''Britain is a third-rate power nursing illusions of grandeur of its colonial past. It created Kashmir when it divided India. Now it wants to give us a solution.''
 
These were the words that an exasperated IK Gujral used just before the Queen landed in India for her official state visit in the year 1997. Of course, Gujral, who was then prime minister, later withdrew his remarks. But the feeling was clear. India was not going to accept third party mediation over the Kashmir or any other issue it considered an internal problem.
 
India’s recent decision to choose France’s Rafale jet over a combined European consortium’s Eurofighter aircraft has severely dented ties between the two nations. British members of parliament are clamouring to cut off aid to India. Peter Bone, a Tory MP, even went to the extent of remarking, “What on earth do they know about cricket and curries?” -- the assumption being that defence tech would be the last thing poor Indians are supposed to have any expertise in. Even the newspapers aren’t far behind with The Sun running a sustained campaign asking the British government to cut off aid to India.
 
Britain gave India over $280 million in 2010 in government-to-government aid and has committed over 1.2 billion over the next four years.  But does India really need ‘aid’ from Britain?
 
“No,” says former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal. “It is childish on the part of the British MPs to try and link aid with an arms deal. They have to understand the implications before making such remarks,” he told Governance Now on Monday.

Asked if stopping aid would affect India, the veteran diplomat said, “They are trying to bribe us.” Sibal also said that Britain was offering aid voluntarily. “The money they give us is negligible. If they want to cut aid, it should not affect us,” he added.
 
Sibal echoed the words of the incumbent finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, who in 2010 said that “we do not require the aid. It’s a peanut in our total development exercises expenditure.”  Mukherjee, in fact, had wanted the country to give up British aid but was cajoled by UK’s department of international development (DFID) to stick with it as cancelling the programme would have resulted in a “grave political embarrassment”. All this considering the fact that DFID consistently portrayed India as a country steeped in poverty.
 
But Sibal’s successor as foreign secretary, Shashank, was cautious when questioned about the need for British aid. He said there were several exchange and other programmes connected with the aid package that could be affected. He said that aid should slowly be removed from government control and that it must be given directly by a donor to an NGO. If this happens, he said, “The planning commission would be able to concentrate on the tasks given to it by the government.” He added, “We must work with Britain to reduce aid and slowly stop it.”
 
British politicians whined over the fact that India plumped for a French offering. Having given us railways, nurtured our bureaucracy and planted the seeds of democracy in India, the UK probably felt it had a god-given right to expect favours in return. 
 
But strategic experts say Britain has more to lose than India if it decides to cut aid. Pravin Sawhney, editor of Force magazine and a defence sector expert, says, “If Britain cuts aid to India, they will be the biggest losers and this will create ill will in bilateral relations.” He clarifies that “they feel they have a role to play in Kashmir.” Stressing that it would hardly make a difference to India, Sawhney adds, “Britain follows a foreign policy that is closely associated with that of the US.”
 
Britain in recent times has been suffering an economic meltdown. The riots last year proved that unemployment was a huge problem. Traditional British automobile companies like Jaguar and Land Rover have been bought over by India’s Tata Motors. Even Venky’s Hatcheries went ahead and bought an English football club – Blackburn Rovers. India is the second largest investor in the UK, after the US. Most importantly, the UK is home to over a million strong Indian diaspora.
 
Logically, Britain has much more to lose than India if it cuts aid. It still has a stake in Afghanistan and needs to closely work with India in the areas of reconstruction of infrastructure destroyed in the ‘War on Terror’. India’s research and analysis wing (R&AW) has proved to be a reliable partner to the West when it comes to intelligence gathering and the UK cannot afford to lose such an ally.
 
The British MPs must understand that colonialist pandering is not going to take the UK anywhere in today’s complicated geopolitical scenario. Britain has to look at India as an equal and move on from a buyer-seller outlook to that of a strategic partner.
 
Doling out a little bit of aid and expecting India, or for that matter China, to buy defence goods in return is not going to benefit the once mighty “Empire”.
 
Britain is learning it the hard way.