Washington: A key Democratic lawmaker on Thursday criticised the Bush administration for reducing the US aid to India by $50 million calling it a "horrible signal to send to hopefully a newly-trusting ally".
"We have entered a historic era of cooperation with India. We should be building new bridges to the Indian people, not tearing them down," Tom Lantos, chairman of the House foreign affairs committee said at a hearing on 'Foreign Assistance Reform'.
"I know that our assistance to India is modest, particularly in relation to the need, but this is a horrible signal to send to hopefully a newly-trusting ally," he added.
"I was stunned and astonished to learn that India is to receive 35 percent less US foreign assistance, made possible by cutting economic growth assistance by 95 percent and dropping assistance for human rights and the environment altogether," Lantos said in his opening statement.
US aid to India was $131 million in 2007, but the administration's 2008 budget request is for $81 million.
"What message does it send to the Indian people that, after the United States signs a historic civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the Government of India, a move the Administration hails as one of its few strategic successes in eight years, we turn right around and cut nearly all of the development assistance for India?" he asked.
Earlier in a letter on Thursday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Lantos said the proposed "unwarranted cut" raised doubts about the US commitment to transforming ties with the world's largest democracy.
The proposed cut "disregards the critical priorities of our Indian partners, ironically casting doubt on the administration's commitment to the goal of transformational diplomacy at the very time when sweeping progress is within our grasp," he said.
This would "effectively zero out highly successful USAID (US Agency for International Development) programmes in clean energy development, water and sanitation, women's rights, and basic education", Lantos said.
It sends "the wrong signal at the wrong time to our Indian counterparts and inadvertently jeopardizes key elements of our increasingly multifaceted partnership with India", he added.
The statement noted that despite a decade of strong economic growth and a burgeoning middle class, India remains home to nearly a third of the world's poorest people, with more than 60 percent of households living without electricity, 20 percent without a safe and clean water source, and over 70 percent without adequate sanitation.
The letter to Rice, drafted by Lantos and Democrats Gary Ackerman of New York and Jim McDermott of Washington, was also signed by members of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans.
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