Britain has decided to continue its aid programme to India despite strong domestic pressure to stop to emerging and booming economies. Britain’s international development ministry had in 2010 announced that it was stopping aid to China and Russia and had announced reviews of bilateral and multilateral aid programmes, which will be announced in March. The Tory-LibDem coalition government is struggling to contain growing public anger over spending cuts announced to control the huge budget deficit. The announcement on continuation of aid to India for the whole term of the current British Parliament is bound to raise controversy.
International development ministry Andrew Mitchell will confirm on Tuesday, in a speech on aid and emerging powers, that “the time has not yet come to end aid completely” to India, DFID said in a statement to this newspaper. Mr Mitchell will freeze the aid programme to India at £280 million a year till 2015.
However, the nature of developmental work in India will change.
“We will not be in India forever but the time has not yet come to end aid completely,” the secretary of state will announce. Total UK bilateral aid received in 2008-09 by India was £297 million. Looking at it sector-wise, health got the largest share of 42 per cent, education 24 per cent, growth 16 per cent, governance 10 per cent, other social services six per cent and other two per cent.
The decision to continue aid to India despite stopping aid to countries like Serbia, Cambodia, Moldova and Vietnam is based on the fact that over 300 million of the world’s poorest people live in India. UK will continue to work in countries in Africa and Asia that have extremely high numbers of people living in extreme poverty, including Ethiopia, India and Bangladesh.
“India has more people living in extre-me poverty than anywhere on the planet,” DFID said.
Explaining the extent of need for aid in India, Mr Mitchell will say in his speech, “More than half of girls in Madhya Pradesh don’t yet go to secondary school; more than half of the young children in Bihar are undernourished.” The aid programme in India will be concentrated on the poorest states. “We will target aid at India’s three poorest states and at the poorest people. We will invest much more in the private sector.”