614. The Place of Aid in Development

International AID has come to stay. Its role is considerable. The World Bank is an organisation of sixty years. Its prestige is so great that men like Clausen, the President of Bank of America gave up a salary of $1 million to serve the World Bank as its President with a salary of $58,000 per annum. The entire Western Europe devastated by the War was fully rebuilt with the funds of the World Bank. It would be interesting to know how many nations are there who have not been a recipient of Aid in one form or another from one country or the other. Apart from the actual facts of Aid, which is seen in so many versions, one question is of interest. Is there any theory about such aid or what is the theory that governs such functions?

In India, during her first few Five Year Plans, the Left was vociferous against any aid from the West. But they had no qualms about aid from the then USSR. So our steel mills were erected with the help of the West as well as the then USSR. About forty western countries ushered themselves into very high levels of prosperity all by their own efforts - financial and technical. That was a high period of civilisation. No nation is known to have had its development sponsored by the generous assistance of AID and still retained its independence. Aid in any form saps the vitality of a nation and robs its self-respect. Why aid from another country. No government has ever succeeded in building up a nation without the entire society rising and taking up development in its own hands.

In the widest scheme of God, known as cosmic creation, there is no giving without taking, as there should be a two way process to maintain the equilibrium. Usually Aid comes in and self-respect goes out. Worse than that, the very capacity of self-reliance is undone essentially. All the nations of Western Europe that received a generous dose of aid through the Marshall Plan have become satellites of the USA and her permanent market. In the field of politics, they have lost their voice to the giver of aid. Self is the Soul of a nation. It is seen as self-respect and self-reliance. They are not worth parting with. It is worth founding an impartial study of aid and its aftermath in the developing nations to discover the economic consequences, the political residue and the social self-reliance in the last five decades. India has recently closed several such offices here, perhaps for eternal GOOD.