Athens: India’s development partnership has expanded well beyond conventional assistance, bringing together grants, concessional Lines of Credit, technical cooperation, capacity building, humanitarian assistance and knowledge sharing, a report has stated.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) described the approach as human-centric, with a focus on diversity, sustainable development and priorities of partner countries, while the overall scale of engagement has increased substantially.
“Development cooperation is changing. It is no longer defined only by financial assistance, infrastructure projects or government-to-government agreements. Increasingly, the real measure of partnership lies in whether knowledge travels, institutions become stronger, communities gain capabilities and successful development models can be adapted elsewhere,” a report in Athens-based ‘Directus’ stated.
“India’s approach reflects this changing landscape. Over the past decade, its development partnership has increasingly combined government programmes, private-sector capabilities, civil society participation, academic expertise, technology and international institutions,” it added.
According to the report, this has created a model that links India’s domestic development experience with South-South cooperation, placing people, rather than aid, at the heart of international engagement.
“The whole-of-society approach is particularly visible in India’s work on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), capacity building, digital transformation, healthcare, climate resilience and development financing. It is also becoming an important instrument of India’s engagement with the Global South,” it detailed.
Citing a 2025 UNDP study, the report said that between 2000 and 2023, India provided more than US$14.7 billion in grants and US$32 billion in concessional Lines of Credit, financing over 600 development projects across 68 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific.
The projects, it said, cover a wide range of sectors, including transport, power, agriculture, healthcare, education, information technology and disaster management.
According to the MEA, India’s Lines of Credit alone support around 600 projects across 68 countries.
“African countries have been a major beneficiary, with 196 Lines of Credit worth approximately US$12 billion extended to 42 African nations. The emphasis, however, is not limited to physical infrastructure. Capacity building has become one of the defining pillars of India’s development cooperation,” Directus mentioned.
As noted by the UNDP in 2025, India’s development experience is increasingly being shared beyond its borders through South-South cooperation, capacity building and knowledge exchange, the report said.
It stressed that the importance of this evolution lies not merely in the scale of India’s development partnerships, but also in the direction in which they are expanding.
From infrastructure and institutions to technology, training, national programmes and international knowledge exchange, India is increasingly translating its development experience into a resource that can be shared with partner countries.
“That makes the whole-of-society approach more than a domestic governance framework. It is becoming an instrument of international cooperation — one that connects India’s development journey with the aspirations of a wider Global South, and places shared progress at the centre of global partnership,” the report highlighted.
(IANS)
