The new Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) was officially released by the defence minister on January 13, 2011. This bulky document—281 pages long and revised eight times in the last nine years—comes into effect on January 1, 2011.
Yet again, India’s defence budget has escaped larger national attention this year. The defence component of the national budget accounts for 14% of central government expenditure but gets less than 5% of media space, the bulk of which goes towards data released by the government with sporadic analyses by experts. Virtually no discussion on the issue takes place in Parliament either. A call for increased resources for national defence usually only goes out when defence spending by Pakistan and China makes headlines.
After the 17th Chinese Communist Party Congress National Meeting in 2007, China started focusing on South Asia, specifically India. Both have been favourably disposed towards multilateralism, with India joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an observer and China joining the SAARC summit in April 2008, also as an observer. Besides, people-to-people diplomacy expanded with mutual tourist visits.
Cross-border threats, which involve an influx of counterfeit currencies, illegal arms, smuggling of narcotics, illicit wildlife trade and its derivatives and cross-border terrorism, are gaining momentum along the 726-kilometre-long porous India-Nepal border. It is a grave concern for India, considering the present political instability in Nepal.
Defence cooperation is the area of Franco-Indian relations that has seen the most substantial progress. Over time, the partnership has evolved from the short-term, tactical interactions of the Cold War era to a more long-term, strategic alignment. Today, France is one of India's most trusted Western defence partners.