Cut in aid will affect India — Desai

Washington: Deputy Prime Minister Morarji Desai suggested that a shift of US resources from foreign aid to domestic needs should not obscure the longer- term responsibility to two- thirds of the world’s population which lives far below poverty levels in the country.

In prepared remarks to a National Press Club luncheon here. Desai, in an obvious reference to reductions in US foreign aid and International Development Association funds, said that the climate for international aid “affects us in our present phase of development more acutely than we wish it did.”

India, he said, did not have a “natural right” to complain that foreign aid “is not forthcoming in the amount or in a manner which our needs might justify”.

It also fully understood that at certain times it was natural for people of a country to become “entirely preoccupied with their own problems”.

Domestic needs were the first charge, on the resources of the government, Desai said.

“In today’s climate in the area of international economic cooperation, the essential question is whether or not the more affluent countries of the world recognise that they have any responsibility for the two- thirds of their fellow men who are at an average level of income which is about a 20th of what is considered as the poverty level in the most affluent part of the globe.”

He said India was bearing its burdens mostly on its own shoulders and would continue to do so.

India expected reasonably good crops this year and was developing projects designed to raise domestic production of fertilisers.

“Progress had likewise been encouraging in family planning exports and industry,” he said.