India tells UK to turn off the aid tap | Hacker News Reader

India tells UK to turn off the aid tap

aidwatchers.com

21 pointscwan16 comments

The way UK aid works is terrible. On the one hand we're told there's no money in the treasury, yet on the other we're handing out money to countries with faster growing economies, space programs and a questionable need.

I'm glad India at least had the gumption to stand up and tell us where to shove our aid, that £3.3 billion is much better in our pockets.

If you read right until the end you'll see it was just a PR stunt. They knew we were going to cut their aid anyway...

The foreign office, treasury and overseas development ministries have been hinting for 6 months or so it was going to go.

Given the mess we've helped create/worsen in Afghanistan and the destabilising effect that has had on the already shaky Pakistan a retargeting of aid did make sense. It benefits India as well as a more stable Afghanistan/Pakistan will lower their security/military costs.

The recent delegation to India spoke of swapping aid for trade, something both countries need. They need our luxury goods (whiskey) and high tech engineering (satellites) and we need cheap manufactured plastic crap and indian students to go to our universities.

In that chart, there's a dip below zero for one of the nations (Japan). How does someone give negative aid? They asked for money back?

Japan's foreign aid to India is mostly in the form of loans, so it's unsurprising that there could be a year where the repayments outweighed new loans.

Oh, that makes sense. I never thought about loans. Is this a common arrangement? I had this image of aid being counted as money given away, not loaned.

These loan 'aid' is very common, although thankfully is becoming (too slowly) less common. This is what landed many 3rd world countries in major problems in that the money given didn't stimulate their economy (for reasons we won't go into) enough to cover repayments.

India on the other hand has a fast growing economy, which means it can more easily afford the loan payments. So for a country like India these 'loan aids' are likely much less harmful than for a country like Sudan.

"Nice country you've got here... be a shame if something were to happen to it."

I wonder what the relation is between this story and the upcoming Dehli Commonwealth Games. I'm sure there's an element of "putting up a front", in a similar way to China spray painting their grass green and building walls around their poor for the Olympics.

3.3 billion over a decade... What a niggardly sum. Makes the U.S. look SO generous by comparison!

And after they exploited us for like 200 years.

The railways the Empire built in India are a damn sight better than the ones BR built here!

Did BR actually build many railways? I thought they mostly closed existing ones that had been built by private companies in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

1948 BR was formed from the Big Four [1] but they themselves were formed from the merging of many smaller operators over the preceding 50 years or so (if I remember correctly)

TBH BR performed reasonably well given investment until they were sold off into the private sector where productivity of staff and reliability slowly started to decline. This was matched be an increase in use so it's hard to see if the sell off caused the problems.

In the 1970's BR designed and prototyped a high speed leaning train but government funding was withdrawn because of fears that 'britain can't manufacture anymore'. The start of the end IMHO.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four_British_railway_compan...

All right, but apart from the railways, what has the Empire ever done for us?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso

Reply on news.ycombinator.com