***In order for a plan to be truly "national" it needs a much wider process of consultation and input from a very wide section of the community.***

THE National Water Management Plan (NWMP) is currently under preparation by a team of international and national consultants working for the Water Resources Planning Organisation (WARPO) under the Ministry of Water Resources. The consultants have also engaged a national NGO to carry out the participatory planning exercise. In addition lo the above there is also an Independent Panel of Experts (IPOE) and a Water Policy Advisory Group (WSAG) both consisting of eminent experts to oversee and guide the process.

So far the consultants and WARPO have prepared the Inception Report and have held two national workshops to share progress of work and elicit feedback from various stakeholders. The plan of action is expected to be finalised by April 1999.

A group of concerned observers who are not involved in the process of NWMP but have participated in the two workshops have expressed their concern to both the IPOE and WSAG that the spirit of consultation seems to have been missed so far in the process and that unless something is done soon to bring the process back on track it may lead to some groups not being able to support the NWMP any further. This would be specially true if the process seems to become a project development one only. Some of the issues being raised are discussed below.

What Constitutes a "National" Plan?

Bangladesh has over the decades carried out many exercises to develop "national" sectoral plans (e.g. for agriculture, fisheries, environment, etc.). In the past, the process was a simple one of the relevant ministry concerned appointing a group of international and national consultants to prepare a plan on behalf of the country.

In recent years, however, starting with the participatory National Environment Management Action Plan (NEMAP) in the mid nineties the need for a "National" plan to be more than a list of projects cooked up by a small group of experts and bureaucrats (no matter how expert or good they are). It has been recognised that in order for a plan to be truly '"national" it needs a much wider process of consultation and input from a very wide section of the community.

Indeed there have also been a number of examples of such exercises being carried out by the government together with NGOs and others and substantial experience has been gained in the country in carrying out such wide consultations.

"Plan" or "Process"?

The water sector is such an important natural resource sector of the country, given its geography and the fact that water is needed by each and every cili-

zen of the country from drinking, bathing, washing and other activities including irrigation, navigation, water transport and ecosystem functions that almost even-one in the country can be said to have a need regarding water which must be taken into account in any planning exercise. Bangladesh also has a long history of planning in the water sector stretching back several decades to before independence.

In all the previous water sector planning exercises the old paradigm of getting a time bound project funded by a donor to hire consultants to produce a document (called the ’plan") which then becomes the guiding document for the country for the next few years.

One might be tempted to ask why after having repeated this old paradigm for so many decades we still need to follow it today? Does the country not possess by now sufficient (or if not sufficient then at least some) capabilities to undertake such a crucially important sectoral planning exercise with its own resources and more importantly using its own national capabilities? This question can perhaps be better understood and answered if one shifts the paradigm from producing a "plan" to instituting a "process" of national capacity building to enable the country to undertake planning in the crucially important water sector.

This attitude would cause us to shift the focus from producing a time bound "plan document" (which usually boils down to a list of projects) to developing capacities in the country to address the water sector for planning purposes. This would, of course, not preclude the production of a "plan" as well but would not focus all resources on merely producing a document but rather build capacities which would be able to continuously and periodically revisit the issues and monitor it and produce plans (or modify the existing plans) as and when required. It can be argued that Bangladesh has indeed developed over the years a substantial capacity to undertake such a task on its own using the new paradigm of participatory planning which is more process rather than plan oriented.

This includes capacities in the government in such organisations as the Bangladesh Water Development Board. WARPO. universities such as BUET. Dhaka University. Ja-hangirnagar University, etc, NGOs and specialised research organisations like EGIS, SWMC. BIDS, BUP and BCAS as well as many others. If these capacities were truly harnessed in the national interest to develop a really "national” and "process" oriented planning ex-ercise it would be a major step forward for the country.

What Can be Done?

In order to take corrective action now it is being proposed

that the IPOE (and WSAG) take the initiative to seek a feedback from a select group of persons who are related to the water and environment sector and come up with practical ways to ensure that there is a genuine sense of participation by all concerned in the NWMP process.

One way of doing so would be to have the IPOE undertake an independent process of getting inputs from key groups through a structured process which would feed into the overall planning process. The details of how to go about putting such a process in place, who to involve in it. how to organise it and who would pay for it could all be discussed at a meeting to be convened shortly by the IPOE with some selected persons initially.

The writer is Executive Director of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, a research and policy institute.