Does India Still Need Our Support?

 
Across the world, people look to Britain for leadership on international development. We should hold our heads high in the knowledge that when future generations judge us, they will do so against the simple fact that they have inherited a more peaceful and prosperous world.

There’s been a lot of discussion about whether it’s time for Britain to stop giving aid to India. It’s an argument that has fuelled heated debate on both sides. One thing on which we can all agree is that the pace of India’s transformation has been remarkable. Yet, despite its phenomenal growth, India remains home to one third of the world’s poorest people.

Or to put it another way, 350 million of India’s people – around six times the population of the UK – woke up this morning knowing they had less than 80p to see them through the day. That’s more people than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, by the way. 

Those who want to end our aid programme in India argue that India is perfectly capable of helping its own poor. To some extent they’re right. India has made huge strides in tackling poverty in recent years: getting 60 million children into school and helping to keep the country free from new cases of polio for a whole year.

But, while these are encouraging signs, to suggest that India no longer needs our help is manifestly wrong. India is still a poor country. Without our support, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people will die for lack of simple immunisation, vaccination or healthcare.

Support, however, does not mean open-ended commitment. No one is suggesting that we give aid to India indefinitely. My department has ‘Development’ in its title for a reason. We’re not in the business of giving perpetual handouts to poor countries: we’re about helping them to develop, to achieve lasting growth and to make that vital transition out of poverty. When countries can support themselves, we withdraw.

We’ve already pulled out of China and Russia, and over the next few years we’ll withdraw from 14 other countries. When the time is right, we’ll withdraw from India too. That time, however, is not here yet. India may be on the road to self-sufficiency but there is still some way to go. The average British income remains more than 28 times that of India. So, instead of cutting our aid, we’ve refocused our efforts – freezing the budget and concentrating on the poorest people in three of India’s poorest states.

We’re also encouraging more private investment so that we can help families, especially women and girls, to get the education, nutrition, skills and jobs that will lift them out of poverty. Of course, this is all part of a much wider debate on aid. In the current financial climate we shouldn’t be surprised that people have concerns about aid, especially when the line between fact and fiction has become somewhat blurred. On average, for example, people think we spend up to 20 per cent of our overall budget on overseas aid. The truth is a far more modest one per cent.

Over the next four years, that one per cent will save the lives of 50,000 women in pregnancy and childbirth; stop a quarter of a million newborn babies dying needlessly; vaccinate more children against preventable diseases than there are people in the whole of England; provide access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation to more people than there are in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; help 10 million more women access modern family planning.

These are just some of the results British aid will deliver. We can say this with confidence because we’ve put in place the strongest safeguards to ensure the taxpayer gets value for money. We have teams on the ground tracking our projects and use other mechanisms, for example payment on results, that mean we don’t pay out until we’ve seen schools have been built or hospitals equipped.

We’ve set up an independent watchdog to monitor how money is spent and we publish details on DFID’s website of all spend over £500. None of this makes for a great headline but it does have the merit of being true.

Another common misconception is that people don’t want their money spent on overseas aid. In fact, polling shows that the vocal minority who speak out against aid are not representative of the British public as a whole. Ultimately, the truth is that aid isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s also in our own interests, helping us to build safe and open societies and to stop war, disease and unchecked migration before they reach our shores.