SIR - By now, regrettably, the world and his wife (certainly the writer) recognise the link your correspondent, D. Hodgson, makes between the aid given to India over 10 years and the cost of the airport in Delhi, as justification for stopping UK aid policy around the world (T&A, November18).

Similarly, his picking out the Indian space programme to further validate his no nonsense, no-aid stance (as if it were a plaything of the Indian rich, who conduct round the block trips to the moon at the British taxpayers expense), ridiculing the idea of British government “Trade for Aid” along the way.

The airport and the space program both earn valuable foreign exchange for the Indian government.

This is better than setting small children to work weaving carpets, reclaiming heavy metals from electronic components, loading donkeys at brick kilns or some other low tech task they might do to survive, but not enough to remove the need for international aid to a country of 1.2 billion (or any other country) whose population live in poverty, except in D Hodgson’s privileged monochrome world. “Are there no prisons?....and the Union workhouses?” As for the UK £1.5tr. debt, he unfailingly mentions, how are austerity politics improving this?

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