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India's military hungry for
more
By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - Indian defense officials
have laid out a request for a huge increase in
spending on arms to New Delhi, most of which will be
used to purchase state-of-the-art weaponry from
suppliers around the world. In a couple of weeks,
the national budget will be presented by the
ruling United Progressive Alliance, headed by
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and while there is
intense lobbying from representatives of various
sectors to incorporate their demands, attention
has focused on the over 40% hike in defense outlay
that has been demanded by the India's defense
forces, which comes in the wake of an
unprecedented 22% increase last year.
Last
year, the budget set apart the biggest-ever
allocation to defense - the equivalent of US$15
billion for 2004-05. This represented 2.5% of
India's gross domestic product, lower than China
(6%) and Pakistan (5.5%), though in absolute terms
Pakistan spent $4 billion last year, which was an
increase of 20% over 2003-04.
The Indian
defense community's wish list is long, which they
feel is necessary to modernize the country's armed
forces. These include a proposal to purchase F-16
fighter jets, Scorpene submarines and long-range
rocket systems. The proposal to buy 126 F-16s - at
$25 million each over five years - will itself
cost the exchequer $3 billion. When this is added
to the payments being made for the expensive
equipment already purchased, the defense budget
takes on huge proportions.
The increased
defense spending includes more than $7 billion to
purchase weapons systems and to implement the
intermediate-range Agni ballistic missile units,
capable of delivering nuclear warheads. India last
year signed a $1.5 billion agreement with BAE
Systems Plc, Europe's biggest weapons maker, for
66 Hawk Advanced Jet Trainer aircraft as part of
its plan to modernize its air force.
Last year, the country also inked a multimillion-dollar
deal with Russia to acquire an aircraft carrier,
the Admiral Gorshkov. India has also agreed to
buy three Phalcon airborne early-warning radar systems
from Israel valued at $1 billion. Of the 3,414
tanks in the Indian army's possession, 1,200 are
obsolete, while 700 of them are vintage Russian
T-55s. India has been introducing T-90s
phase-by-phase and it is estimated that almost $8
billion will be set apart for a project to
increase the firepower of the infantry.
It is estimated that Israel's defense industry
sold arms and munitions to India valued at $2.7
billion in 2003, constituting about 30% of its
total orders, and offered more at Aero India, a
five-day international aerospace and defense
exhibition that ended this Sunday in the Indian city
of Bangalore. It has been reported that at
Aero India, touted as the largest show of its kind
in South Asia, deals worth more than $1.2
billion were been signed between Indian and
foreign aerospace firms. The deals ranged from
aircraft purchases by Indian budget carriers from
Airbus and Boeing to the joint manufacture of
missiles and engine parts. India's air force is
seeking government approval for 126 so-called
"multi-role" combat aircraft to replace aging Russian
MiGs, India's Air Chief Marshal Satish Tyagi said
in Bangalore. Boeing has offered to sell its
F-18 jets, while Maryland-based Lockheed Martin has
offered its F-16 fighter as part of the deal.
There is one school of thought
in India that insists that there is a requirement
for such a huge augmentation and modernization
of the Indian armed forces. Finance Minister
P Chidambaram, while presenting last year's
budget, said that the enormous hike in the defense-budget
allocation was born out of the "government's
determination to eliminate all delays in
modernizing the defense forces. Having regard to
the trend of defense capital expenditure in recent
years, it has become necessary to make a higher
allocation this year; 60% of the increase will be
utilized for modernization." Some defense analysts
say that the country should allocate such a huge
portion as the bulk of the defense budget is
revenue expenditure (salaries, wages) given the
huge size of the Indian army, navy and air force.
Predictably, Pakistan is miffed at India's
proposals to hike defense spending. Islamabad has
repeatedly warned that India's increased defense
spending was a "cause for concern". "This would
wittingly or unwittingly accelerate the arms race
between the two countries, which we could have
avoided because both India and Pakistan need
massive resources for poverty alleviation,
education, health and for the social sector and
creating new jobs," Pakistani Foreign Ministry
spokesman Masood Khan said in the recent past.
Khan also said that Pakistan had increased its own
defense spending, though at a smaller rate than
India, and would seek to maintain the "competitive
edge of our strategic and conventional
capabilities".
The other
school of thought is that India's defense
spending and war preparedness should take
into consideration the threat of actual war in
the foreseeable future, short, medium and long term,
with greater cause for concern being terrorist attacks,
as well as internal insurgencies, such
as Naxalism, bad governance, caste and feudal
wars and communal violence. This, in turn, should
lead to India focusing more on
getting its intelligence-gathering infrastructure, external
and internal intelligence agencies and
paramilitary forces right, rather than building
on conventional weapons of war. Given the current
state of superiority of India's armed forces
over Pakistan, the country from which the threat
perception is the highest, there is no requirement for
such a massive drive. Further, given the fact
that both India and Pakistan are nuclear-weapon states,
it is unlikely that a full-scale high-intensity war
lasting for weeks will ever happen, making the
case for having such a huge cache of arms as well
as armed forces redundant.
As far
as India's other powerful neighbor, China,
is concerned, it is believed that the
exponential growth of business relations between the
two countries is an effective deterrent, but in
any case it would be impossible for India ever
to match China's military strength. But business
is seen as a bridge to peaceful
relations. Sino-Indian bilateral trade has set a
record, touching $13.6 billion in 2004, up by 79% over
the total trade volume of 2003. India enjoyed
a comfortable trade surplus of $1.75
billion, according to Chinese customs statistics. If
growth remains at current levels, India-China trade
could cross $17 billion by the end of 2004-05.
In contrast, India's trade with the United States
- its largest trading partner - has grown by
just over 23% in April-August 2004. Indeed, there is
an increasing comfort level, with India
discounting Chinese influence in Nepal after the royal
coup there on February 1 and the dismissal of the
democratically elected government.
Economists such as Nobel Prize winner
Amartya Sen have repeatedly stressed that the
rising military expenditure imposes substantial
opportunity costs on government priorities such as
health and education. According to defense analyst
K Subhramanyam, "Modernizing the armed forces does
not necessarily mean just adding inventories of
the latest hardware ... Unplanned acquisition of
hardware without appropriate defense planning
based on sound assessment of threat may lead to
large-scale avoidable expenditure."
A
comment in The Times of India reads: "New Delhi
needs to realize that engaging in a pointless arms
race with Pakistan serves little purpose. So long
as Pakistan remains under authoritarian rule, its
defense budget will remain disproportionately
high. But that does not mean India needs to match
every Ghauri [type of ballistic missile] with an
Agni. India enjoys a considerable edge over
Pakistan by dint of the sheer size of its armed
forces ... As for China, New Delhi is much better
off trying to match Beijing's economic growth than
its military might. However, the best argument for
pulling out of an arms race is that social
development and economic growth are the best
defense for any nation."
While few would
claim that India's armed forces should not be
modernized, it is important to pace the process in
a way that there is a definite but sure increment
without a disproportionate chunk of government
funds being siphoned away from equally important
needs - the social sector, which affects the
welfare of people the most.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New
Delhi-based journalist.
(Copyright
2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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