Publication: India : The Challenges of Development, A Country Assistance Evaluation
Date
2001-05
ISSN
Published
2001-05
Author(s)
Zanini, Gianni
Abstract
This country assitance evaluation
assesses the development effectiveness of World Bank
assistance to India during the 1990s. The Bank has been
India's largest source of external long-term capital
and has financed a sizable share of its public investment.
Its lending and nonlending services have been thinly spread
over many central and state agencies and have addressed many
different objectives. Overall the strategic goals of the
Bank during the decade were relevant and the design of the
assitance strategy improved. Efficacy is rated as modest,
mainly because of the Bank's limited impact on fiscal
and other structural reforms, the failure to develop an
effective assistance strategy for rural poverty reduction,
and the mediocre quality of projects at exit. Institutional
development impact has also been modest and sustainability
incertain, given the serious remaining fiscal imbalances,
high environmental costs, and governance weaknesses. Taken
together, these ratings gauge the overall outcome of
assistance for the decade as moderately satisfactory. But
these ratings must be viewed in light of the recent,
subtantial improvement in the relevance of the assistance
strategy, largely prompted by the innovations embodied in
the 1997 Country Assistance Strategy (CAS). The focus on
poverty reduction has been sharpened, a more selective
approach to state assistance put in place, and greater
attention given to governance and institutions, although it
is still too early to judge efficacy.
Citation
“Zanini, Gianni. 2001. India : The Challenges of Development, A Country Assistance Evaluation. © Washington, DC: World Bank. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/13964 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”