India to ok aid from UK, built Statue of Unity: Daily mail

Mangalore Today News Network

Ahmedabad, No 05, 2018 : The controversy over the Statue of Unity has reached overseas, with British media now upset that India was given more than one billion pounds in aid in the years that it was spending a lavish amount of money on erecting the world’s tallest statue, Yahoonews reported.

 

In a caustic article published by The Daily Mail, in which it tore into India’s decision to pour funds into the statue, it wrote that official figures show that in the 56 months it took to construct the 330 million pound Statue of Unity, UK taxpayers donated 1.17 billion pounds to India.

“As the cash rolled in from Britain, the Indian authorities poured billions of rupees into building the 597 foot tall bronze likeness of Sardar Patel, one of the heroes of India’s independence movement”, the article said.


According to the figures, the article went on to state that the UK had given India 300 million pounds in 2012, when the erection of the statue had begun.

The Daily Mail further claimed that in 2013, 268 million pounds more was given and 278 million in 2014. In 2015, the amount given was 185 million and smaller amounts followed.

It seems that the media is not the only one upset by what they see as squandering the UK taxpayers’ money.

Tory MP Peter Bone told The Daily Mail on Thursday, 1 November: “To take £1.1 billion in aid from us and then at the same time spend £330 million on a statue is a total nonsense and it is the sort of thing that drives people mad.”

The MP went on to say that the statue showed that UK did not need to give money to the nation which could afford to build this statue.

“What it proves is that we should not be giving money to India. It is up to them how they spend their money but if they can afford this statue, then it is clearly a country we should not need to be giving aid to”, he said.

The article further went on to say that while India had not directly spent the aid money on the statue, it went towards funding projects India could have afforded itself had it not been lavishing funds on the memorial. It also noted that India gives out more aid than it receives despite dealing with problems in disease and healthcare.