14 December 2004
PRESS RELEASE
Delhi, 14 December 2004
The World Bank is presently engaged in ‘consultations’ in different parts of the world in an attempt to test the acceptability of its new proposal to use Country decision making systems as the basis of Bank operations. In India, the consultation is being held only in Delhi, and a minor section of Indian “Civil Society Organisations” have been invited to a meeting of a little over two hours, today, to discuss and comment on a document that could transform the basis of functioning and review of World Bank projects with particular regard to social and environmental safeguards and financial management and procurement. The undersigned believe that the proposals contained in the document are a clear prescription of a Race to the Bottom, and a ploy for the Bank to weaken its relatively tough safeguards, in comparison with India’s own.
This proposal is justified on the basis of the “World Bank’s ongoing efforts to better meet client needs and improve development impact”, as articulated by Mr. Michael Carter, World Bank’s India Country Director, in his invitation letter to the meeting (letter dated 2nd December 2004). It innocuously presents the fundamental principle of this reform as: “…development can be successful only if the country itself owns the process and government leads development efforts.” However, in essence this would involve accepting India’s environmental and social safeguards as being acceptable to Bank lending, especially for high risk and high social and environmental impacts of mega projects, provided the objectives of the Bank’s policies are in tune with India’s own laws, regulations and standards, based on peculiar and previously unheard of theory of “equivalency”. A dozen pilot assessments world wide will run on approval of this policy in Feb 2005, for two years, and if found acceptable, could easily replace the existing Bank policies, that are relatively superior to our country’s systems.
But the Bank is unsure of what it is undoing, or even doing. Couched in a footnote to the proposal, the Bank admits that “(o)verall, there appears to be little experience across the development community in systematically using country systems, and particularly in basing such use on a rigorous and transparent process of assessing equivalence against accepted international good practices, objectives, and principles, or similar criteria”. The proposal simply does not have the theoretical basis, or any positive experiences, to legitimately propose the replacement of existing policies by the Using Country Systems Proposal.
Yet in a highly contestable move, comments were invited by only listing the proposal online on the Bank’s website October through to December, and without in any manner canvassing attention to this fundamental shift in policy. As in the past, in particular the manner in which it rushed through the India Country Assistance Strategy earlier this year, notice periods for organisations invited to the consultation were less than a fortnight, with absolutely no translation being made available of this heavy text in any Indian language.
With this in view, the undersigned organisations, representing a wide range of movements, networks and NGOs working on issues of social and environmental justice concern, walked out of this meeting in protest, having read out an Open Letter addressed to World Bank President, James Wolfehsohn, and India Country Director, Michael Carter, that offers substantive criticism rejecting the proposal. A copy of this letter is being sent to the Prime Minister of India and all Parliamentarians. This letter is available on request from Delhi Forum at the address below.
In summary, we believe this proposal will seriously undermine human rights and environmental standards that the World Bank is compelled to adhere to as a result of international efforts over decades. Indian social and environmental safeguard policies and implementation discipline is significantly weaker than existing Bank safeguards. The implementation of the proposal would only lead to greater disasters both for the communities and for the environment. In India the process of policy making in recent cases of National Tribal Policy, National Resettlement & Rehabilitation policy and the National Environment Policy have themselves evoked very strong response in terms of lack of consultation, transparency and ad hoc decision making keeping Parliament and Legislatures in the dark. Policy drafts have been prepared by bureaucrats and/or consultants, and are being pushed through with little regard to careful critiques offered by academia and civil society groups. Today, such policies are meant to replace those that the Bank was compelled to evolve by worldwide review and criticisms, many of which were independent and meeting the highest standards.
Hundreds of leading civil society representatives across the world are taking a similar view on this proposal and it is clear that the Bank must quickly abandon this controversial policy, whilst making sincere and participative efforts in building on previous safeguards.
Bansuri Thaneja/Ashish Kothari ()
Kalpavriksh
Pune
Ramananda Wangkheirakpam () Citizens' Concern for Dams and Development (CCDD) Manipur
Dr Laifungbam S Roy.
CORE
Manipur ()
Ravindranath.
Rural Volunteers Centre
Assam ()
Zakir Kibria
Brahmaputra Barak Watch
Arup saikia
River Basin Friends
Assam ()
Leo Saldhana ()
Environment Support Group
Bangalore
Shalmali Guttal ()
Focus on Global South
Bangalore
Souparno Lahiri ()
Delhi Forum
New Delhi
Dunu Roy ()
The Other Media
New Delhi
Smitu Kothari ()
Lokayan
Delhi
Himanshu Thakkar ()
South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People Delhi
Address of Contact:
Delhi Forum, F 10/12, Malviya Nagar, New Delhi. Tel: 011-26680883, 26680914 Fax: 26687724 Email: