Support for private housing reconstruction in the wake of conflict or natural disaster has been presented as a flagship programme by India in its foreign aid programmes in both Sri Lanka and Nepal. In Sri Lanka, the Indian Embassy used the title ‘rebuilding broken homes’ to describe this project (High Commission of India, Colombo, 2014). Within this context, this paper explores some of the project outcomes on the lives of the beneficiary communities, and the limitations and challenges faced while implementing these projects.

The brief analysis in the first half of the paper is followed by a set of key recommendations arising from this review. These include the need for India to systematically document learnings from its own grant-making processes, and to encourage learning and adoption of lessons learned from best practices of other donor partners where appropriate. This includes adopting grant-management approaches that include formal project evaluations and project designs that include impact assessment studies.

Policy Paper #8 Rachna Shanbog