100 million $ World Bank credit for Jeevika, Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project
Lender to borrower: take less, give more!
New Delhi/Patna: The Centre and the Bihar Government today signed an agreement with the World Bank for 100 million US dollar additional credit to scale-up the ongoing Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project, Jeevika. The Project is aimed at enhancing the social and economic empowerment of the rural poor in Bihar. According to release issued by Ministry of Finance, the additional financing will help consolidate and expand the Project to cover all the blocks in the existing six districts covered under the Project.
This will not only allow the Project to cover all the villages in the existing districts, but also provide a comprehensive district wide model for poverty alleviation in Bihar. The Project has initiated a number of interventions on a pilot basis through convergence with other government programs and enabled access to public entitlements for the poor.
These include access to social security pensions for nearly 29,000 households in partnership with the social welfare department and access to wage employment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in partnership with the rural development department for nearly 5000 Self Help Group women.
The moral of the story may be – even if the centre is unwilling to grant special status to Bihar or to release special funds, lenders of all variety are responding to the Bihar cry for injection of funds. The question all such happy tales of borrowing raise is, of course, what are the terms and conditions and whether the centre will be in step with Bihar while repaying? Or is this question a political rather than a purely economic one?
Such are the complexities of federal structure in India and the consequent everyday politics played between the states and the centre!