India's former foreign minister and leader of the opposition BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), Yashwant Sinha, called on the UK to withdraw its aid money stating that India did not need "that kind of assistance or advice".
Welcoming the Indian finance minister's comments that UK aid was "peanuts" relative to India's overall budget, Sinha said,
“You can tell the British public from our side that they can keep their money, use it for their own welfare, or divert it to some other country which is in greater need.”
“[Aid] gives an opportunity to those countries who are giving us small sums of money to be sanctimonious in their approach, ‘India should do this, India should do that’. We don’t need that kind of assistance or advice,”
“There are problems in the UK and US but we are not rushing there with our aid saying, ‘We will fix it for you’.”
“We have malnourished children, we have disease, we have poverty but these are our problems and we should fix them.”
“We are producing so much food that we have run short of hessian bags and storage. Malnutrition is not because we don’t have resources.”
