India: Support to Strengthening Accountability Risk Assessments in Projects and Sectors

The World Bank in India has developed a program wide Action Plan in response to the findings of the 'Detailed Implementation Review of the Health Sector' which identified systemic weaknesses in project design and supervision resulting in the possibility of fraud and corruption in projects. The Action Plan recommends that there is a need to analyze more deeply and strategically the processes vulnerable to corruption and the accountability gaps in sectors where there is World Bank presence in order to get a better sense of and categorize the risks to Bank lending. The Plan also recommends that there is a need to examine both sectoral and project specific vulnerabilities as well as vulnerabilities related to weaknesses in the larger institutional environment in the Indian states and in the overarching institutions of accountability.

ASI has been asked to strategically examine risks and rewards in different sectors (sectors include roads and transport, rural livelihood, education, agriculture, health, urban, and infrastructure) states, clients and types of operations in order to develop a framework/methodology that would support World Bank Task Teams to better design future projects as well as to (where possible) retro-fit existing projects using this framework.