By
Praful Patel
Vice President, South Asia Region
The World Bank Group
New Dehli, India, June 21, 2004 Your Excellency the President of India, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great honor to have you join us, Mr. President, to celebrate the first India Development Marketplace. What we have before us today is a market of competing ideas about how to make rural services work in India. Creativity is fighting for space with innovation and who better, Mr. President, than you to share this celebration with us. As your presentation just now confirmed, you have an inspiring vision of a knowledge-powered transformation of rural India. The recurring theme in your public discourses has been one) the development of the rural areas of India, two) the birth of a knowledge-based society, and three) a quest to find ways of putting ideas into action. Mr President, I am happy to inform you that this event seeks to address exactly these questions. We are proud and humbled to have attracted nearly 1,500 competitors. NGOs, community organizations, foundations, academics, the private sector, committed individuals with a cause - all these have responded to our invitation to share their creativity. And warm congratulations to the winners for the power of your ideas and innovations. The World Bank is proud to be a partner in your endeavors. Proposals came to us from right across India by mail, courier, fax and a large number of emails. The major states and Union Territories are represented. But so are the smaller and more remote areas of the country like Assam, Kashmir, Manipur and Nagaland. And the range of ideas is breathtaking. There are proposals to empower young girls as champions of hygiene, health, and nutrition. Ideas to harness fish for malaria control, mobile toilets to improve rural sanitation. Someone has thought of using plants in the management of wastewater, someone else of harvesting dew along the coast of Kutch, another still of using the sun's power for water distillation. And there are proposals to deliver better education in rural areas using participatory theatre, information networks, and community partnerships. What these and many other excellent ideas have in common is that they aim to make services work for poor people, since it is poor rural people that these basic services fail, more often than not. Well-functioning services in health, education water supply, sanitation, roads, electricity, and finance can profoundly influence human development and reduce poverty. We have only to ask why the infant mortality rate in Uttar Pradesh is five times that of the rate in Kerala. Why are women born in UP expected to live 20 years less on average than women born in Kerala? Service delivery is key to human development. The 2004 World Development Report asked precisely this question: when do services work for poor people? From what we found out, services work when poor people are at the center of service delivery. When poor people as citizens have a voice in policymaking through voting, through NGOs representing the interests of poor people, through civic involvement, through a vigilant press. When poor people, as clients, have the power to monitor and supervise service providers. And when service providers have the right incentives to serve poor people. Even in vibrant democracies such as India's, poor people are not always heard regularly. Basic services for which states are responsible consistently fail poor people. This happens when politics favors one group of voters over universal services for all. Or when providers are rewarded for service to political masters, not to the majority of citizens, who happen to be poor. Or when recipients of services just don't know how to judge what they receive against promises made. In celebrating the creativity, the commitment, and the passion underlying the first India Development Marketplace, let us all remember to listen to those millions of citizens whose voices are not heard everyday. As you implement your ideas and scale up your innovations, can we think together how best to make space for poor people to have a say in service delivery. Thank you all and I wish you the best in bringing your great ideas to life. |
RSS