End of UK Aid to India Divides Opinion (The Guardian)
Director of Global Health Policy and Senior Fellow Amanda Glassman is quoted in a piece from The Guardian on the importance of British aid in public health and education efforts.
Playing down Britain's decision, India's president, Pranab Mukherjee, a former finance minister, described the £280m annual aid programme as "peanuts", totalling less than 0.03% of India's national income.
Since 2007 India has been the world's largest recipient of recorded remittances from abroad. In 2010 these inflows were worth $54bn (£35bn). UK foreign direct investment in India is considerable, reaching £1.8bn in the same year.
With that kind of money flowing India's way, opponents of aid to India question why Britain, undergoing its own belt-tightening, should send money to a country that has enjoyed high economic growth and has its own aid and space programmes.
Yet the "India shining" image co-exists with massive poverty. India is home to a third of the world's people living on less than $1.25 a day – more than all the poor in sub-Saharan Africa. India's poverty rate, although falling, was 37% in 2008, the most recent year for which figures were available.
Amanda Glassman, director of global health policy at the Centre for Global Development, a US-based thinktank, acknowledged that British aid for India was small in absolute terms, but said it could still make a big difference, especially in India's poorest states.
"If in the poorest states most of the budget goes on pensions or salaries of civil servants, a donor's small amount of money for health or education can make a large difference," she said.
"It is worthwhile investing in vaccinations to prevent the spread of infectious diseases," she added. "Only 44% of children under five are fully vaccinated. Aid money could be used to leverage higher vaccination rates."
