Letter published in the Sunday Times 22 August 2021

Philip Sherwell, your Asia correspondent, accuses Narendra Modi of a “£2 billion splurge” on the project to build a new parliament “as his citizens die around him” (World News, last week). India has had the same parliament building since independence 75 years ago and it is no longer fit for purpose. The project has got the go-ahead after careful scrutiny and approval by the High Court. Here in the UK we too have lost tens of thousands of people to Covid but that has not stopped the government spending money on crucial projects, one of them being the overhaul of the Houses of Parliament. The Indian people want a parliament that does justice to the world’s largest democracy and an emerging superpower.
Nitin Mehta, Croydon, London