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A blog to promote dialog on development in South Asia

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About us

This blog is maintained by the South Asia Region of the World Bank Group. Its goal is to exchange ideas on how to end poverty in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

Water Supply and Sanitation

24 Hours in the Life of Some Horizontal Learners

Submitted by Mark Ellery on Tue, 10/13/2009 - 09:12

Co-authored with Santanu Lahiri

In the face of families whose relatives have just died of arsenic poisoning advocating for institutional reform can seem a touch inane.

On the flip side, an urgent response to provide clean water or some relief to those affected is often neither sustainable nor scalable.

During a visit to Chapai Nawabganj we discovered that the Horizontal Learning Program enables rapid response - without undermining a sound policy position.

While visiting Meherpur municipality in Bangladesh last week, we learnt that 15 people had recently died in the nearby Amjhupi Union Parishad (UP) from arsenicosis. In a village meeting with the District Commissioner and UP Chairman we discovered that the citizens were drinking from both wells marked green (safe) as well as red (unsafe) because they were not confident that either of these sources had been correctly marked.

We were overwhelmed with the need for an immediate response but aware that any top-down solution could at best be partial. However, because of the Horizontal Learning Program (initiated by Union Parishads, facilitated by the Government of Bangladesh and supported by development partners) we were aware that local solutions to this problem had been developed by other Union Parishads.

At around 11 pm that night, it was resolved that a three member team from Amjhupi Union Parishad would join us to visit the nearby Ranihati Union Parishad of the neighboring Chapai Nawabganj Upazila (sub-district) to see how they had solved this problem. The solution was surprisingly simple, low cost and comprehensive.

World Bank Provides Four Loans Worth Over $4.3 Billion to India

Submitted by Joe Qian on Wed, 09/23/2009 - 14:49

The World Bank approved four loans worth $4.345 billion dollars yesterday, which is the second largest volume of lending to a single country in a year.

The goal of the four projects is to contribute to improving India's infrastructure and help bolster the country's response to the global economic and financial crisis and lay the foundations for stronger growth in the future.

The financial package consists of:

-Banking Sector Support: $2 billion
-Support for India Infrastructure Finance Company Limited: $1.195 billion
-The Fifth Power Sector Support Project: $1 billion
-The Andhra Pradesh Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project: $150 million

For more information and to watch an interview with India's Country Director Roberto Zagha, please check out the feature story.

Development Marketplace: My Tryst With Nutrition

Submitted by Sundararajan Gopalan on Mon, 08/03/2009 - 14:31

For more information on the Nutrition Development Marketplace, please see the accompanying Feature Story and Press Release

The year was 1975. I was a final year medical student in Pondicherry, South India. I was going for my practical test on Preventive and Social Medicine (PSM). PSM was (and probably still is) one of the least favorite subjects in the medical curriculum for most students. “Why should we prevent diseases? If we prevent all diseases what will we all do with our medical degrees? Isn’t that professional suicide?” asked one of my class-mates! But I digress. Coming back to the test, I was unusually nervous because I had not studied everything well. For some reason, one chapter that I did study the night before was nutrition. I had also volunteered for two months in a Nutrition Rehabilitation Center (NRC) which meant that it was one chapter that I was more confident about. As my luck would have it, every single question that the examiner asked me that day was on nutrition! I blasted my way through the test, and thanked my stars for that exceptional bit of good fortune. From that day, nutrition has always been close to my heart.

The NRC is a somewhat outdated concept nowadays. The idea was to have a malnourished child and mother live for a month in the NRC and learn good household behaviors that could result in better nutritional outcomes.

Thirsting for Social Change: Women, Agriculture, and a Stream of Opportunity

Submitted by Brittney Davidson on Fri, 07/31/2009 - 14:55

The cows were judging me. The unforgiving Indian summer sun was beating down on the crop field where I stood, and though I desperately wanted to listen the soft-spoken villager who was explaining the trials and accomplishments of his agriculturally centered village, my attention was pulled to the cattle several meters away. Perhaps I was dehydrated, perhaps a little woozy, but I am not proud to say that I could have sworn those grazing beasts were eyeing me, watching me wither under the intense gaze of the mid-afternoon sun. “Weakling,” They seemed to say.

And perhaps I was.

From my brief time spent in this rural, South Indian village, I had seen people deal with far more than the uncomfortable heat. These villagers like many throughout the rural areas of South Asia, worked long and tedious hours in their fields. Heat was not simply a discomfort, but could mean less water, less grass to feed the cattle, fewer crops, and, as a result, the inability to sustain spending on education, healthcare, and sanitation.