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One of the world’s poorest countries is now planning to join the big boys in setting up an aid agency which she hopes will win her friends and influence like her other friends and rivals, Brazil, Russia and China.

That country is India which is also celebrating its independence today.

Until recently, India – which holds half of the world’s poor –  was the biggest receiver of aid.

Now she has arrived – or has she?

On the day that India was celebrating her independence, demonstrations were being held against the corruption that has plagued her politicians and businessmen.

After all they don’t have have struggle through the day like the rest of India on a dollar a day.

Like the eiltes of the other Bric states -that is Brazil, Russia, india, China – the rich are often heard to say that the poor should get off their backsides and work, after all the opportunities are there.

It is common to hear well healed Spanish elites speak like this also.

If you live in a glass tower, where you simply tick the boxes provided by the World Bank, IMF etc for economic development, then you are very lucky.

The rest of the world outside your doorway, does’t have that luxury and as events the last week in India’s former colonial master showed the poor can hit back.

If this century is indeed going to belong to Asia, then the nations that belong to this continent have to understand that the greatest contibution that the West has made to civilisation wasn’t it dazzling and startling discoveries.

What the West really achieved was to open the eyes of  the humbliest citizens of the world, who have seen how even the poorest people in western nations have immerisably better lives than they.

And that should be a warning to all corrupt politicians and businessmen who plan to set up aid agencies whilst their own citizens suffer.