ADB criticised for anti-poor attitude and policies

Speakers at a discussion meeting on Wednesday strongly criticised the Asian Development Bank’s policies and projects for their ‘negative impacts’ on people’s lives and livelihoods.

They also lamented the Asian Development Bank’s Long Term Strategic Framework (LTSF) for 2008-2020 for its ‘anti-poor’ stand and demanded strong resistance against ADB’s policies that are biased toward private sector-led development.
The discussion was jointly organised by ‘Voice’, a research organisation, and NGO Forum on ADB in the WVA auditorium.
Civil society organisations’ members, trade unionists, farmers’ organisations’ representatives, NGOs, students, activist groups and civil society actors attended the seminar, moderated by Ahmed Swapan Mahmud, executive director of the Voice.
Towhid Ibne Farid, coordinator of ActionAid Bangladesh, said that in the face of the global financial crisis and climate change, civil society actors should come together to fight the dominant role played by the international financial institutes including the ADB.
Highlighting the Southwest Integrated Water Resource Management Project, he alleged that ADB had not complied with its safeguard policies and thus violated the people’s right to development. He also demanded redesigning of the project in consultation with the affected communities.

Monowar Mustafa, an independent development activist, said that the failure of the neo-liberal policies should be underlined by the civil society groups in the upcoming Bali meeting. He termed the International Financial Institutions undemocratic and unjust, and called for redefinition of the term ‘development activism’.
The speakers said that private sector, which dominates the development process, would concentrate on its own profit, thus endangering the agenda of poverty reduction and ultimately undermining the aspiration of the people to break out of the poverty trap.
The ADB’s recommended growth-based development paradigm creates poverty, so most of the countries including Bangladesh have failed to reduce the number of destitutes which has increased in recent years.
Speakers criticised the ADB for its bias towards market-led economic growth that increases poverty in many countries of Asia and the Pacific.
They rejected the LTSF that suggests expanding the ADB’s activities and increasing the private sector’s resources, which is only 13 per cent at present, by 50 per cent within 2020, and they also urged people to take a collective stand against ADB’s role in the country.
The ADB never understands the root causes of poverty, it only wants to ensure that the corporate powers can dominate and control the global market and continue to make abnormal profits, said Uma Chowdhury, director of Supro, a civil society network.
Ratan Sarkar, director of Incidin Bangladesh, Zakir Hossain, executive director of Nagorik Uddyog, Farzana Akhter, Mohammad Iqbal, trade union leader Subal Sarkar and farmers’ leader Zayeed Iqbal also spoke on the occasion, along with others.

http://www.newagebd.com/2009/mar/19/nat.html