The British Government is standing by its commitment of £1.2-billion aid to India over a four-year period, as it came under increasing pressure to justify the same following India's decision to choose the Dassault Aviation's Rafale for the $10-billion fighter aircraft contract.

“We will not be in India for ever but now is not the time to quit,” the International Development Secretary, Mr Andrew Mitchell, said on Monday. “Our completely revamped programme is in India's and Britain's national interest and is a small part of a much wider relationship between the two countries.”

Britain's decision last year to maintain aid to India “while cutting it from Russia and China, as well as countries near the bottom of the UNDP Human Development Index such as Niger and Burundi” faced criticism, particularly from within the Conservative Party.

Defends decision

In the early stages, the criticisms centred on whether at a time of austerity measures and cut backs to public services, such support should be given to one of the world's most powerful economies. The British government has repeatedly defended that decision, including in a Parliamentary debate on aid to India at the end of January. A recent review had made it clear that the country could “achieve real results for poor people in India,” said Mr Stephen O'Brian, a Minister within the Department for International Development, estimating that 2.3 million people had been brought out of poverty in rural India as a result.

Increased scrutiny

Following the IAF fighter aircraft deal announcement last week, the aid programme has come under increasing scrutiny again. “Given the long relationship between India and Britain and given that we give many times more aid to India than France ever did, will the Prime Minister engage himself and the full force of the Government in attempting to reverse that decision?,” the Conservative MP, Mr David Davis, asked the Prime Minister, Mr David Cameron, in Parliament last week.

Some MPs have gone further, urging the government to reconsider the programme.

Adding further fuel to the debate was an article in Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper, pointing to a comment made by the Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, in the Rajya Sabha last year, in which he described Britain's aid as “a peanut.” “We do not require the aid,” he said, according to the article, citing an official transcript of the session.

India had been keen to end the aid programme, but had been persuaded to maintain it by British officials, the article said. “They said that British Ministers had spent political capital justifying the aid to their electorate,' the paper quoted an unnamed source as saying, adding that it would be “highly embarrassing,” if the programme ended.

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