From correspondents in Delhi, India, 03:01 PM IST
Even as the Indian armed forces are undertaking a modernisation drive to maintain their deterrent capability, this year's defence budget has slumped to below two percent of the GDP - the first time this has happened since the 1962 India-China war.
'Though the defence budget for 2008-2009 is 10 percent higher than the previous year's allocation, an analysis reveals that for the first time, since the India-China War of 1962, it has fallen below two percent of the GDP,' said Indian Army chief General Deepak Kapoor here on the sidelines of an event at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses.
According to Kapoor, there has been a persistent decline over the years from 3.38 percent of the GDP in 1987-88 to 1.98 percent this year - much below the global average.
The allocation for India's defence budget has been raised by exactly 10 percent this year - from Rs.960 billion to Rs.1,056 billion.
This has raised a dilemma among military planners, who have to balance rightsizing of the defence forces along with inducting state-of-the-art weapons and equipment.
Kapoor also said that the budgetary allocation for the modernisation drive is very small.
'Sometimes it so happens that by the time a deal (for arms and equipment) fructifies, the financial year is over and the allocated amount lapses,' he pointed out.
Budget papers presented in parliament show that Rs.42.17 billion of the amount allocated for equipment purchases was unspent. Cumulatively, Rs.225.17 billion has been left unspent since 2002.
'There should be some provision of carrying over the amount to the next year or at least a percentage of it,' Kapoor maintained.
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Too much 'tele' communication only accelerates the decay, especially among the youth whose aim should be to think of ushering world peace and harmony with justice for all mankind through a less materialistic and more spiritualistic stragegy.
It is a convention to use defence budget as a proportion of GDP. The relevance of applicability of this convention in present times is however arguable. Great strides in technology are making this much less irrelevant than before. So too, as even the cold war has virtually ended, the possibility of conventional war with non-nuclear weapons may have made it difficult for defense expenditure to be simply related to GDP. But of course, the new phenomenon of some new nations like China being perceived as US's rival in economic strength, and fear of nuke-armed 'rogue nations' in the Islamic world may be bringing a new dimension to war threats on possibly unimaginably more disastrous proportion for mankind, not just particular nations.
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