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"It's not about the destination, it's about the journey. "

Aid to India justified anymore?

Posted by on Feb 5, 2012 in Blog

India, a coun­try which spends £20 bil­lion on its defence pro­grammes and over £1 bil­lion on a space pro­gramme while its pop­u­la­tion starves.

There isn’t really more I can say about this. Just the above jus­ti­fies not giv­ing them any aid, espe­cially so when the UK at the moment is fac­ing hard eco­nomic times along with the rest of Europe.

How­ever, if a coun­try can afford a space pro­gramme, a large mil­i­tary bud­get, that in my eyes is enough to stop the major­ity of aid to that coun­try. In the end, that extra £1 bil­lion being used by the Depart­ment for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment Agency is being used inev­ert­edly as it means India them­selves don’t have to spend as much on help­ing their pop­u­la­tion. — Whether or not India con­sid­ers the amount as “peanuts”.

Peo­ple will say that the £1 bil­lion in aid is to “bribe” and to buy favour in terms of rela­tions with India and the UK, how­ever in my opin­ion that isn’t the way to con­duct bilat­eral trade. If a coun­try has some­thing which meets the require­ments of another coun­try, that coun­try should buy prod­ucts because it suites and works for them, not because that coun­try is giv­ing them aid.

What’s worse, is that you have India, a coun­try which receives aid, is also giv­ing aid to oth­ers. It doesn’t make sense. Stop the aid and if they want to trade with us, we shouldn’t be brib­ing them. Until we can focus on a clearer eco­nomic strat­egy which works (Within the EU as well) then there is no point pour­ing money down a drain where it’s needed elsewhere.

I have noth­ing against Indian peo­ple, but their gov­ern­ment for not doing more to help their peo­ple. They have a thriv­ing econ­omy, yet they think it is more sen­si­ble to build up their mil­i­tary. Now of course, com­ing from a UK stand­point, we also had a thriv­ing econ­omy (Although reced­ing a lit­tle, how­ever expect a bounce-back once the ‘EU issue’ has cleared itself up) and we spend dou­ble the amount on our armed services.

How­ever, this is what we don’t have:

  • Peo­ple starving
  • Peo­ple who can­not find edu­ca­tion when needed
  • Peo­ple who do not have proper toi­letry or actual toi­let facilities
These 3 points alone could be the def­i­n­i­tion or rea­son­ing behind giv­ing aid to India, as they have these prob­lems still preva­lent in their soci­ety and it is a huge issue. How­ever, the job now should be left to India to help its own peo­ple. That is not to say the Indian gov­ern­ment aren’t help­ing its peo­ple now,  but now they are in a more suit­able posi­tion to help their pop­u­la­tion and have the resources to do so if they so wish. Oth­ers shouldn’t be doing it for them when they are per­fectly capa­ble of doing it themselves.

 

The facts

  • The N.C. Sax­ena Com­mit­tee report states that 50% of Indi­ans live below the poverty line. (Source)
  • India has more peo­ple in poverty than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. (Source)
  • 42.5% of the chil­dren in India suf­fer from mal­nu­tri­tion. (Source)
  • India has the high­est amount of under­weight chil­dren in the world. (Source)
  • 58% of chil­dren under five sur­veyed were stunted. (Source)
This is not to say that the Indian gov­ern­ment aren’t doing any­thing, how­ever efforts to com­bat this,  just don’t seem to par­al­lel with their growth. Tack­ling poverty is a hard issue and isn’t sim­ple cut, I’ll admit, but I can’t find it in me why any coun­try would want to give aid to a coun­try which its own gov­ern­ment doesn’t put enough weight behind to tackle the enor­mous amount of poverty that exists there.

 

Now, I under­stand they have to spend money on other things in order to bring in trade, busi­ness etc, which they have done a fan­tas­tic job on. How­ever, you some­times won­der whether or not India is actu­ally mak­ing an effort to bring peo­ple out of poverty when coun­tries are still giv­ing aid.

 

Right now, India’s econ­omy is doing fan­tas­ti­cally. Per­haps, it is time that aid be cut off and be directed towards other inter­ests which actu­ally help fur­ther devel­op­ment of other coun­tries. Even an Indian MP has stated that the UK con­tri­bu­tion is “peanuts”, so why should we be giv­ing peanuts to a coun­try, which already has a lot of peanuts! :p

 

Let’s give more to help the devel­op­ment of the coun­tries in Africa if any­thing, they need the money more than India which has a boom­ing econ­omy and will take over the UK’s econ­omy in years to come.

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2 Comments

  1. Kris Srikanth / February 6, 2012

    Inter­est­ing .. Have u ever vis­ited INDIA or for that Mat­ter china.  FYI these are coun­tries with large pop­u­la­tion and sta­tis­tics makes no sense here..Yes agreed we are a poor coun­try does that mean we must sit fear­ing Our nuclear armed neigh­bors with whom we have had to fight wars. Search the inter­net and u will get to know that till the Brits landed up and con­quered us under the dis­guise of trade we were the rich­est coun­try on earth ( we had no inten­tions of con­quer­ing so didn’t have a pow­er­ful army and the Brits made us slaves for 300 long years in our own coun­try) plun­dered our wealth, and left us des­ti­tute and in deplorable con­di­tion. And still after our hard fought inde­pen­dence we didn’t treat Britain like an enemy (nor we do so now) like they were treated by many for­mer colonies. and this bogey of giv­ing aid and then abus­ing us for not doing enough to reduc­ing poverty, mal­nu­tri­tion, please, we have pulled sev­eral mil­lion peo­ple out of abject poverty  in the last 60 years give us time, con­sid­er­ing where we were left in 1947 with only 3% of the pop­u­la­tion lit­er­ate, com­mu­nal vio­lence, dec­i­ma­tion of local indus­try and local edu­ca­tional set up and divid­ing us into three pieces and we still became a democ­racy and haven’t had a dic­ta­tor rul­ing us. India used to be a net importer of food we used to depend on food aid, now we are net exporter of food and are offer­ing food aid to other coun­tries.  This con­stant vic­tim­iz­ing of india as a land full of poor mal­nour­ished peo­ple isn’t cor­rect. and as for our finance min­is­ters remark, it was a pointed ques­tion where he was asked why we are still get­ting UK aid when our own wel­fare pro­grams for our peo­ple runs into sev­eral bil­lion pounds for which he said we don’t require the aid and nor did india ask for it , con­sid­er­ing that fact that sev­eral mil­lion peo­ple still live in poverty we will accept what­ever is offered, but con­sid­er­ing our wel­fare fund it is peanuts. He never said that to offend UK , it  was just to point the point across that Indian gov­ern­ment didnt go beg­ging for aid. As for the Space pro­gram , mil­i­tary bud­get, nuclear pro­gram. we intend to become a strong sci­en­tific nation and how is it jus­ti­fi­able that only after all our prob­lems get solved we must start think­ing about our defence , when we have already had to under a  repres­sive for­eign  rule for 350 years just because we weren’t defended prop­erly. and my dear friend please look at our sit­u­a­tion we are sur­rounded by neigh­bors who claim part of our land as theirs and what option do we have but to defend our self. We appre­ci­ate that fact that ur coun­try helps us with aid but we act accord­ing to our inter­est and will not be dic­tated by aid. And unlike the french who have a inde­pen­dent for­eign pol­icy the uk doesn’t have one, it acts accord­ing to the whims and fan­cies of the US. We have already burnt our fin­ger once with UK refus­ing to pro­vide spares in the late 1990s for the Sea king heli­copter after US sanc­tions whereas the french and russian’s stood by us at times of dif­fi­cul­ties and did not lay sanc­tions upon us. and so now when we are grow­ing they are enjoy­ing bet­ter and closer rela­tions with us. I appre­ci­ate your views but please do not view us only with the prism of poverty. For all its might the US still mil­lions poor and on social secu­rity. Visit South Chicago and you will know.

    Reply
    • Anonymous / February 6, 2012

      Hello, 

      While I agree with you that through­out his­tory that India has been plunged into a bad posi­tion (To which effects her today) because of the UK, how long will you use that excuse for? 

      I know it isn’t very lib­eral of me to say that, but it isn’t as if the cur­rent pop­u­la­tion of the United King­dom were respon­si­ble for the mishaps that occurred through­out his­tory. Although you can say we were the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of it, I’d put that in dis­pute, how­ever I do see con­flicts with the Roy­alty and the Koh-i-Noor; I think that should be given back, per­haps with a lot of talks about other dis­puted items/things.I love India, I have Indian friends so I more than wel­come your com­ment! How­ever I don’t think we should be send­ing bribes in the form of “aid” to other coun­tries. So it isn’t just Indian aid I’m com­plain­ing about. But to an extent, India is now grow­ing, she should be self-reliant soon enough. There is even a pos­si­bil­ity that coun­tries will be send­ing aid to the UK, look­ing at things the way they are now. :P It’s just that we are con­stantly told that there is no money in the gov­ern­ment piggy bank to fund children’s edu­ca­tion, social wel­fare, etc. I’m sure that extra 1 bil­lion would do a lot of good in the UK as opposed to the “peanuts” it is doing in India. Dur­ing huge cuts and aus­ter­ity mea­sures in our coun­try, we are look­ing at India in awe as we see they are devel­op­ing rock­ets which can go into space while we don’t have this. As a UK cit­i­zen, I think I can say that we are quite jeal­ous of India and its achieve­ments. Which undoubt­edly India has achieved a lot, through what it has been through. How­ever there are of course still some LARGE issues which still haven’t been resolved and per­haps the gov­ern­ment could do more to resolve. — Though of course it is eas­ier said than done and it isn’t just your gov­ern­ment that has heard these words; I guess. Although review­ing my thoughts, per­haps we should still give aid to India, even if con­sid­ered “not much” in terms of your government’s spend­ing on wel­fare. — As we prob­a­bly owe it as a nation and as human beings to help one another in a time and age, where poverty should be really non-existent. I look for­ward to see­ing India grow, but we shouldn’t be expect­ing stuff in return for aid. I don’t find that morally correct.  

      Reply