thakur_ritesh
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Slightly dated article (6 months old), but worth a read on changing dynamics on flow of aid "to" India to now "from" India.
India Gives
by Shashi Tharoor
[FONT=&]The recent India-Africa summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at whichIndia's government pledged $5bn in aid to African countries, drew attention toa largely overlooked phenomenon - India's emergence as a source, ratherthan a recipient, of foreign aid.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&]For decades after independence -when Britain left the subcontinent one of the poorest and most ravaged regionson earth, with an effective growth rate of zero per cent over thepreceding two centuries - India was seen as an impoverished land of destitute people,desperately in need of international handouts. Many developed countriesshowcased their aid to India; Norway, for example, established in 1959 itsfirst-ever aid program there.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&]But, with the liberalisation ofthe Indian economy in 1991, the country embarked upon a period of dizzyinggrowth, averaging nearly eight per cent each year since then. Duringthis time, India weaned itself from dependence on aid, preferring to borrowfrom multilateral lenders and, increasingly, from commercial banks. Most foreignaid programs - with the sole exception of Britain's - have dwindled orbeen eliminated altogether.
Today, the proverbial shoe is on the other foot. Long known for its rhetoricalfaith in South-South cooperation, India has begun putting its money where onlyits mouth used to be. It has now emerged as a significant donor to developingcountries in Africa and Asia, second only to China in the range and quantity ofdevelopment assistance given by countries of the global south.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]
Money to spend[/FONT]
[FONT=&]
The Indian Technical and EconomicCooperation Program (ITEC) was established in 1964, but now has real money tooffer, in addition to training facilities and technological know-how. Nationalsfrom 156 countries have benefited from ITEC grants, which have broughtdeveloping country students to Indian universities for courses in everythingfrom software development to animal husbandry.
In addition, India has built factories, hospitals, and parliaments in variouscountries, and sent doctors, teachers, and IT professionals to treat and trainthe nationals of recipient countries. Concessional loans at trifling interestrates (between 0.25 per cent and 0.75 per cent, well below the cost ofservicing the loans) are also extended as lines of credit, tied mainly to thepurchase of Indian goods and services, and countries in Africa have beenclamouring for them.
In Asia, India remains by far the largest single donor to its neighbor Bhutan,as well as a generous aid donor to Nepal, the Maldives, Bangladesh, and Sri Lankaas it recovers from civil war. Given Afghanistan's vital importance for thesecurity of the subcontinent, India's assistance program there already amountsto more than $1.2bn - modest from the standpoint of Afghan needs, but large fora non-traditional donor - and it is set to rise further.
India's efforts in Afghanistan have focused on humanitarian infrastructure,social projects, and development of skills and capacity. Five Indian medicalmissions provide treatment and free medicines to more than 1,000 patients aday, most of them poor women and children. The Indian-built Indira GandhiCentre for Child Health in Kabul is connected through a telemedicine link withtwo specialty medical centres in India.
A million tons of Indian food assistance provides 100 grams of high-proteinbiscuits to two million of Afghanistan's six million schoolchildren, a third ofwhom are girls. Indian engineers, braving attacks that claimed several lives,built a 130 mile (218km) highway from Zaranj to Delaram in southwest Afghanistan,opening a trade route to the Iranian border. Indians braved the 3,000m heightsto run a power-transmission line from Pul-e-Khumri to Kabul - givinground-the-clock electricity to the capital for the first time since 1982. Indiais currently engaged in building the Afghan Parliament building, a visible andevocative symbol of democracy.
India has also commissioned 100 small development projects (mainlyquick-gestation, small-scale social-sector projects), and pledged further fundsfor education, health, power, and telecommunications. Of course, some inPakistan see nefarious designs behind this assistance, but the ultimateobjective is straightforward: to build indigenous Afghan capabilities foreffective governance, reflecting India's commitment to regional stability inthe face of terror and violence.
In Africa, India's strength as an aid provider is that it is not anover-developed power, but rather one whose own experience of developmentchallenges is both recent and familiar. African countries, for example, look atChina and the United States with a certain awe, but do not, for a moment,believe that they can become like either of them. India, by contrast, comesacross as a land that has faced, and is still surmounting, problems rather likethose confronting its beneficiaries. If India can do it, many Africans reason,perhaps we can learn from them.
Moreover, unlike China, India does not descend on other countries with a heavygovernmental footprint. India's private sector is a far more important player,and the government often confines itself to opening doors and letting Africancountries work with the most efficient Indian provider that they can find.
Similarly, unlike the Chinese, Indian employers do not come into a foreigncountry with an overwhelming labour force that lives in ghettoes, or imposetheir ways of doing things on aid recipients. Instead, they recruit, hire, andtrain local workers and foremen, and leave behind enhanced capacities. WhereasChina's omnipresence has provoked hostility in several African countries - a presidential candidate in Zambia even campaigned on an explicitlyanti-Chinese platform - Indian businesses have faced no such reaction in thepast two decades. Indeed, Uganda, where Idi Amin expelled Indian settlers in1972, has been actively wooing them back under President Yoweri Museveni.
Finally, India accommodates itself to aid recipients' desires, advancing fundsto African regional banks or the New Economic Partnership for Africa'sDevelopment (NEPAD). Its focus on capacity development, its accessibility, andits long record of support for developing countries have made India anincreasingly welcome donor. This could not have been imagined even 20 yearsago, and it is one of the best consequences of India's emergence as a globaleconomic power.[/FONT]
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/06/201161410198655929.html
India Gives
| In the recent India-Africa summit in Ethiopia, India emerged as a source rather than a recipient of foreign aid. |
by Shashi Tharoor
[FONT=&]The recent India-Africa summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at whichIndia's government pledged $5bn in aid to African countries, drew attention toa largely overlooked phenomenon - India's emergence as a source, ratherthan a recipient, of foreign aid.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&]For decades after independence -when Britain left the subcontinent one of the poorest and most ravaged regionson earth, with an effective growth rate of zero per cent over thepreceding two centuries - India was seen as an impoverished land of destitute people,desperately in need of international handouts. Many developed countriesshowcased their aid to India; Norway, for example, established in 1959 itsfirst-ever aid program there.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&]But, with the liberalisation ofthe Indian economy in 1991, the country embarked upon a period of dizzyinggrowth, averaging nearly eight per cent each year since then. Duringthis time, India weaned itself from dependence on aid, preferring to borrowfrom multilateral lenders and, increasingly, from commercial banks. Most foreignaid programs - with the sole exception of Britain's - have dwindled orbeen eliminated altogether.
Today, the proverbial shoe is on the other foot. Long known for its rhetoricalfaith in South-South cooperation, India has begun putting its money where onlyits mouth used to be. It has now emerged as a significant donor to developingcountries in Africa and Asia, second only to China in the range and quantity ofdevelopment assistance given by countries of the global south.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]
Money to spend[/FONT]
[FONT=&]
The Indian Technical and EconomicCooperation Program (ITEC) was established in 1964, but now has real money tooffer, in addition to training facilities and technological know-how. Nationalsfrom 156 countries have benefited from ITEC grants, which have broughtdeveloping country students to Indian universities for courses in everythingfrom software development to animal husbandry.
In addition, India has built factories, hospitals, and parliaments in variouscountries, and sent doctors, teachers, and IT professionals to treat and trainthe nationals of recipient countries. Concessional loans at trifling interestrates (between 0.25 per cent and 0.75 per cent, well below the cost ofservicing the loans) are also extended as lines of credit, tied mainly to thepurchase of Indian goods and services, and countries in Africa have beenclamouring for them.
In Asia, India remains by far the largest single donor to its neighbor Bhutan,as well as a generous aid donor to Nepal, the Maldives, Bangladesh, and Sri Lankaas it recovers from civil war. Given Afghanistan's vital importance for thesecurity of the subcontinent, India's assistance program there already amountsto more than $1.2bn - modest from the standpoint of Afghan needs, but large fora non-traditional donor - and it is set to rise further.
India's efforts in Afghanistan have focused on humanitarian infrastructure,social projects, and development of skills and capacity. Five Indian medicalmissions provide treatment and free medicines to more than 1,000 patients aday, most of them poor women and children. The Indian-built Indira GandhiCentre for Child Health in Kabul is connected through a telemedicine link withtwo specialty medical centres in India.
A million tons of Indian food assistance provides 100 grams of high-proteinbiscuits to two million of Afghanistan's six million schoolchildren, a third ofwhom are girls. Indian engineers, braving attacks that claimed several lives,built a 130 mile (218km) highway from Zaranj to Delaram in southwest Afghanistan,opening a trade route to the Iranian border. Indians braved the 3,000m heightsto run a power-transmission line from Pul-e-Khumri to Kabul - givinground-the-clock electricity to the capital for the first time since 1982. Indiais currently engaged in building the Afghan Parliament building, a visible andevocative symbol of democracy.
India has also commissioned 100 small development projects (mainlyquick-gestation, small-scale social-sector projects), and pledged further fundsfor education, health, power, and telecommunications. Of course, some inPakistan see nefarious designs behind this assistance, but the ultimateobjective is straightforward: to build indigenous Afghan capabilities foreffective governance, reflecting India's commitment to regional stability inthe face of terror and violence.
In Africa, India's strength as an aid provider is that it is not anover-developed power, but rather one whose own experience of developmentchallenges is both recent and familiar. African countries, for example, look atChina and the United States with a certain awe, but do not, for a moment,believe that they can become like either of them. India, by contrast, comesacross as a land that has faced, and is still surmounting, problems rather likethose confronting its beneficiaries. If India can do it, many Africans reason,perhaps we can learn from them.
Moreover, unlike China, India does not descend on other countries with a heavygovernmental footprint. India's private sector is a far more important player,and the government often confines itself to opening doors and letting Africancountries work with the most efficient Indian provider that they can find.
Similarly, unlike the Chinese, Indian employers do not come into a foreigncountry with an overwhelming labour force that lives in ghettoes, or imposetheir ways of doing things on aid recipients. Instead, they recruit, hire, andtrain local workers and foremen, and leave behind enhanced capacities. WhereasChina's omnipresence has provoked hostility in several African countries - a presidential candidate in Zambia even campaigned on an explicitlyanti-Chinese platform - Indian businesses have faced no such reaction in thepast two decades. Indeed, Uganda, where Idi Amin expelled Indian settlers in1972, has been actively wooing them back under President Yoweri Museveni.
Finally, India accommodates itself to aid recipients' desires, advancing fundsto African regional banks or the New Economic Partnership for Africa'sDevelopment (NEPAD). Its focus on capacity development, its accessibility, andits long record of support for developing countries have made India anincreasingly welcome donor. This could not have been imagined even 20 yearsago, and it is one of the best consequences of India's emergence as a globaleconomic power.[/FONT]
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/06/201161410198655929.html
