This article shows that foreign aid to India merely substitutes for spending that the government would have undertaken anyway; the funds freed by earmarked aid are spent elsewhere. Moreover, in passing external assistance earmarked for the states, the central government makes a reduction in transfers it would have otherwise made to the states. From the country's perspective these fungibility results could be good; domestic spending priorities - inter-sectoral and inter-regional - are unaffected by foreign aid. For the donors, however, the results indicate that success of their projects, as measured by the conventional benefit-cost analysis, does not tell the whole story; the marginal use of their money and its overall development impact could be different from that intended.
