UK likely to cut foreign aid to 'rich' India

H S Rao and Prasun Sonwalkar
London, Jul 11 (PTI) Under pressure to reduce its
foreign assistance, Prime Minister David Cameron may scale
down the 250 million-pound British aid given to India
annually, saying wealthy local people could do more to help
their poor countrymen.
International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell
has signalled that the "250 million pounds of public money
spent annually on nuclear-armed India could be scaled back."
He said the rich NRI population of Britain could do
more to help their countrymen.
Besides, the 40 million pounds spent by the Department
for International Development (DFID) in Vietnam, now regarded
as an Asian "tiger" economy, will be axed.
It follows the disclosure that development funding to
China and Russia would be withdrawn.
Mitchell told The Sunday Times: "India is more complex
and more difficult than China. But this is a (aid) programme I
am looking at in detail."
He defended the government's decision to ring-fence
overseas aid while most other departments face savage cuts.
Last month, Britain, shocked by reports of massive
embezzlement in India in the use of millions of pounds granted
as aid for 'sarva-shiksha abhiyan', promised "zero tolerance
to corruption" and launched an "immediate inquiry".
Mitchell had then said in a statement to PTI that the
allegations reported from India about widespread corruption in
the use of British aid were "shocking".
"These are shocking allegations. I have launched an
immediate inquiry to ensure British aid money has not been
misused. The new British Government will have a zero tolerance
policy to corruption," he had said.
"When I took up this job ... I made a pledge to
British taxpayers; they must know that for every pound of
their money, we will get 100 pence of value."
Cutting foreign aid to countries like India was the
most important suggestion by voters to Chancellor George
Osborne, who launched a Treasury's Spending Challenge website
to ask people for ideas on where the funding cuts axe should
fall.
As hundreds of suggestions poured in, the most popular
was for international development funding to bear some of the
brunt of the pain.

Jo Johnson, a Conservative MP and brother of London
Mayor Boris Johnson, wrote in The Financial Times: "India can
now fund its own development needs, considerable though they
are in a country with 450 million poor. It has a defence
budget of USD 31.5 billion, plans for a prestige- boosting
moon-shot and a substantial foreign aid programme of its own".
He added: "India is not China; but as a claimant to a
permanent Security Council seat and a place at the top table
of world affairs, it is also no longer a natural aid
recipient".
Johnson wrote that nowhere was the need to bring the
India-UK relationship up to date more obvious than in the area
of aid.
"The moral arguments might be finely balanced, but
common sense suggests it is a better idea for the UK to
prioritise aid to countries that cannot afford to fund their
development over those that take the money because it is going
free. Many other donors have in recent years either been
kicked out of India for being too small or, like the US, whose
aid flows peaked in 1960, stated they are 'walking the last
mile' in India.
"The UK accounts for almost 30 per cent of all foreign
aid to India. A bit of tough love in the new special
relationship should end this anachronism," he said.
As the government announced average cuts of 25 per
cent in spending over five years under plans to tackle the
UK's record deficit, only the health service and foreign aid
have been told they are safe from the reductions. PTI PS
KAB