Britain gave £45m (which we haven't got) to India (which is spending £1bn on aircraft carriers sending a probe to Mars) - 24th Apr 2011

India's economy is booming - so why is the UK still sending millions of pounds in aid?

Britain gave £45m (which we haven't got) to India (which is spending £1bn on aircraft carriers sending a probe to Mars) for a scheme that planted this biofuel crop (which is poisoning their children, using up valuable grazing land and can't actually be used as biofuel). In this powerful dispatch, David Rose holds to account the sacred cow that is our £7.8bn foreign aid budget.

Within living memory, the Satpura hills in the southwest corner of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh were a kind of paradise. In the shade cast by teak forests, antelope roamed, together with deer and the occasional leopard, as well as abundant rabbits.

In summer, the intense, sweet scent of the trees’ white flowers filled the air, while pools and streams were full to the brim with fish and freshwater crabs. The local Adivasi tribespeople did not have much money, says Ram Das, a man in his sixties from the village of Chiklia, ‘but times were good and our diet was rich’.

Today the hills above Chiklia and the landscape for miles around are bare. The teak has gone to make construction beams and furniture. The climate has turned arid. The streams have dried up and in the long dry months from November to May the land supports little vegetation.

However, since the beginning of 2008, there has been a change. Thanks to a £45 million programme financed by British taxpayers via the Department For International Development (DFID), the villagers have covered thousands of acres with jatropha, a strange, pale-stemmed plant with livid green-and-yellow leaves, native to Central America. In other districts, the programme budget has also sponsored the cultivation of bamboo and the development of solar-powered lighting, but DFID workers promised the Adivasi that the jatropha would make them richer, because it could be turned into biodiesel. They were wrong.

‘This stuff is a menace,’ Ram Das says. ‘The wood is useless. Cattle can’t eat it because it’s highly poisonous, and that means that after the monsoon, when these hills turn green, we have to keep our animals away from what used to be good grazing. The plants also spread very fast. The wind blows the seed pods and it creeps into our wheat fields.’ Read More