The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Flip side of `development'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 07, 2006

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Flip side of `development'

K. Venkateshwarlu

MAKING A POINT: ADB project-affected people from Nepal making a presentation on the Melanchi water supply project.

HYDERABAD: The "well-researched, superbly designed and tailor-made" Asian Development Bank (ADB) projects were supposed to spur development and transform their lives pulling them out of the abyss of poverty, illiteracy and ignorance. Instead they turned them into "development refugees".

This in short seems to be the outcome of a plethora of projects funded by ADB across Asia, as the "project victims" from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bangladesh, Laos, Nepal and India vouched in their heart-rending testimonies at a session organised by the People's Forum Against ADB.

For Kumarasinghe, a farmer from southern Sri Lanka, the ADB funded Kirindi Oya Irrigation and Settlement Project (KOISP) was to usher in prosperity, push up farm productivity, income and employment levels by augmenting existing irrigation facilities.

Water woes

But calculations went awry. Dam construction shot up five fold. Water supply was overestimated by 33 per cent. Only 59 per cent of the farm families were resettled. Years after the completion, faulty design, wrong location of the dam, inaccurate estimates all made without the consulting the local community led to failure of the project. "We were better off earlier getting plenty of water. Now even for drinking water we have to trek 10 km," lamented the farmer.

Thailand's delegation, which has become famous for handing over a bowl of coal to ADB president Haruhiko Kuroda, narrated how the bank-funded expansion of Mae Moh coal plant had devastating effect on the health of the people and the environment. About 300 people have lost their lives to the deadly pollution.

Shafiqul Islam of Bangladesh recounted the failure of the $ 62 million Khulna Jessore Drainage Rehabilitation Project. The failed project has left a legacy of environmental disaster exemplified by silted up dead rivers, permanent inundation of thousands of hectares of land and loss of indigenous variety of fish and crops.

Displacement

Laos presented the peculiar example of using a bank project of building schools for girls to displace indigenous people from forests. With the authoritarian regime not allowing the NGO delegation to travel to India, the testimony was presented by Shalmili Guttal of the People's Forum.

NGO representatives from Nepal, Ram Bahadur Khadka and Yognath Dotel, described how Melamachi Water Supply Project to Kathmandu valley led to privatisation besides affecting people. From India, Judith Mascarenhas cited the example of Mangalore Corporation's action in making the bank agree to shelve its condition on raising taxes.

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