public institutions in the water sector, which should be confined to creation of vital infrastructure. Everything else should be encouraged through private efforts and an enabling environment should be created for private enterprise development. An essential focus of the Bangladesh Water Resource Management Strategy is people's participation. To implement this strategy, it is necessary for BWDB to devote its attention to development of beneficiaries capability for undertaking minor water control structures and O&M of facilities. Only major upstream water development and management functions, where heavy engineering equipment and skills are necessary, should be retained by BWDB. Other activities, such as monitoring and regulation of water regime in various parts of the country should receive its strong attention.

The second aspect that needs reconsideration is the mandate of BWDB in relationship to WARPO. After sector strategy formulation, long-term planning, intersectoral coordination, and regulation of water usage activities is assumed by WARPO, BWDB's mandate will have to be redirected towards real-time management of water resources including project planning, construction of FCD-I structures, and operation and maintenance. The third factor for consideration is bringing a system of accountability and control in the organizational culture of BWDB which will ensure its efficiency.

# Re-fixing BWDB's Mandate

There is now an urgent need for redefining the present mandate of BWDB, in view of separation of functions of WARPO, arising from different jurisdictional coverage as well as the need to develop specialized knowledge, and institutional strengthening of RRI and SWMC which later on may evolve into the Bangladesh Hydrological Institute (BHI). Macro data collection requires comprehensive procedures and coverage; macro planning requires interdisciplinary team work and the understanding of national and sectoral and intersectoral policies and programs, which are best undertaken by a central coordination and planning organization like WARPO. On the other hand, design requires advanced technical knowledge, construction must oversee field activities and assure quality, and O&M requires the expertise and discipline of sustaining a service to end-users. Moreover, quality assurance requires a clear separation of work so that units can be held accountable for performance. This is most evident in the design, construction and O&M phase of a project. For example, transfer of responsibility from construction to O&M should require a warranty to ensure that construction deficiencies are not passes on to the O&M agency.

The appropriate mission of BWDB should be to provide large scale engineering support for implementation of the national water sector strategy and plan for flood control, drainage and irrigation and real-time management of water resources. WARPO should provide the macro framework within which BWDB could design engineering schemes with due consideration of social and environmental parameters. The sequence of activities, from strategy to national planning to project planning, implementation and maintenance are conceptualized in Table 4 below to identify specific institutions and specific responsibility.

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