Aid to India

Three little snippets on the aid we pay to India:

Mark Williams in the comments at St John of Redwood: If Mr Brown wants to know how we can pay for a cut in duty the answer is simple. The Indian and Chinese governments pay billions to subsidise the price of oil in their own countries - i.e. to maintain/stimulate demand. Yet we, who pay billions in taxes supposed to reduce demand here, are sending £1 billion a year in aid to India.

Remittance Man: While doing a bit of Wiki-surfing I discover that India has provided Afghanistan with quite a sizeable chunk of development aid since 2001. $650-750 million worth to be precise... But it does beg the question: If India can afford to give her neighbours international aid on this sort of scale, why is India listed as one of the biggest recipients of British aid on the DfID website? Just asking.

Snafu: Why should Britain commit £252m to save the lives of 1 million Indian children each year when India would rather spend $3.3bn on its space programme?

As an accountant, once I've netted all this off and done the contra entries, it strikes me that the amount of aid we should be sending to India, should be in the order of ... er ... zero.