Has the British public turned against India?

The BBC’s Question Time programme is frequently like an unruly rabble of children arguing in front of a cheering mob. Thursday night, one of the questions posed on the show was why international aid should be paid to India when India is spending it’s own money on fighter jets. Both the Tories and opposition Labour agreed Britain should continue to help the world’s poorest, but they weren’t hitting the public mood. This started when a member of the audience asked the question: “Why does India need all our foreign aid when it’s got several billion pounds to spend on French fighter jets?” The $ 15bn Rafale aircraft deal   has struck a nerve with the British public — not for the first time — about why India needs help. Alan Duncan, Conservative MP and international development minister, gave a very forceful defence. He said: “India is the most difficult country to decide whether we give aid for that reason. I think we’re right to be spending the money we’re spending. They’re on the way up — yes they have some billionaires, yes they have defensive weapons. If you take the three poorest states, there are more of the poorest people there than you have in the whole of subsaharan Africa. You can ignore them if you want because they have a nuclear weapon and want to buy some fighter jets.” “If you ignore them, the world is never ever going to get anywhere near meeting the Millennium Development Goals. It would mean that hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of people will die who could otherwise live on the back of vaccinations and food. We do not link aid to trade.” [caption id=“attachment_203803” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“AFP”]  [/caption] “We want countries to be able to live by their own means. In due course we will come out of India because it is on an upward path and we should be very pleased that that’s the trajectory they’re on.” That set off Emma Boon, campaign director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, a right-wing “rent-a-quote” organisation used by media in the UK whenever they need someone to question public spending and previously praised by the Tea Party group in the US. I’ve used them myself for quick and easy quotes — check this page to see how easy it is to generate a quote. But she knows the public mood. To enthusiastic applause, she said: “The government in India is making the choice to spend money on a space programme, on fighter jets, when the Indian government could make a choice to spend its money on its own people. Why are we paying?” Labour MP Sidiq Khan replied that the UK is a “just, generous and fair society” and lives were being saved. But, “Of course it would be far better if the Indian government was saving these lives, but they’re not. In the meantime, children are dying.” The loudest applause and even cheers at one point came for former CBI director and now House of Lords member Digby Jones when he talked about “fairness”. “YOU,” pointing to the audience, “are paying Bernie Ecclestone to have a grand prix in Delhi.” “All this money sent abroad when they need help — who’s going to help us?” asked a woman in the audience, to which a young man replied, “You mean when we need help paying our Sky TV bill?” As I said, Question Time descends into bitter arguments every week, but this one was surprisingly hostile towards foreign aid, despite ever increasing numbers of donations by the British public when there are natural disasters or celebrity TV appeals such as Comic Relief. When times are tough, you see countries pull apart more and incredible excuses for selfishness and even more corruption as everyone scraps over the crumbs. Those in the right are in their element at the moment, as governments and opposition movements hit out at all spending, frequently to the benefit of their own business connections. Fiscal responsibility is a good thing, but when it drifts into an almost isolationist and libertarian “ignore everybody else”, you get problems. Aid is not perfect — in fact, it’s deeply flawed and Dambisa Moyo rightly pointed out in the book Dead Aid that many countries have become trapped by developmental aid. However, that is not an excuse to say we ignore those worse off than ourselves. The UK ignores its own elderly neighbours, sometimes for years, so it’s open for debate whether we can lecture anyone about prioritising those in need, particularly compared to war machines. Britain’s politicians last night had to defend giving aid to India to the British public, and they didn’t really win, based on the audience of Question Time. India though could, perhaps, do a better job explaining how the aid is helping, or offer more effective alternatives. The one undeniable fact is that there are still millions of people living in poverty. As yet, neither UK aid, nor Indian fighter jets, have managed to solve that problem.