NEW DELHI, Aug 20: World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz met top Indian leaders on Friday to discuss ways of scaling up infrastructure development to improve the lives of millions of rural poor.

The bank agreed as a first step to provide a loan of 325 million dollars for a water management project in the western state of Maharashtra, which was devastated by floods this month that killed more than 1,000 people.

One of the most important things I have been discussing with my hosts is how the World Bank can do more to support the critical challenge of scaling up rural infrastructure, Wolfowitz said.

The World Bank chief, who arrived in New Delhi Friday after a stopover in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of India’s Planning Commission economic thinktank.

Ahluwalia told reporters he sought a one billion dollar loan from the bank for an ambitious 174-billion-rupee (four-billion-dollar) rural infrastructure programme called Bharat Nirman (Build India).

We have mentioned that India could easily absorb something of the order of a billion dollars in the Bharat Nirman programme, Ahluwalia said after meeting Wolfowitz.

The Planning Commission sets five- to 10-year goals for economic and social development programmes, and works with the federal and state governments and domestic and multilateral agencies to achieve them.

Chidambaram told the World Bank chief that one of the priorities of development was the restoration, renovation and repair of water storage facilities such as reservoirs and ponds as it could boost output in the farm sector, which employs two-thirds of India’s workforce.

Wolfowitz, on his first swing through the impoverished South Asian region in his new post, said he discussed the progress of World Bank-funded development projects in India and infrastructure projects including water.

He hailed India as a “rapidly emerging country of global importance,” but lamented that poverty remained rampant despite the country’s success in information technology, industry and commerce.

Indian finance ministry officials urged Wolfowitz to increase the bank’s annual lending of three billion dollars to help meet development goals. It was not known whether the bank agreed to the request.

Wolfowitz’s visit coincided with the tabling of an employment bill in parliament aimed at guaranteeing 100 days of work to the rural poor.

More than two-thirds of India’s 1.05 billion people live in the countryside — often in dire conditions — with some 350 to 400 million people overall living in poverty.

India, whose economy grew 6.9 per cent in the year to March 2005 and is seen expanding by seven to eight per cent this year, has an unemployment rate of around eight percent but economists say the number is much higher.—AFP