By Toby McIntosh
The Indian government routinely blocks public disclosure of key documents about proposed World Bank projects in India, according to an examination of Bank records by eyeonglobaltransparency.net.
This practice recently came to light in the context of a controversial $500 million education loan that is scheduled to go before the Bank’s board on June 24.
The meeting should be delayed because the project’s concept is flawed, according a letter sent to the Bank by over 1,400 academics, activists and teachers, summarized in this Careers30 article. Oxfam India prepared a critical report.
Transparency about the proposed project has been impeded by the Indian government’s use of a loophole in the Bank’s Access to Information policy. The Bank allows borrowing countries to prevent disclosure of a key document it prepares about proposed projects, the Project Appraisal Document (PAD).
As a project heads toward the Bank Board, governments are allowed to block release of the PAD. Call it the “PAD veto.” Only after the meeting do these PADs get released.
Not disclosing the PAD “makes it difficult to understand what is being proposed, making informed engagement difficult,” said Anjela Taneja, lead specialist, education and inequality, Oxfam India. She continued, “Fundamentally, if there is nothing to conceal, why not just disclose the documents?”
India Vetoes Transparency
The India government vetoed release of the education project PAD and appears to use its PAD veto all the time.
EYE looked at all 11 projects approved for India between June 23, 2019, and June 23, 2020. In each instance, India blocked pre-meeting disclosure of the PAD . They were released after the Board meeting, in from three to 10 days. (Spreadsheet on EYE study)
The controversial education project is called “Project STARS” (Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States). It seeks to reform the educational governance system in six Indian states.
India’s use of the PAD veto for STARS was confirmed by a Bank spokesperson who told EYE:
“PADs are routinely disclosed after the Board approval and the STARS PAD should be available soon after the Board’s consideration scheduled for tomorrow, June 24. Simultaneous disclosure of PADs requires a written government consent and is not a practice agreed to with the Government of India.”
“Simultaneous disclosure” refers to the practice of issuing documents on the Bank website at the same time they are sent to the Board. This is the norm for most documents, but not for the PAD.
Critics have asked for a delay of the June 24 meeting. Oxfam wrote, “The STARS project risks significant diversion of Indian taxpayers’ funds to an array of private actors, introduces the privatisation of education in six of India’s states, and changes the framing for the private sector’s engagement with education in India as a whole. The Oxfam analysis is based on an earlier document, the Project Information Document (PID) (found here on World Bank website) which is less comprehensive than the PAD.
The joint letter to the Bank voices “deep concerns that systemic inequities in India’s education, as underscored by the pandemic, are not being addressed in the STARS Project.” The project “an excessive focus on assessments and use of technology.” There also is “an unsustainable reliance on non-state entities to improve governance systems,” according to the critics.
Use of PAD Veto the Norm
Recipient countries regularly exercise the PAD veto, according to EYE research.
The practice came up earlier in 2020 in the context of a controversial education project in Tanzania. The Tanzanian government applied its PAD veto, as it had for all other recent Bank projects.
Turned out that other countries also regularly use the transparency loophole.
EYE in early 2020 looked at Bank records posted online for 20 countries, including Tanzania, to see whether PADs were issued for the most recently considered projects in each country.
For all but one of the 20 projects, pre-meeting disclosure did not occur, indicating that government had not consented to issuance of the PAD. (See EYE article.)
Bank officials in January that said they would be examining the PAD veto policy, but also said there were no plans to reconsider the access to information policy.
“We are aware of the relatively low percentage rate of simultaneous disclosures in recent years and are looking into it,” a spokesman said in early February. EYE has written Bank officials to see if a review was conducted and what it showed.
