Short's hopes for poor of India

HALFWAY THROUGH her Indian journey, Clare Short came to Delhi yesterday to speak about Britain's approach to development aid, outliningher "new global vision for poverty elimination".

This is practically the first opportunity India has had to get the measure of New Labour. In the Government's first year in office, things were thrown awry by the controversies surrounding the Queen's visit and the maladroit remarks made by Robin Cook about Kashmir.

Last year, India's nuclear tests caused what Sir Rob Young, the new British high commissioner in Delhi, described yesterday as "undoubted turbulence" from which relations are only now "warming up". With the visit of the Secretary of State for International Development, the message is finally arriving.

While being careful to stroke local feathers, describing the country as "a major leader and player on the world stage", Ms Short pointed out that of the 1.3 billion people in the world who live in abject poverty, "500 million of them are in India.

"By 2015 we must lift 1 billion people out of abject poverty by halving the world's population living on less than $1 per day, ensure universal primary education, cut infant mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three-quarters, ensure universal access to reproductive health care, and reverse current trends in loss of environmental resources."

To achieve this, Ms Short said, reform is vital. "We are looking in India for states that have the will to reform in order to release the resources that will eliminate poverty."

That's why Britain's development programme in India is its biggest anywhere. And why the pounds 90m per year is directed at just three reforming states, Orissa, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh. "This is not just charitable work," she went on, "but mutually beneficial work that we need to succeed in order to make a safer world."