Michael F. Carter 08/25/2004 11:02 AM

To: "delhi forum" <delforum@vsnl.net> cc: manthanb@sancharnet.in Subject: Re: Position Statement of Indian Civil Society Organisations on CAS 2004

Dear Signatories to the Position Statement of Civil Society Organizations in India on the Draft Country Assistance Strategy of the World Bank:

The World Bank thanks you for your interest in the process of formulating the latest Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) for India, and sincerely appreciates your feedback and comments. On behalf of the Bank, I am responding to your concerns.

At the outset, let me briefly outline the exact purpose and limitations of the CAS document. The CAS is the Bank's assistance strategy for a particular country, and therefore a purely Bank-owned document. The CAS document (a) describes the Bank Group's strategy based on an assessment of priorities in the country, and (b) indicates the level and composition of assistance to be provided based on the strategy and the country's portfolio performance. In other words, it is a guide, but no more or less than that, to Bank staff for the Bank's work in the country over the next four years.

That said, the CAS is obviously synchronized with the country's own development strategy -- in the case of India, it aligns itself with India's Five-year Plans. It is also consistent with the recently published Common Minimum Program of the Indian Government. The CAS is prepared with the government in a participatory way; its key elements are discussed extensively with the government prior to Board consideration. But it is not a negotiated document, and any differences between the country's own agenda and the strategy advocated by the Bank are highlighted in the CAS document.

You will find a detailed description of the CAS instrument and procedure in the Bank's Operational Manual (BP 2.11) which is available on the Bank's website. The link is: http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/institutional/manuals/opmanual.nsf/textonly.

I mention the above so that we can converse on the basis of an appropriate level of expectation from the document. I now address the specific concerns outlined in your position paper.

Consultation and transparency: An annex in the final CAS document will describe the consultation strategy we adopted at different stages of the drafting process. If we are to include all those who participated in our client survey, web consultations, workshops and sector discussions, we can confidently say that the opinions of more than a thousand Bank interlocutors, representing a wide range of views including such as yours, were factored into the process. The Bank's CAS has never in the past been formally discussed in Parliament or the state legislatures, and this is a matter of procedure of the sovereign Indian state. On our part, we would be pleased to discuss our work with parliamentarians and state legislators, some of whom were included in their individual capacity in our client survey. It is not correct to say that certain civil society organizations were "deliberately" left out of the consultation process. Determining consultees in a country the size and diversity of India was necessarily a selective exercise, but at no stage was there a decision to deliberately exclude any particular body of opinion. Moreover, the CAS process does not signal the beginning and end of all communication: it sets the broad strategic directions, while more detailed consultations and transparency should continue to accompany specific endeavours.

Lessons from previous engagement: The final document will contain an annex evaluating the experience of the previous CAS period. If and when we proceed in the hydro sector, we will communicate and consult appropriately about any specific engagement as indeed we have already been doing with some of your colleagues.

Dictating policy of Government of India: Based on many discussions with the Government of India, we are confident that our strategy and program priorities are in consonance with both the Tenth Plan and the present government's Common Minimum Program. Your estimation of the Bank's ability to "dictate" policy to the Government of India, while perhaps might be considered flattering to us, is rather unfounded. Ours is a partnership in which the Government of India clearly drives the agenda, and the Bank offers support where it feels it has value to add. It is also important to remember that India is a part owner of the Bank, and a powerful and influential member of the Bank's Boards of Governors and Executive Directors.

Knowledge provider and generator: Our intention here is to convert our global presence into an advantageous channel for India to access the latest methods, learnings and practices from both developed and developing countries, and equally, to transmit India's own enormous fund of experiences and knowledge to the rest of the world. It is in response to the criticism that the Bank is often too technocratic in its approach and does not consider all options that we use the term, and will attempt to be, "politically realistic". We are somewhat nonplussed at your criticism of this approach and your apparent lack of confidence in India's ability to deal with knowledge sharing and transfer. I look forward to further discussion on this topic.

Withdrawing the CAS draft: We believe that the draft has encompassed a wide range of inputs and feedbacks from a diversity of interlocutors, has benefited from the insights of several independent Indian experts, and has the endorsement of the Government of India. We therefore see no reason to withdraw it. It will indeed be disseminated widely. Once again, it is not in our powers to place the CAS before the Indian Parliament but we would be only too happy to see it discussed there.

I hope you will accept my responses in the same spirit of frankness and accommodation with which you have expressed your opinions. I look forward to a continued dialogue on these and other matters concerning India's development.

Yours sincerely,

Michael F. Carter

Country Director, India