Britain begged India to accept aid money: Telegraph
05 Feb 2012, 10:46 AM
Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee last year asked the UK to cease giving aid to the country’s booming economy, but relented after being begged to take the money for fear of “grave political embarrassment”, reports the UK’s Telegraph newspaper.
“We do not require the aid. It is a peanut in our total development exercises [expenditure],” Mukherjee told the upper house of Indian parliament, during question time, adding that the government wanted to give it up.
India is the top recipient of UK foreign aid, according to the Telegraph expose. The UK has given £1 billion in aid to India in the last five years and has earmarked a further £600 million in aid by 2015.
Projects from Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) are mired in controversy, reports the Telegraph. They include a £118,000 program to install satellite tracking on municipal buses in Bhopal – years before the technology was used in the UK – and program to deliver 7000 televisions to schools despite the lack of electricity.
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