UK gave £1bn aid to India as country built expensive Statue Of Unity: British Media

British media is now upset that India was given more than one billion pounds in aid in the years when it was lavishing a fortune on building the world’s tallest statue - Statue of Unity.

In an article published by The Daily Mail, 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.

The article said, “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”.

Tory MP Peter Bone told The Daily Mail, “To take 1.1 billion pound in aid from us and then at the same time spend 330 million pound on a statue is a 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 the nation which could afford to build this statue.

The article further said 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 spending funds on the memorial. It also noted that India gives out more aid than it receives despite dealing with problems in disease and healthcare.