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.

Budgetary outlays for national defence need a careful autopsy for a general understanding, which has otherwise been kept out of a national debate. This apathy must change for the very simple reason that a subject which accounts for 14 percent of the total government expenditure and is not kept under planned category, needs to be examined properly. First, defence expenditure has witnessed only a modest hike this year.

The defence budget outlays for 2008-09 (at Rs.1,05,600 crores) has witnessed an increase of ten percent at current prices and a 14.1 percent jump vis-à-vis last year’s revised estimates at Rs. 92,500 crores. Provisions for larger defence efforts, normally not included in the defence budget (for example, outlays for civil defence, coast guard, etc.) could put the figure at Rs. 1, 25,000 crore or possibly more.

Trends in defence expenditure denote certain clues to assess especially the military component of a state’s comprehensive national power. Components of national power, in turn, are intricately linked to a state’s grand strategy - the latter connotes the desire of a state to achieve its rightful place in the global community. In brief, trends in defence expenditure tend to objectively assess aspects of a state’s military capability, although lacuna still remain as even the very concept of military capability is often value-laden.