THE BIG MAKE IN INDIA PUSH

The $70-billion stay-the-course Defence Budget further drives the Aatmanirbhar Bharat agenda. The whopping hike for naval build-up is the surprise package

-  Vishal Thapar

FOR A GOVERNMENT that is sometimes accused of being militarist, its ninth Defence Budget lacks the menace and the rattle of the martial sabre. What is evident in India’s $70.3 billion war chest instead is a quiet resolve to stay the course for a military build-up powered by a domestic defence industrial complex.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Rs 5,25,166.15 crore allocation for defence in her February 1 Union Budget marked a modest increase of 4.4 per cent over the Revised Estimates for FY 2021-22, and 9.8 per cent over the Budget Estimates for the previous year, the addition in money terms being Rs 46,970 crore.

While this keeps India at the No. 3 spot globally in defence spending behind the US and China, it amounts to just 2 per cent of India’s GDP and 13.3 per cent of the Central government expenditure. If the Rs 1,19,696 crore ($16 Billion) defence pensions bill is taken out of the equation, India’s defence spend stands lower at 1.5 per cent of the GDP. This marks a marginal decline in defence spending, the real measure of which is in GDP terms.

No Big Bang

There’s no big bang despite the continuing border standoff, but there’s a continuation of a steady effort to make monies available to modernise the military and meet its operational requirements at a time when the tight fiscal space is squeezed.