Sectoral and Decentralization Programs , South Asia Region,The World Bank

Mainstreaming decentralization within our organizations is as important as supporting clients

Decentralization is multisectoral and to succeed we need to carry our sectoral colleagues with us

“The line of accountabililty from sectoral line departments to local governments is broken and needs to be fixed”

Michael Rutkowski Sector Director, HD, South Asia Region

We believe In decentralization our experience ie Nepal during conflict, when net enrollment and completion rates increased has taught us this.

Accountability in education delivery is possible only with the involvement of the local community.

It is a no brainer when around 30% of LG budgets deal with health and education

It is a mistake to ignore decentralization we can only have an impact through leveraging government resources

We know how to deliver outcomes in our sector and do not need you people telling us how to do it.

How did we go from total aversion to where we are now?

Retreating to go forward.. Initial attempt to hold retreats with

sectors failed to deliver substantive results

In the second stage it was felt that finding a neutral ground was important

Knowledge was felt to be a safe meeting point where all could meet without turf issues

The Thematic Group and the South Asia Decentralization Series was organized

The series gave D&LG in SAR visibility throughout the organization

It reached out to several sectors

We only got traction when:- We put money where our mouth is by

teaming up with AusAID to make available a pool of funds that would facilitate policy and sectoral reforms in South Asia along the framework of the WDR 2004.

More importantly the objective within the Bank was to get sectoral units to think thorough the issues of decentralization and service delivery

Accountability was a central issue of concern to the new HD Director

Results 1) flagship study of health and education decentralization in the SAR which is expected to feed into a work program that looks at issues of decentralization and service delivery ie 18th Amendment in Pakistan.

2)Local framework to deliver nutrition programs in Sri Lanka

HD has suggested joint programs where we take a local government and work across us a team to look at issues dealing with delivery of health, education, water and sanitation etc.

They want local governments to be strengthened and their capacity built to deal with line departments and other stakeholders

Why did small sums of flexible funds lead to a change ?

Context is important countries in the region were decentralizing leaving the Bank behind . Where Bank was involved they made it clear that sectoral programs had to take into account the role of decentralized institutions

Leadership and champions found on both sides at the highest level

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