Catalog

Background

Designing a project with poverty interventions is not easy.

It requires careful analysis, planning, and input from stakeholders. It is even more difficult to modify an existing project to make it more participatory and effective in reducing poverty.

The Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development Project is a good example of this challenge. Approved by ADB in late 1995, the Project’s original goal was to improve the basic urban services in four towns -- Channapatna, Mysore, Raman- agaram, and Tumkur -- in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, in an effort to reduce migration to the state capital of Bangalore. Achieving poverty reduction through the improvement of slums was a minor component under the Project.

Stakeholder Participation Needed

When ADB adopted its Poverty Reduction Strategy in 1999, we felt that the impact of the Project could be improved through a stronger, more focused attack on poverty in the towns.

In designing the increased poverty component with the executing agency, it was agreed that reducing poverty should not be a top-down activity planned by professionals in isolation from the reality of people’s lives.

Participatory planning and development were seen as vital to the success of the slum rehabilitation component. Redirection was needed with the stakeholders’ guidance.

But to make this change required us to modify the project design and allocate funds for new direct poverty reduction activities, hold participatory workshops, engage the local NGOs, and recruit community development experts to facilitate consultations among the different project stakeholders.

Through these initiatives, 31 slums were improved through building roads, drains, water supply, women’s centers, and training/community centers. Several initiatives were developed to help slum dwellers strengthen their income-earning abilities, including

• vocational training

• microfinance schemes

• training in entrepreneurship

• health education

However, we wanted to reach more beneficiaries and make such poverty reduction part of urban management when the Project was completed.

This was where the $400,000 regional technical assistance (RETA) project to facilitate participatory development, approved by ADB in December 1999, was helpful. The RETA provided funds to help mainstream the participatory process in local communities and to train local NGOs and community leaders to plan and implement poverty reduction initiatives in consultation with stakeholders.

Under the RETA, a local consultant was hired to extend the programs begun under the Project to other slums and low-income communities not involved in the Project. The consultant worked closely with local authorities, community leaders, and NGOs.

Several workshops were held to help raise awareness of the advantages of the participatory process and train stakeholders in the skills required to follow this approach. Project beneficiaries, community leaders, municipal officials, and NGO representatives were among those who attended the workshops.

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Lessons Learned

The chief lesson from the Project, as from other participatory projects, is that a consultative participatory process requires time and strong support through facilitation—but not necessarily a lot of money.

The project stakeholders, local communities and their leaders, NGOs, and the local government have to earn each other’s trust and learn the skills required to effectively share information and negotiate agreements. This took many months of concerted effort.

The Project showed that if the beneficiaries are actively involved at all stages of project planning and implementation, they gain a strong sense of project ownership. Thus the infrastructure created or upgraded under the Project is more likely to be properly maintained. Several dozen self-help groups have been formed in the slums, and people are coming forward to request vocational training and health education.

The participatory development initiative under the RETA helped focus the Project more directly on reducing poverty in consultation with the local communities and other stakeholders. As a result, the Project was redesigned to better meet the needs of the poor in the ways they want, and project gains are more likely to be sustained.