Between Diplomacy and Development Policy. The Donors in the Consortia for India, Pakistan and Turkey, 1959-1974

• Applicant: Dr. Amit Das Gupta
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 397668674

The consortia for India, Pakistan, and Turkey stood for the first concerted effort of Western industrial countries to raise large sums for development cooperation with countries whose stability was considered indispensable for political and economic reasons. The research project intends to investigate how the donors interacted among each other and vis-à-vis the receiving countries. Therefore, the focus is going to be, first, on the establishment of the consortia, the methods of selecting its members, the modes of interaction, and the lessons learnt. The research project, second, wants to find out which political and economic aims donors were pursuing as a whole and individually. There are going to be analysed, third, development concepts of individual donors and of the consortia as a whole and their repercussions for domestic and international affairs. Fourth, the focus is on the influence of the receiving countries in terms of indigenous development policies, financial needs and their capacity to strike deals with individual donors in preparation of consortia meetings. The conditions under which aid was given is the final aspect of the research project, which is based on documents of important donors, the World Bank and the OECD.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants