An ODA casts a binding obligation on a country to commit funds for infrastructure and capacity-building projects in developing countries. The obligation arises from historical processes like global treaties.
"This is a completely unacceptable approach as it compels us to become part of the historical obligation that we don't have," Mehta said at the valedictory session of a regional consultation on development cooperation, hosted by the Symbiosis International University (SIU) at its Lavale campus near Pune. "We were not the colonisers nor did we create the disparities that exist between the developed and the developing countries," she said.
"What we do in terms of development partnership with fellow developing countries is not an obligation but is borne out of a sense of friendship and solidarity. Our approach as part of India's foreign policy is participatory and cooperative," she said.
She pointed out that the push from developed countries comes at a time when the UN is finalising a post-2015 development agenda. Year 2015 marks the 70th year of the UN establishment.
"The new agenda will be a set of goals that the international community will see to and adopt for the years ahead," she said. "The exercise comes at a time when the world has barely started to emerge from the global financial crisis and when the climate change challenge is becoming critical," she said.
"During the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the developed countries had agreed that they would provide new and additional resources to tackling climate change issues. It appears now that those new and additional funds are not forthcoming and there is a strong push that the funds committed for ODAs be diverted to climate change finance alone. Therefore, there is a greater push, largely from the developed countries, to make solidarity-based development partnerships followed by countries like India, a part of the ODAs," Mehta said.
Later, during an informal chat with TOI, Mehta said, "The MEA focus is on improving the delivery and the efficiency of its partnership programmes with other developing countries. As part of this, we are developing standard operating procedures (SOPs) for activities we undertake in developing countries across the world."
While the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme was introduced in 1964, cooperation with other developing countries are being carried out since independence. An important feature of such cooperation is that India does not put any conditions to extending development assistance but only does what the receiving country wants to do, she said.
"A lot of our activities are focused in our immediate neighbourhood and in Asia besides projects in 40-odd countries in Africa, Latin America and the Carribean islands," she said.
Mehta said, "The phenomenon of terrorism, although an unfortunate reality, has barely come in way of the development activity being pursued in partnership with other developing countries. It is generally agreed that where development happens, we would hope that people would feel less drawn to terrorism. It is only in a situation where there is safety and security issue that we have to be more careful."
Principal director of SIU Vidya Yeravdekar, senior academician Kingshuk Chatterjee from University of Calcutta's Institute of Foreign Policy Studies, RIS director Sachin Chaturvedi and Symbiosis school of economics director Jyoti Chandiramani were present.
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