The Department for International Development (DFID) has issued a statement in response to British media criticising India’s Statue of Unity.
DFID, that uses a blog to response to media stories discussing UK aid, has responded to the article by The Daily Mail and the Mail Online and said that "no UK aid has been used to fund this statue".
“Our partnership with India is one that delivers benefits for both countries and our joint role in the world. The support referenced in the article also comes from other government departments, as well as multilateral organisations, which the UK funds.”DFID Media Team
UK’s media was awash with disapproval of the expenditure, claiming that India was given more than 1 billion pounds of aid by the UK in the years that it was spending extravagantly to built the world’s tallest statue. 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.
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 wasn’t just the British media that was upset by what they see as squandering 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 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 a nation that could afford to build this giant 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.
Twitterati React
Indians reacted to The Daily Mail’s article, with some calling out the huge expense and agreeing that the money could have been put to better use.
Some noted that it was up to India to decide what to do with their funds, drawing connections to Britain’s colonial rule over India.
While others had other opinions and fun takes on the article.
(With inputs from The Daily Mail.)
(The story was updated on Monday, 5 November, with the response of Department for International Development, DFID)
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