UK aid to India

This country portfolio review examines the UK’s official development assistance to India since 2016.

Score: Amber/Red
  1. Status: Completed
  2. Published: 14 March 2023
  3. Type: Country portfolio review
  4. Subject: Country focus, Transitioning development partnerships
  5. Assessment: Amber/Red
  6. Location: India
  7. Lead commissioner: Tamsyn Barton
  8. SDGs covered:No poverty, Climate action, Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Latest news

We have published our country portfolio review of the UK’s aid spending in India since 2016. The government has also published its response. We completed our follow-up report in April 2024.

Summary

India is one of the fastest growing major economies and is projected to become the world’s fourth largest economy by 2030. Despite its economic success, India is constrained in reaching its full global economic and political potential by significant challenges, including continuing high poverty rates, skills shortages, unplanned urbanisation, a huge infrastructure deficit, pollution and the impacts of climate change.

UK aid to India has undergone a major transformation since 2015 and lessons from these changes will be relevant for UK aid in other countries.

In the decade before 2015, India was one of the largest recipients of UK aid. The UK’s portfolio of direct financial aid, focused on supporting the government of India’s delivery of services, such as health and education, in the country’s poorest states. Since 2015, UK aid to India has decreased, after a longstanding debate in the UK about the extent to which limited aid resources should be spent in middle-income countries and after statements from the Indian government that UK aid was no longer needed. Nevertheless, we estimate that between 2016 and 2020, the UK provided around £1.9 billion of aid to India.

This country portfolio review examines how the UK’s aid programme in India has developed since the former Department for International Development stopped providing direct financial aid to the Indian government in 2015.

Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals relevant to this review are:

  • Sustainable Development Goal 1: No poverty
  • Sustainable Development Goal 13: Climate action
  • Sustainable Development Goal 9: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Timeline

Approach

Published 2 August 2022

Evidence gathering

Complete

Review publication

Published 14 March 2023

Government response

Published 25 April 2023

Further scrutiny

Follow-up published 18 April 2024