$300mn from World Bank for Bengal projects

The West Bengal government is likely to get a fund of $300 million, or nearly Rs 1200 crore, under the "West Bengal Accelerated Development of Minor Irrigation Project", from the World Bank by October 2008.

Nearly 80 per cent of the fund is expected to be for irrigation and drainage purposes, with the rest for agriculture, fishing and forestry sector.

According to Joop Stoutjesdijk, lead irrigation engineer for sustainable development department in Europe and Central Asia regions, the funding will possibly come in equal proportion of loan and credit at one-go, by the end of next year.

Shedding its leftist, anti-World Bank, stance, West Bengal had sought a loan from World Bank after a gap of 10 years, he said.

Stoutjesdijk, on a visit to Kolkata at present, met West Bengal chief secretary Amit Kiran Deb and ministers of various government departments recently.

The project, still at a concept stage, will bring a total area of about 213,500 hectares under assured-irrigation through rehabilitating and developing some 28,000 public minor irrigation schemes spread over 18 districts, and will be implemented by the state water investigation and development department.

The state government will send a project summary for two out of 18 districts to the Bank by January 2008.

The rationale behind approving the loan, according to the project information document of the World Bank, is its alignment with the Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) of the bank.

CAS was designed to scale-up and ensure improvement of rural livelihoods using community-empowerment approaches.

"The Bank is also supporting similar projects in other states of India, namely, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Orissa and Tamil Nadu in addition to major irrigation initiatives in Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, and was engaged in a minor irrigation project in West Bengal in the previous decade. Given its large portfolio of irrigated agriculture projects in India and elsewhere, the Bank is well positioned to provide the value-added support that the Government of India is looking for," the document says.

However, the document cautions against some of the negative impacts of the projects on health and livelihoods.

"The overall social and environmental impact of the project is expected to be positive. However, as the project involves a large number of minor irrigation schemes, some adverse social and environmental impacts may not be ruled out. Safeguard policies likely to be triggered include environmental assessment, involuntary resettlement, indigenous peoples and pest management. The Safety of Dams policy may also be triggered in certain cases," it says.

Also, the possibility of land acquisition is not ruled out in the document.

"Involuntary resettlement is triggered because it is not clear at this stage whether the project would involve any land acquisition or not, but certain activity areas might be occupied by the local people," it says.

The document notes agriculture to be the backbone of livelihood in West Bengal.

It admits that in presence of large number of landless agricultural workers in West Bengal.

"Future agricultural growth and increase in rural incomes will need to come from increased land and labor productivity brought on by agricultural intensification and diversification," it stated.