Here’s looking at you, India

Many of the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in India are seriously off-track, especially health and when it comes to giving girls and women equal opportunities. The challenge is to make India’s phenomenal growth inclusive. I do not want to preach, and much of what I write here is known to most. But I do want to share with readers why I came to India, what I saw and what the UK could do as a potential partner. I visited Bihar, where almost half of the population — 38 million people — live below the official poverty line. Only 22 per cent of all births take place in a health facility, only 4 per cent use piped drinking water and only 25 per cent have access to toilet. Education provision and skills are well below the Indian average, and despite being home to 8.5 per cent of India’s population, it contributes only 1.6 per cent to national income. I was shocked to learn that 58 per cent of Bihar’s children are undernourished. Visiting a Patna slum, I saw homes without electricity and sanitation, with open sewers running through the streets.

I discussed the challenges facing the state with Bihar’s government officials, local industry figures, and medical personnel. I was reassured to hear that despite the problems, progress is being made. The patients and people I met said the same. Great efforts have been made to provide 24-hour affordable health care at the local ‘block’ level and the decentralisation of pharmaceutical drugs has made access easier for patients. A drive to recruit 2,15,000 teachers has been launched; the streets are safer; and corruption is beginning to be tackled seriously. But what really impressed me was the energy and commitment to make a real change.

India is the UK’s largest development programme. We provide the government with about $500 million annually, showing our commitment to this partnership. But what I was told was that we are valued for our international experience, our partnership approach and our expertise as much as for our money. We have helped local authorities design models that best deliver health, education, water and sanitation. For instance, in Orissa, a watershed project supported by UK’s Department for International Development introduced low-cost rainwater harvesting techniques and other less technologically intensive measures that involve the community. It even won a national award, and now the Indian government plans to roll this out nationally. We want to work with India in order to tackle the challenges of poverty and the MDGs. In July the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown addressed the United Nations in New York and called the world for action to meet the MDGs. Certainly, global success for meeting the MDGs depends on how well India, in turn, responds.

The world has much to learn from India’s progress. It has attained a growth rate of 8 to 9 per cent and plans to reach 10 per cent in the next few years. A commitment to reform, as seen in the Eleventh Five Year Plan, sets out significant investment in electricity, roads and agriculture. Business is thriving, with 6 million new subscribers to telecom every month, for example. The pharmaceutical industry is growing at a rate outstripping global competition.

India has a vital role to play in producing generic drugs that could save millions of lives, not just in India but across Sub-Saharan Africa.

We are therefore asking for a new kind of partnership with India, which today has a new place in the world.

The writer is UK’s parliamentary under-secretary of state for international development