Hacker News Reader

Comment by discardorama | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

... 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).

View on HN

"Thankfully the UK will stop sending foreign aid to India in 2015". You seem to have a problem with this simple wish but perhaps you can explain what it is? Do you think aid should continue (in spite of India's request) or that the UK should stop. BTW we can read negatives without capitalization.

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.

> You seem to have a problem with this simple wish but perhaps you can explain what it is?

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.

As stated elsewhere, foreign aid from the UK to india is £280m. But I'm glad that's such a miniscule amount to you.

India's budget for this year is ~ $270B. So this "aid" from Britain (most of which would be absorbed by British charities buying British goods and hiring British consultants anyways) amounts to about 0.1% of the budget. Sounds pretty miniscule to me; and in terms of impact, would have roughly the same effect as a flea jumping on an elephant.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Union_budget_of_India

Reply on news.ycombinator.com