does not even so much as mention options
like renewables or demand side management.
Bank’s Propriety in
Dictating Government of India Policy
The draft CAS imposes conditionality of reform in and
privatisation of key sectors as its basis for extending lending to the Central
and State Governments. With a possible scaling up of Bank’s resources in India
the projected gross disbursement of the Bank during the CAS 2005-08 period will
be less than 0.2 per cent of the country’s GDP. Even then, the draft CAS dares
to leverage that lending with a conditionality that funding will only be
extended to sectors where the reform process has already started or there is an
emphasis on reform and privatisation. The CAS seeks to work in those States
only where the governments support its twin policy of reform and privatisation.
The World Bank, with its minimal investment in India, has
imposed these conditionalities of reform and privatisation in the name of partnership
with Government of India ‘for implementation of the Government’s poverty
reduction strategy, embodied in India’s Tenth Five-Year Plan’. The Bank, in
fact, has not only gone beyond the mandate of the Tenth Plan but has totally
disregarded the thrust and content of the Common Minimum Programme (CMP)
adopted by the recently elected United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government in
the centre and which sets the agenda and process for the next five years.
Politically Realistic
Knowledge Provider and Generator
While the draft CAS fails the most minimum standards of
academic rigour in analysis thereby raising questions on its credibility, the
Bank aims to ‘substantially expand its role as a politically realistic
knowledge provider and generator”!
The draft CAS envisages:
i.
strengthening
Bank capacity to act as a channel for ideas and lessons of international
experience;
ii.
placing
greater emphasis on understanding the motivations of interest groups and
different stakeholders in the reform process;
iii.
helping
clients to better communicate the potential benefits of their reform programme;
and
iv.
operating
in a more strategic and integrated fashion across different organizational
units of the Bank to leverage knowledge resources more effectively.
Thus the CAS 2004 provides a recipe to the Bank severely
undermining not only an independent country’s own knowledge providing systems,
generators and institutions but subverting the people’s traditional and
cultural rights.
This, in its thrust and operation, amounts to the imposition
of a comprehensive agenda that will seek to undermine and devalue indigenous
and independent generation of knowledge.
The Bank seeks to initiate such an operation by increasing
its array of partnerships with local research institutions and interested
organisations in both developing its analytical work and disseminating
important findings; a re-shaped analytical and advisory activities (AAA) will
actually promote Bank’s reform and private-sector-led development paradigm
trying to change the country’s face of information gathering and dissemination
mechanisms.
WE, THEREFORE,
DEMAND
That the World Bank immediately withdraws the draft CAS 2004
for India and re-engage in extensive public consultations with the civil
society, the diversity of the research community, project affected communities
and other concerned during the next year.
That the translated copies of CAS with all its annexures be
disseminated within the country extensively through various available
communication channels including print media and in the form of booklets.
That the draft CAS with all its annexures be placed before the Indian People, Parliament
and State Legislatures and finalised only after due process of debate and
consultations.
[A detailed critique of the CAS will soon be sent out to all
concerned]
Shripad Dharmadhikary, Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, Madhya
Pradesh; manthan_b@sancharnet.in
Soumitra Ghosh, NESPON, West Bengal; nespon@sancharnet.in
Sunita Dubey, New Delhi; sunitadubey@hotmail.com
Ginny Shrivastava, Astha, Rajasthan; astha39@sancharnet.in
R Sreedhar, mm&P, New Delhi; Environics@vsnl.com
Leo Saldanha, Environmental Support Group, Bangalore; leo@esgindia.org
Himanshu Thakkar, South Asia Network on Dams Rivers &
People, New Delhi; cwaterp@vsnl.com
Smitu Kothari, Lokayan, New Delhi: smitukothari@vsnl.net
Benny Kuruvilla, Focus on the Global South, Mumbai; bennyk@focusweb.org
Sanjay Basu Mullick, Jharkhand Save the Forest Movement,
Jharkhand; rch_sanjay@sancharnet.in
Sukhdev Vishnu Premi, Navrachna, Himachal Pradesh; lvk@navrachna.org
Ravindra Nath, Rural Volunteers Centre, Assam; assamravi@yahoo.co.in
Souparno Lahiri, Delhi Forum, New Delhi; delforum@vsnl.net
W Ramanand, Citizens Concern on Dams and Development, NE; wramd@hotmail.com
Ashok Chowdhury, National Forum of Forest People &
Forest Workers; vikal5@rediffmail.com
D Roy Laifungbam, CORE, Manipur; laifungbam@coremanipur.org
Prakash Louis, Indian Social Institute, New Delhi; Prakash@unv.ernet.in
Malavika Vartak, Habitat International Coalition, South Asia
Regional Network, mvartak@hic-sarp.org
Himanshu Upadhyaya; h_upadhyaya@hotmail.com
Vimalbhai, MATU – People’s Organisation, Uttaranchal; vimal_bhai@indiatimes.com
Chittaroopa Palit, Narmada Bachao Andolan, Madhya Pradesh; nobigdam@sancharnet.in
Ravi Rebbapragada, Samatha,
Andhra Pradesh; samatha@satyam.net.in