Thaindian News

New Delhi, Apr 24 (ANI): The fact that Britain, which is struggling to emerge from recession, has been donating money for projects to improve the economic condition of Indian states like Madhya Pradesh, despite the latter is booming and is a large aid donor itself, is beginning to raise concerns.

India had reportedly donated 320 million pounds for programmes in 40 countries last year, and is also spending a billion pound on aircraft carriers sending a probe to Mars.

Despite that, Britain had given 45 million pounds to India for a scheme that planted a biofuel crop in the Satpura hills in Madhya Pradesh. However, the biofuel crop had resulted in food-poisoning children there.

In Chiklia, and in the other villages along its rocky valley, the jatropha sprouts in giant plantations, rooted in pits 2 feet deep, were dug by the villagers, but they now say that they could prove dangerous for living beings.

“This stuff is a menace. The wood is useless. Cattle can’t eat it because it’s highly poisonous, and that means that after the monsoon, when these hills turn green, we have to keep our animals away from what used to be good grazing. The plants also spread very fast. The wind blows the seed pods and it creeps into our wheat fields,” the Daily Mail quoted one of the villagers, as saying.

Meanwhile, reports have surfaced that very few Indians are actually aware of the British aid in the region.

“Very few people even know that Britain is still giving aid to India, and those that do are surprised it is continuing,” Chandan Mitra, a member of the upper house of Parliament for Madhya Pradesh, said.

“Most Indians think of ourselves as aid donors, not recipients. So when the news broke that the issue of foreign aid spending was causing a row in Britain, we were mostly amused, because in Indian terms, the amount you give is too small to make a real difference. We don’t want to sound ungracious. But India could do without it. That pretty much sums up our attitude: indifference,” he added.

Amid reports that the Indian Space Research Organisation would soon send its first probe to Mars, and by 2015 the country hopes to become only the fourth to launch its own manned spacecraft, Britain’s International Development Secretary’s pledged in February to give India 280 million pounds every year until 2015, has come under the scanner.

Andrew Mitchell, however, justified his stand by saying that India’s development has so far been uneven, and its three most deprived states - Orissa, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh - contain more people below the poverty line than all sub-Saharan Africa and, therefore, Britain will be ‘tightly focused’ on the poorest in those states. (ANI)