Scandal: Indian Space Rocket Cost £1.74 Billion.

British Taxpayers Have Given India £1.9 Billion in “Foreign Aid”

British taxpayers have been forced to give India £1.9 billion in “foreign aid” since 2002 — effectively paying for the £1.7 billion recently announced manned Indian space mission.

Indian Rocket

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K. Radhakrishnan announced yesterday that India will launch its first manned space mission “in a bid to match space pioneers such as Russia and the United States.”

The Indian government approved plans for a human space flight project by ISRO and gave the go-ahead for funding of around $2.8 billion, or £1.74 billion.

According to the British government’s Department of International Development’s UKAID office, India is home to Britain’s “largest country programme” and has its “largest country office.”
The DFID says that “Reducing poverty here is crucial to the global success of the Millennium Development Goals. In 2002–07, we gave more than £1 billion to India, and from 2008 to 2011, we will be investing another £825 million, up to £500 million of which will be spent on health and education.”

The DFID helpfully adds that its “main challenges” in India are malnutrition, child and maternal deaths, education, water and sanitation.

Meanwhile, the ISRO chairman Mr Radhakrishnan said his agency would develop India’s space module for the programme within four years.
The space agency will also establish a facility in Bangalore for training the astronauts and build a third launch pad at its spaceport in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

In September, India’s Chandrayaan-1 satellite discovered water on the moon. India began its space programme in 1963 and has developed its own satellites and launch vehicles to cut dependence on overseas agencies.
Obviously the British taxpayer has helped the Indian government along the way, otherwise they might just have had to spend their own money on uplifting their own people.

If India can afford to send manned rockets into orbit and satellites to the moon, they are in no need of handouts from the British taxpayers.
This is especially the case while there are 2.7 million unemployed British people who are desperately in need of training and education, and while there are two million British pensioners who cannot afford to pay their heating bills.

The British National Party says that all foreign aid must stop — and especially that to India. Only once there is no more need locally can any consideration be given to foreign aid, and even that must be linked to the recipient nations’ willingness to take back its own nationals who have invaded Britain.

* The Conservative Party has promised to increase Britain’s foreign aid spend in India if they should win the next election.
Original article... HERE

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