India

[Filo]

£200M in UK aid and they launch a probe to Mars, there's something wrong there don't you think?

[Dagenham Rover]

Very Wrong

[not on facebook]

Its going to be cut right back to 35million pounds a year very soon.

WTF are we giving them that Ffs

[BillyStubbsTears]

If only the world were that simple.

India is investing in hi-tech areas like automotive engineering and aerospace because that is how it is going to be a stronger economy in the medium term. If all they did was save the very poorest from starvation, they would always be doing that.

We give aid (about 0.01% of our GDP) to them primarily as a long term investment. When they are an economic superpower (and they will be) we want to make sure that they think favourably of the UK.

Simple politics.

[Glyn_Wigley]

If only the world were that simple.

India is investing in hi-tech areas like automotive engineering and aerospace because that is how it is going to be a stronger economy in the medium term. If all they did was save the very poorest from starvation, they would always be doing that.

We give aid (about 0.01% of our GDP) to them primarily as a long term investment. When they are an economic superpower (and they will be) we want to make sure that they think favourably of the UK.

Simple politics.

Of course, no UK companies whatsoever have benefitted from selling the technology that India has just shot at Mars...!

*sarcasm mode off*

[wilts rover]

India is a fascinating country if you ever have the opportunity to visit and it is a country of huge contrasts. They have had a space programme since 1945 and a nuclear programme since 1950. They have 21 nuclear power stations, the first one came online in 1969, with 8 more under construction and 39 planned. They are thought to hold between 90-110 nuclear weapons. They have had a film industry (Bollywood) since 1913. It has been bigger than Hollywood, for the number of films made and tickets sold, since the 1970's.

Yet it has 360 million people living on less than 35 pence per day.

The question of British Aid to India has been controversial for quite a while, hence is why it is stopping from 2015. Does the success with the space programme show that it has been used wisely - or badly? What does that organ of fairness and virtue, The Daily Mail think?

You probably know that India has a space programme. When Justine Greening, the Development Secretary, announced all aid to the country from Britain would be phased out by 2015, this was among the facts used to justify the move.
And it is a compelling one. A government that can spend £780m to boldly go where a lot of folk have gone before hardly needs a hand-out worth £200m from Britain.
India has one of the fastest growing economies in the world, is the third largest investor in the UK and the largest market for British goods outside the European Union.
No more: Development Secretary Justine Greening has announced that all aid to India from Britain will be phased out by 2015
It also has people foraging through rubbish to survive and a quarter of global child deaths, 1.6 million, in 2011. When Greening made that call, having just returned from Delhi and Bihar, she must have had to mentally obliterate her recent memory, close her eyes and think nice thoughts very hard.
On Tuesday, outside the Motera Stadium in Ahmedabad (where England and India are playing cricket this week), an old woman sifted through dried leaves and dust on the floor with her hands and a home-made brush of sticks.
Who knows what she was looking for, but it was sellable, and for India’s poorest poor where there’s muck there’s — well, not exactly brass, but the pittance required to exist.
In the film Monty Python And The Holy Grail, peasants pick through mud to eat. ‘Dennis, there’s some lovely filth down here,’ says one.
We laugh at that broad depiction of life in the Dark Ages, but the most desperate parts of India are not far removed. Still.
There may be a five-star hotel down the road, there may be a swish new airport, but there are people whose home is, literally, a tip.
So when we say we have enough problems of our own in Britain without worrying about those abroad, it is relative. We do not have the problems of an Indian slum-dweller. We do not have 360 million people living on less than 35 pence per day.
Of course, it can be argued that seven decades on from independence, with an economy predicted to reach financial superpower status outstripped by only the United States and China within 25 years, India’s government must bear full responsibility for rescuing its people.
‘If central government release one rupee for the poor, only a tenth reaches them,’ said former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, 20 years ago.
Little has changed with economic growth. Indeed, considering the strides made in the 21st century, India’s elite, the business and political class, are more venal and less interested in the fate of the poorest than ever.
In the circumstances, why should Britain facilitate their corruption?
This is fine and logical if a person can stare down at their treasury files, and ignore the realities of the lives that are passing by the window of the ministerial limousine.
Clearly Greening is made of strong stuff if she travelled India and still made that call. A third of the world’s poor ignored. More poor people than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa banished from mind.
We know what happens now.
India’s government will not fill Britain’s void. They will not suddenly start caring about children living on, and in, garbage.
Let India look after India’s own is a theory, not a reality. We know it won’t happen.
It would be equally correct to say that British parents who raise their children in squalor should change their ways without intervention from the State. But we know they won’t. So we do the decent thing.
The old woman sifting filth was beyond any help, but the next generation of slum-dwellers are not.
Now, not coming to their rescue, is a crooked, uninterested government, more excited by showy whizz-bangs than sanitation or education.
We save a few quid, a lot of people die.
We know the very sound political and economic reasons why Greening acted as she did, but to balance making it with sleeping peacefully at night? Rather her than me

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2233611/Cutting-aid-India-Glad-Im-Justine.html#ixzz2jmaMuqze

[Sprotyrover]

And here was cynical old me thinking the amount we gave in aid was directly linked to a bit of 'Palm greasing' in order to secure a multi billion pound contract to sell India Typhoon Fighters.
My theory being compounded by the fact that we only started bleating in the press the day after the Indian Government opted for the French Rafael Fighter.
Let the French do the 'Palm ' greasing not the British tax payer.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

The aid to them (I'd call it a sweetene) makes sense.

I'm sure many would agree working with Indians is not easy, as I do every day.

[BillyStubbsTears]

BFYP

What do they think about working with you? (And it should go without saying that this is a generic question, not a dig at you personally.)

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

Well as with any situation when there's a client and provider the client should get what they want out of it as agreed.

I don't think that differs whether it's a local agreement or international. But then we're into a huge debate over offshoring which has its obvious benefits and downsides. I don't mind who I work with as long as they get what is needed to be done.

[BillyStubbsTears]

BFYP

Agreed. I think the point I was making is that everyone is a product if their environment. And when you deal with people from a different environment, there will inevitably be things about their approach and behaviour that jar with you.

So, in your post, you could have replaced "Indians" with pretty much any other nationality. And you could also have said that there are positive aspects to each nationality's culture.

I'll give you a personal example. I'm currently involved in a technical project with a German partner. Not the first I've worked with. I tend to find a remorselessly logical approach from German engineers that drives me crazy. Their opinion is that engineering problems are addressed through a flow-chart approach, making logical decisions at every step. I find that a crazily inefficient approach. My own top level technical staff are encouraged to apply their own judgement to choose the most fruitful lines of inquiry.

So I find the German engineers difficult to work with. And (having seen an e-mail that one of them inadvertently cc'd to me) it appears that the German engineers find us English difficult to work with.

Different approaches. Products of their environment. Neither is "right". And in a globalised world, you either learn to see things from the other bloke's point of view, or you don't survive.

Me. If I ran the country, I would be setting compulsory courses in the study of Chinese history and society. If we are going to succeed in business with China, it'd be useful for us to know how much they despise us because of what we did to them in the Opium Wars. Being able to drop a discrete apology on that score into a conversation might well help to oil the wheels.

[RedRover45]

I find adding an extra portion of fried rice or noodles to my order helps too Billy.....

[Iberian Red]

BFYP,
Great to see you keeping old-fashioned views, traditions and morals alive!
A country more populous than the whole of Europe,they don't work like you do! Shame on them.
As Jerry Dammers penned,"he's just a sterotype"
Wiser than both of us.