Britain’s support programme to India is fragmented, lacks a transparent rationale and does little to counter the adverse tendencies in human rights and democracy within the nation, the federal government’s support watchdog has discovered.

The findings are probably for use by those that declare the UK authorities dangers utilizing its support programme to deepen its relationship with India, together with in search of free commerce offers, fairly than making an attempt to scale back poverty, which is the statutory goal of UK support.

The evaluation by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact mentioned the federal government spent £2.7bn on support to India between 2016 and 2021, together with the availability of loans by the government-run British International Investment to primarily smaller firms. In complete, loans to India symbolize 28% of the BII world mortgage portfolio.

The evaluation finds “the overall programme is fragmented across activities and spending channels and lacks a compelling development rationale”, significantly since India already has comparatively developed monetary markets.

The UK doesn’t use its support programme, enshrined in a joint roadmap signed by India and the UK in 2021, to assist Indian democracy and human rights, regardless of backsliding on this space beneath the premiership of Narendra Modi, the evaluation says.

The ICAI evaluation group reported: “To explain the limited activity on democracy and human rights, Foreign Office officials noted India’s acute sensitivity to any external influence in its political affairs, particularly from the UK. They acknowledged that the UK and India have different perspectives in this area and described the roadmap as being based on shared interests, rather than shared values. They informed us that the UK engages in ‘quiet diplomacy’ on issues such as freedom of speech.”

On human rights the report finds the 2021 roadmap setting out India and the UK’s joint cooperation targets “does not include any objectives related to the promotion of democracy or human rights in India” and provides that “the UK has not been particularly active in India in this area in recent years, either in its aid programme or in its public diplomacy”.

The report says: “There is little or no programming related to democratic space, free media or human rights. UK funding for Indian NGOs working on civil society issues has been largely discontinued. In fact, internal UK documents reviewed by ICAI suggest that behind-the-scenes diplomacy in this area is also quite limited. A number of Indian NGOs we consulted for this review expressed concerns that the UK was prioritising good relations with the Indian government over human rights.”

The report says it isn’t satisfied that BII’s massive India portfolio is making a robust contribution to inclusive development and poverty discount, with lots of its investments offering advantages to middle-class customers fairly than the poor. One BII research discovered solely 30% of these benefiting belonged to the underside 60% of India’s inhabitants by earnings. One main funding in an Indian financial institution, supposed to increase monetary providers for the poor, actually led primarily to enlargement of the financial institution’s bank card enterprise and company lending.

The evaluation discovered the programmes have been nicely managed and the emphasis on local weather breakdown, particularly within the Indian energy sector, made sense given the dimensions of India’s carbon emissions.

The UK overhauled its support programme to India in 2011 in response to the enlargement of India’s economic system and falling charges of utmost poverty. A decade in the past, India was the most important recipient of UK bilateral grant support, with annual funding peaking at £421m in 2010, however that determine fell to £95m in 2020.

A Foreign Office spokesperson mentioned: “Since 2015 the UK has given no financial aid to the government of India. Most of our funding now is focused on business investments which help create new markets and jobs for the UK, as well as India. UK investments are also helping tackle shared challenges such as climate change.”