As the World Bank office in India has been conducting various consultations for its country assistance strategy (CAS) for 2013-16, it has come in the line of fire by the several civil society groups. In a press note released on Friday, the civil society groups have questioned the World Bank’s new move on consultation, terming it as non-transparent and undemocratic.

The civil society groups alleged that the World Bank consultations are very opaque and chooses select few NGOs which toe their lines on strategy of rapid growth and privatisation. “It has consistently followed undemocratic procedure for previous CAS (2005-2008 and 2009-2012) consultations. It chooses a few select NGOs into a process of so-called multi-stakeholder consultations… deliberately avoiding the ones who are critical of its policies,” said a group of civil society in a press release.

The civil society groups demanded wider consultations by the World Bank in India before it embarks on new funding for the next few years. “The parliament should initiate such a consultation and evaluation process on the CAS involving project affected communities, parliamentarians and other elected representatives, academicians and civil society groups,” it said.

At present, the World Bank has been conducting its different consultations for CAS (2013-16). The last one was held in Bengaluru on May 31.

The Bank has also failed in meeting its objectives in a number of projects, the civil society groups alleged. “The World Bank is unclear about its role in India – its budgetary allocations amount for a miniscule amount of India’s development budget (the World Bank contributes only about 3.3 percent of the central government’s development spending, and its loan volume is only about 0.2 percent of India’s GDP) and its reinvention as a climate bank from a development bank has been an abject failure,” said the press release. The civil society groups included National Alliance of People’s Movements, National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers, South Asia Network for Dams, Rivers and People etc.

However, in the last two years, the World Bank has improved on transparency aspect by opening to public scrutiny through Access to Information (AI), which is equivalent to the Right to Information Act (RTI) of India.

Earlier story: Plan process 'outsourced' to World Bank?