Statement by Madhu Kohli (Grameen) to the World Bank Board of Executive Directors

 

Experience with the Singruali (India) Claim

 

February 3, 1998

To the Executive Directors and Chairman of the Board of Directors
of the World Bank

Dear Chairman and Executive Directors:

Thank you for this opportunity to describe our experiences with the World Bank Inspection Panel.

The World Bank Inspection Panel, as we understand, primarily emerged out of the experiences of the struggling people, often the poor, harmed by violations of World Bank polices and procedures in a large number of Bank financed development projects. The Bank’s experience with the Sardar Sarovar Project was particularly decisive in this respect as it urgently pointed towards the need for an accountability mechanism. We appreciate that the Bank decided to establish such a mechanism.

The 33 Project Affected Persons from Singrauli, who filed a request at the Panel in May, 1997 were desperate when their pleas addressed to the Bank Management had long been ignored. The provisions of the Inspection Panel encouraged them to raise their voice by filing a request alleging violations of various World Bank polices and harms consequently being borne by them. The Requesters had been facing imminent threat of being forcibly dispossessed from their lands, day to day repression and harassment at the hands of the Borrower and its agents. The repression ranged from forced bulldozing of crops, implication in false cases, and imprisonment. All these had the effect of causing the majority of the affected to abandon their struggle for a fair rehabilitation before displacement.

The purpose of going to Panel from the hapless peoples’ stand point was to make the World Bank accountable and see some strong measures in place to ensure the people’s immediate protection from repression as well as adverse impact of violation of policies. In so far as going to the Panel helped them in neither of the two senses, the PAPs wonder whether the Panel in its present form is effective in making the World Bank accountable. Unfortunately, the people in whose name all World Bank investments are justified, continue to feel just as insecure as they were before going to the Panel, in some cases more insecure because they have faced reprisals for having filed a claim. The people face the grim prospect of their fields being engulfed by flyash slurry which is being dumped in the vicinity since August 1997 in the full knowledge of the World Bank management. They continue to be in the grip of fear of their crops being destroyed, and being beaten up and assaulted by the borrower’s agents. That this fear is real has been demonstrated by a series of recent incidents. I myself was attacked by an agent in the presence of the Borrower on November 21, 1997.

The preliminary findings of the Panel (July 1997) confirmed the substance in the Request and recommended, as a matter of urgency, full investigation of the World Bank’s involvement in NTPC Power project. The recommendations of the Panel are not mandatory, and to that extent its effectiveness as an accountability mechanism becomes doubtful. The need for an accountability mechanism like the Inspection Panel can hardly be overemphasised. However, for the Panel to fulfill the objectives it was set up with, it needs to be strengthened and given certain mandatory powers. In this context the following issues emerging from our experience are placed for the Board’s consideration.

Transparency

There can be no accountability without transparency. The Requesters to the Panel have suffered from a lack of access to information. The Requesters were neither given a copy of the Management Response filed by the Bank, nor the report of the Panel, till the Board had already taken a decision on the report. This evidently placed the Respondent and the Requesters in an unequal position. Whereas the Respondent had access to all the documents filed by the Requester, the latter did not enjoy such access. In fact, even some of the documents cited in the Management Response were not made available to the Requesters. The Requesters asked for copies of some of those documents, and the local World Bank office stated that the Bank’s disclosure policy did not permit making them public. The documents requested related to the studies on flyash in Singrauli - an issue directly related to the concerns raised in the request. There can be no effective participation without the stakeholders first having access to all the relevant documents relating to social and environmental matters having a bearing on sustainable development in the region.

The fact that Management Response was not made available to the Requesters early enough prevented them from effectively representing their case during the Panel’s very short visit. For example, the Requesters had no clue about response of the Management on the violation of Indigenous Peoples policies. The presentation of the requesters would have taken account of this and the Panel would not have arrived at the conclusion that it did on this issue (ref. Para 19 of the Panel Report, July 1997). Having once filed the Request, the Requesters had no official opportunity to return to issues or to comment on the Report of the Panel.

The decision of the Board to limit the Panel’s investigation to a Washington based study was non-transparent and concerns expressed by us in this regard to the Management were not answered. Why was the Panel not allowed to travel to India for investigation, and why is this decision still shrouded in secrecy? This inquiry of ours was never answered, but the circumstances lead us to presume that the Bank did not want to document the abuse because it did not have the political will to follow through on the findings of the Panel. Meanwhile, the fact that the Panel has not been allowed to return has given confidence to the Borrower and Bank that they can continue in the same manner as before, promoting construction and ignoring abuses.

The Action Programme

The July 1997 Report of the Panel states that "lack of local consultation and participation in both preparation and implementation of R&R component of the Project appears, prima facie, to be root cause of past and current problems and complaints including a reluctance or resistance to relocation".- (Para 24 Page 7). Yet, the Action Programme of the Bank, supposedly a response to the issues raised in the Request, was developed without the participation of the people, NGOs and all others concerned about sustainability of the current model of energy development in Singrauli. This most basic criticism of the Action Programme remains unanswered, and the claims of the Bank Management of having consulted concerned ‘stakeholders’ in the preparation of the Action Programme remain unsubstantiated. In fact, the Requesters for the first time learnt about the Action Programme only when it had started to be implemented.

It is little wonder, therefore, that the Action Programme does not address in any fundamental way the crux of the issues raised in the Request. For example, land option is not given any place whatsoever in the discussion of the issue concerning restoration of livelihoods of PAPs. All that the Action Programme emphasises is again income generation schemes, which are clear failure and over which the internal debates within the Bank have expressed grave doubts (Internal Memoranda dated March 1, 1993). It is strange, that the Bank Management still continues to push this option on an unwilling and unsuspecting people.

The Bank Management is projecting land as an option lacking feasibility. Feasibility from whose point of view - the Bank, the Borrower or the people? The Bank’s own policies call for a land option - why is it that only thing the Bank finds feasible is to dilute its own standards? And if land option is disfavoured as lacking feasibility, so also should further investments in Singrauli not be seen as feasible because these would mean further displacements of hundreds and thousands. And if the Bank has learnt its lesson it must immediately press for a moratorium on all future displacements in Singrauli till the efficacy of other rehabilitation options in terms of their consonance with the objectives of Bank policies on R&R are demonstrated.

The Issue of Repression

The use of force and other intimidatory tactics has been the most sensitive and critical issue for the Requesters and yet this issue has not been dealt with in the Panel’s report. Use of police force was confirmed by PAPs during Panel’s visit to project area.

Subsequently, Bank’s fact finding team confirmed loss of a human life as a result of forced relocation of a PAP from one of the ash dyke villages of Vindhyachal Super Thermal Power Project of NTPC. Any independent investigation can be meaningful only if repressive measures are not used to alter the day-to-day ground level reality before it is even investigated. This is precisely what is happening in Singrauli. Threats of reprisals, and actual execution of those threats have altered the ground level reality especially in areas where construction work goes on unhindered.

In the case of Singrauli, where enough documentation in the form of official studies already existed confirming harms to the people and environment, the filing of Request at the Panel should have at least resulted in a halt to all direct and indirect forms of repression. On the contrary, incidents of repression continued and each time these were brought to the attention of the management the latter refused to act. Even after the Panel’s report confirmed prima facie evidence of harms, no concrete effort was made by the Management, of which we have knowledge, which would have pressurised the Borrower to give up repression as a tactic.

And the ongoing construction activity continues to alter the situation on the ground with every passing day. In August last, the Country Director during his visit to one of the affected villages in Rihand witnessed the fact that ash slurry was being dumped on an unfinished ash dyke. This was being done primarily as a measure to intimidate the people who had not still given up their struggle for a fair rehabilitation. Subsequently, the Country director in a letter dated Oct. 9, conveyed that the Borrower had agreed not to carry out construction in areas where PAPs still remained to be resettled till an agreement about their rehabilitation was reached.

We have informed the Country Director that on the ground there was no evidence of such an agreement taking effect with the Borrower. There was no further response from the Country Director on this issue (ref. our correspondence with Mr. Edwin Lim between Oct-Nov. 1997). The ash dumping, construction and repression continues, in such a way that sooner or later it would make it impossible for the PAPs to remain. An Independent Monitoring Panel (IMP) is now in place to review R&R efforts in all the three NTPC projects in Singrauli, but we do not yet know how its findings will have an impact on the Bank or the Borrower. The IMP is part of the World Bank Action Programme. However, the Borrower continues with its repressive activities. On Jan. 20, 1998 the Chairman (IMP) sent a letter to the Executive Director of NTPC censuring use of force and calling for maintenance of status quo at least till the next visit of the IMP.

Conclusion

It is our hope that the World Bank Board will be aware of the situation of the people in Singrauli when it discusses our case on February 12. We appreciate having this opportunity to let you know that the problems we have been experiencing with the Bank and the Borrower are still continuing. We hope as well that the Bank would use the experiences of the people with the Panel to strengthen the Panel. We definitely want the Panel to continue, but only if it is strong. We also hope that a strengthened Inspection Panel would continue to keep a watch on the violations in Singrauli. A strong Inspection Panel, we believe, would go a long way to ensure that human and social costs are not ignored in Bank financed projects, in line with the Bank’s mandate i.e. to provide loans and credits for projects that alleviate poverty and promote economic development in developing countries.

Sincerely,

Madhu Kohli
on behalf of Requesters