New Delhi: In what is being seen as India's attempt to prevent an economic collapse in Afghanistan as the war-torn nation witnesses a major catastrophe, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman allocated Rs 200 crore to Afghanistan, while presenting Union Budget 2022-2023 in the Parliament on Tuesday. The move comes even as India has not formally recognised the Taliban regime.
Up until now, India has supplied three shipments of medical aid to Afghanistan and is expected to send the much-awaited aid of wheat in February, as New Delhi and Islamabad formalize modalities of the plan. This happened after Pakistan faced a huge backlash from around the globe for acting as a road blocker in sending this important shipment of wheat as Afghanistan faces its biggest crisis in decades, ever since the fall of the Ashraf Ghani government and the subsequent rise of the Taliban on August 15, 2021.
However, at Rs 200 crore, the allocation in 2022-23 is a decrease as compared to Rs 350 crore allocated in the ongoing financial year of which Rs 200 crore has been the revised allocation. As per the FY 2022-2023 budget, India has announced to allocate Rs 360 crore to the Maldives, (versus Rs 250 crore), Myanmar at Rs 600 crore (versus Rs 400 crore), Mongolia at Rs 12 crore (versus Rs 2 crore), Bangladesh at Rs 300 crore (versus Rs 200 crore) which is likely to put a strong impetus to the bilateral relations with New Delhi.
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It is pertinent to note here that the Maldives, for the past few months, has been witnessing a huge wave of the anti-India campaign, led by former President Abdullah Yameen who is viewed as a close ally of Beijing while the present President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih is pro-Indian. Other than that, Nepal at Rs 750 crore (versus Rs 992 crore), Seychelles at Rs 14.06 crore (versus Rs 160 crore), Bhutan at Rs 2266.24 crore (versus Rs 3004.95 crore) saw a huge decrease in aid by New Delhi in the next financial year. While Sri Lanka at Rs 200 crore and Mauritius at Rs 900 crore witnessed no change in the Budget support.
Chabhar Port, viewed as one of the most cardinal projects by New Delhi to connect with Central Asia and the West, has been witnessing a sudden full-stop ever since the Taliban's shocking takeover of Afghanistan. It saw no change in Budget allocation with the allocation of Rs 100 crore to continue. Allocation to Africa stood at Rs 250 crore (versus 300 crore), Eurasian countries at Rs 140 crore (versus Rs 100 crore), Latin America at the same Rs 40 crore as the last year.
Overall the Budget of the ministry of external affairs has been increased to Rs 17,250 crore for FY 2022-2023 (vs Rs 16,000 crore which is the Revised 2021-2022 budget). In an important development, the Budget for the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) has been increased to Rs 320 crore in the next financial year as against 300 crores in the current financial year. Nalanda and South Asian University (SAU) saw an allocation of Rs 200 crore and Rs 128 crore as compared to the revised allocation of 350 crores and 94 crores respectively.
