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India has more poor people than sub- saharan Africa

July 20, 2010 By

This heading has preoccupied Current Affairs and News programmes at the BBC over the last two weeks and in case you missed it all here are some facts as I understood them for you.

  1. India receives in excess of £300M in AID  from the British tax payer- this despite the fact that India has its own Foreign AID programme as well as a Space programme
  2. the reason why it gets the AID mentioned above, several districts in India are much poorer than DR Congo and other sub- Saharan Africa
  3. the poor districts in India rank so low on the human development indices
  4. 43% of Indian children are Malnourished and the charity Save the Children is faces a mammoth task of feeding them

But why is this? Why is India this poor  and yet elsewhere it is deemed as an emergerging economy on par with China. The Indian diaspora wherever in the world they be appear to be doing very well and much better than their African counterparts

Is it a case of bad policies which mean that wealth is not spread all over India?

The moral question that the panel on the BBC’s Moral Maze had to answer was whether India should continue to receive the UK tax payer’s  money if it is indeed doing that well?

I have never been to India and as such I am not familiar with how society is organized there or how it functions so I am not I am able to speak with any authority on these issues.

If you have knowledge of Indian affairs I would be grateful for some enlightenment here as I am on the side of the coin that says India is not a poor country

Filed Under: International Policy Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Questions about AID to Africa

January 22, 2010 By

I would like to invite readers fo this blog to debate issue surrounding AID to Africa. AID  has been flowing into Africa for as long as many of us can remember. However parts of Africa remain desparately poor.

My question is/are

  1. Why is that?
  2. Is AID  the best way to lift Africa out of poverty
  3. How much does the ordinary citizen of any given Western world really understand about AID
  4. Have you got a view about AID to Africa?

What are your views on this matter?

Filed Under: AID Tagged With: ,

International development according to the Conservatives

July 28, 2009 By

I came across this article over at The Guardian’s Katine Chronicles and it sums up what a Conservative government would do about International Development.

Of all the proposals /promises this is the one that caught my eye

setting up an independent aid watchdog to scrutinise the impact and outcomes of British aid – “sunlight is the best disinfectant”, says the paper, when it comes to cleaning up aid

The reason for this is that I strongly believe that without effective monitoring of where AID money goes whole chunks of the population in the developing world will continue to miss out. This has been pointed out several times in all sorts of publications and hopefully this is the start of things to come.

I recently became aware that whilst the British Government favours handing over money to the developing world leaders to allocate as they see fit the American approach differs in that it is project based, meaning that grants are paid to a specific project.

I am can’t quite make up my mind which of the systems is better for a number of reasons, the British way removes the paternalistic approach but then again is open to abuse as there isn’t any guarantee that it will be spent on the things that locals consider to be a priority.

On the other hand the US system, ensures that there is something to show for the money but I do wonder how the projects are decided on and how much of a say the locals have?

I would welcome your views on this!

Going back to the Conservatives, they have  been involved in Project Umubano down in Rwanda in fact David Cameron paid the folk on the ground a visit back in 2007 .  A little while ago I met  a Conservative Councillor that is heavily involved in this project and travels to Rwanda frequently.  I do hope hope that this experience has been used to inform their policy. As the only way to to learn about what works in the field of International Development is by working alongside the people at receiving end of the policy and AID.

Would a Conservative government draw on their experience in Rwanda when formulating their International policy?The jury is still out on this!

Filed Under: Development Policy, Good Practice Tagged With: , , , , ,