About the role
At the World Bank, a member of the World Bank Group (WBG), you’ll join a diverse, global community working across cultures, disciplines, and borders to address the world’s most pressing development challenges. With 1.2 billion young people reaching working age in the decade ahead, the challenge of job creation has never been greater. Through partnerships across 145 countries and more than 182 offices worldwide, we work with governments, private sector, development partners and other stakeholders to invest in people, strengthen markets, and deliver scalable, data-driven solutions that generate more and better jobs and improve lives. For more information, visit
South Asia Region Context:
The South Asia Region, comprising Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, is at a pivotal stage of development. Rapid economic growth, driven by urbanization and demographic trends, has reduced poverty, but significant disparities persist. The region also faces growing climate risks, environmental pollution, informality, and low female labor force participation.
Sustained, private sector-led growth, anchored in investments in infrastructure, logistics, energy, and connectivity, is critical to creating jobs for South Asia’s sizeable youth population. At the same time, continued investment in human capital and resilient public services is needed to equip people for the jobs of the future.
India, the largest economy in South Asia, is undergoing a profound economic and urban transformation. Meeting growing demand for reliable infrastructure and services, while managing climate and natural resource risks, will be central to sustaining growth and creating jobs. The World Bank Group’s engagement in India increasingly calls for integrated solutions that combine public and private financing, policy reform, institutional strengthening, and close partnership with central and state governments.
Water Global Practice:
The Water Global Practice helps countries achieve water security for people, food and the planet. Under the WBG Water Strategy, it aims to improve water security for 400 million people by 2030 through country-led Water Compacts, combined public and private investment, and multiphase programmatic approaches that replicate and scale what works. The Practice combines lending, analytics, technical assistance and policy dialogue across water supply and sanitation, irrigation, water resources management, and resilience to floods and droughts.
India is home to about 18 percent of the world’s population but only around 4 percent of its freshwater resources. Rapid urbanization, rising demand from agriculture and industry, groundwater depletion and increasingly variable rainfall are putting growing pressure on water resources and services. In India, the Practice’s program supports central and state governments in improving water security and the performance of water services. The portfolio spans irrigation modernization and water security programs, dam rehabilitation and safety, urban and peri-urban water supply and sanitation, and river basin management, together with analytical and knowledge work on water data, irrigation efficiency and dam safety. Operations use IPF, IPF with PBCs, PforR and trust funds, and increasingly combine investment with institutional reform, digital systems and results-based financing. Delivering this growing, multi-state portfolio requires sustained operational capacity in New Delhi that can work across task teams.
Duties and responsibilities:
The ET Consultant will bring operational, digital and results-monitoring skills to the South Asia Water team, and will work across task teams rather than on a single project. Under the guidance of the Practice Manager and Task Team Leaders, the selected candidate will:
General operational support
•Support the supervision of current operations, as well as the preparation and design of new water operations in irrigation, water supply and sanitation, and water resources management, including program design, results frameworks and implementation arrangements under IPF, IPF with PBCs, PforR and trust funds.
•Design and quality-assure technical assistance and consultancy packages, from scoping and ToRs through review of deliverables, so that they respond to operational needs.
•Manage day-to-day engagement with client agencies on behalf of task teams, driving progress on agreed actions, helping resolve implementation bottlenecks, and shaping mission agendas, agreements and follow-up.
•Curate and share lessons across states and operations through workshops, South-South knowledge exchanges and knowledge and communication products.
•Support engagement and dissemination activities for Water Forward knowledge products, including the preparation of podcasts, articles, and workshops, in close coordination with Task Team Leaders (TTLs).
Information systems and digital innovations support
•Support institutional capacity building for government counterparts to manage results-based programs, asset management systems, irrigation performance assessment systems, M&E systems and other digital systems, and help embed these systems in the agencies’ own processes so they continue to be used beyond the life of the project.
•Coordinate the operationalization, field testing and validation of irrigation performance assessment tools in client states. This includes refining methodologies to reflect climate resilience, such as performance under drought and water stress, and putting in place the institutional arrangements needed for adoption and scale-up.
•Provide technical and institutional inputs to digital water resources management systems and support use of their outputs in investment planning and prioritization.
•Support the design, development and roll-out of utility management information systems (MIS) and dashboards in water supply and sanitation operations, and help utilities use them for performance management, regulatory reporting and investment planning.
•Strengthen M&E systems across the portfolio, using digital tools to consolidate data from multiple implementing agencies, track results and flag implementation risks early.