"Since 2007 India has been the world's largest recipient of recorded remittances from abroad. In 2010 these inflows were worth $54bn (£35bn). UK foreign direct investment in India is considerable, reaching £1.8bn in the same year."
You can't really on the one hand claim your country is terribly poor, and needs handouts from other nations, and on the other play at being spacemen.
Thankfully the UK will stop sending foreign aid to India in 2015.
... and you can't really post on HN without showing some basic common sense.
FYI: "International remittances" is NOT foreign aid. It is money sent to India by Indians working abroad.
Foreign direct investment is NOT foreign aid. It is non-Indians buying Indian stocks.
Please read up on these before you criticize. Your bigotry is too obvious.
BTW: India has asked UK to stop the aid. Plus, any aid that UK does send should be considered a payment for all the stuff they looted from India (and the Indian lives lost fighting for UK in WW2).
Many countries including Britain seem to me to get their priorities wrong. India certainly does when one sees the wretched and disgusting (not strong enough!) way in which so many people are forced to live by being deprived of services which have perforce to be supplied by the state.
My problem is with the assumption that this miniscule amount of "aid" is somehow significant.
Do realize that when countries give "aid", it is often more for domestic reasons. This "aid" comes with all sorts of strings attached, and benefits the donor country more than the recipient.
Case in point: US military aid to Israel comes right back to the US in the form of weapons purchases from Lockheed, Grumman, Boeing, etc. In other countries, donor countries stipulate that the aid be used to purchase things from the donor country only; or expensive "consultants" are hired to manage the aid, depriving any benefit to the recipient.
Where are you quoting that from? It is not good form to give a quote without a link. And you make a quote and come to a conclusion about aid. Btw, the UK aid to India is £280m.
Edit - Probably this one - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/18/uk-aid-india
Read the article again properly.
The point stands though. Whether it's billions or millions, it's still a ton of money which we shouldn't be giving them in aid.
France.
Do you want to guess what number 8 is? Germany. Are these poor countries? Are remittances "international aid"? No, not necessarily. They're just an example of extended families spread out across different countries sending different parts of the family money. Should we begrudge France or Germany their remittances? Or their space programs?
"More Indian investment comes to the UK than to the rest of the EU combined. There are over 900 Indian companies in the UK, with Tata being the largest manufacturing employer across the whole country."
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/danny-alexander-visits-in...
Tata Motors also owns Jaguar and Land Rover...
Even if India needed/wanted international aid (see other comments) we are talking about investing 1/1000 of that money into giving jobs to skilled engineers and scientists (and others). Helping poor countries doesn't mean just feeding poor people, it means to give the possibility for development.
I find very offensive treating international aids as if recipients are helpless beggars that deserve that should be grateful and stay put.
I believe this is the bigger question about international aid. It should enable development, not increase assistentialism.
There are similar parallels with internal welfare systems in many countries. Help shouldn't be cut off as soon as someone reaches the limit of poverty, because there is little incentive to cross that barrier.
Personally, I don't think people should pay for other peoples mistakes, even if they happen to be born in the same country.
When any side feels the dominant emotion of 'loss', it makes it do selfish things to avoid future losses. But that extracts more losses from the other side and so the cycle can continue.
In the light of all that history, which current Indians being on the receiving side remember more than the British, any help the British give to India is at least perceived by India in a positive way.
As to the extent of the monetary help - its effect is limited by the ability of the recipient to absorb it. For analogy, YC reduced the investment into each startup down from $150k as it made things worse, not better.
On the other hand, I think the stopping of state aid to a country should be celebrated as a positive thing - a "graduation", if you like.
I wish India the best in its effort to the future and a better life to all of their people. It by their own big dreams and achievements they will create a great and shining civilization (they already has)
Let your light shine through the world, and dont listen to the bullies; it's pure envy
Besides, I suspect that except in cases of natural disasters, most aid in general is a not-so-subtle bribe to buy influence. We can see front-pages demonstration of these facts quite often, all you have to do is follow the itinerary of John Kerry.....
As for remittance, I think you have misunderstood the meaning of the word. So let's ignore that part of your outburst.