Muddy waters: inside the World Bank as it struggled with the Narmada irrigation and resettlement projects, Western India

Abstract

The period since the Second World War has witnessed three global power shifts: one, from sovereign states relating to each other through balances of power, to inter-state organizations which pool some sovereignty and enact collective preferences; two, from states to non-state organizations, including NGOs, enormously facilitated by the internet; and three, from West to East. The World Bank has been a microcosm of these shifts. This chapter describes the interplay between some of the agents: World Bank staff; World Bank top management; World Bank Executive Directors (representatives of member governments, who formally govern the Bank); Government of India and governments of states; Indian and international (mainly UK, US, Japanese) NGOs; and the US Congress. The context is the Narmada irrigation and resettlement projects in western India from the 1970s to the 1990s. The first of the projects (Sardar Sarovar) became the subject of a large-scale opposition movement, Indian and international, which ended up forcing the World Bank to take serious responsibility for resettlement and environmental sustainability in its projects world-wide, and to create an independent inspection facility to which people who consider their welfare net harmed by a World Bank-supported project can bring complaints direct to the Bank by-passing their national government.