India ups defence spending as country battles poverty (News Feature)

By Siddhartha Kumar Feb 15, 2010, 12:04 GMT

New Delhi - The Indian government's ambitious modernisation plan for its military was in full swing this week as military procurement units descended on the DefExpo 2010 trade fair in New Delhi.

Meanwhile, the administration has attracted criticism for not investing more to tackle the country's development issues, as millions remain mired in poverty.

Over 300 foreign suppliers laid out their wares at the fair, hoping for a share of the 30 billion dollars that India is projected to spend on defence equipment and services over the next five years.

India, the largest arms buyer among emerging nations after China, accounted for 7.5 per cent of all international arms sales between 2000 and 2007.

Wedged between nuclear neighbours China and Pakistan and facing armed insurgencies at home, India is keen to revamp its Soviet-era defence inventory. In an atmosphere of multiple perceived security threats, guns have become as politically important as butter.

Concerned over the increasing militarization of the land of Gandhi's birth, civil society groups are increasingly pressing the government for 'welfare and not warfare.'

Some experts estimate that military spending will increase further, totalling as much as 200 billion dollars over the period to 2022.

Competing for India's lucrative defence market, global defence giants from the US, Russia and Europe converged in New Delhi for the military trade fair, one of Asia's largest, organized by the Defence Ministry and set to run from Monday to Thursday.

Indian companies represented just over half of the 650 companies attending, with the rest coming from 35 other countries. US and Israeli companies were the most-represented foreign ones.

In recent years, India has bought reconnaissance aircraft from US aerospace major Boeing worth 2.1 billion-dollars, medium range missiles for 1.4 billion dollars from Israeli Aerospace Industries, and signed an upgrade service contract with the Russian Aircraft Corporation to upgrade its MiG 29 squadrons for 965 million dollars.

Several big-ticket deals are planned for the near future including one of the largest arms contracts of recent times - a 11-billion-dollar project to acquire 126 multi-role combat aircraft.

Russia, historically India's leading defence supplier, is facing increasingly tough competition from Israel and the US, with France and Britain not far behind.

Over 14 billion dollars have been earmarked for new-generation submarines, artillery modernization programmes and 800 helicopters, of which half are to be sourced abroad.

Delhi is also shopping for radars, missiles and drones to improve domestic security in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks in November 2008.

India wants the weapons not only as a deterrent against Pakistan and China, with whom relations have been historically tense, but also to bolster the country's politico-military status in Asia.

Defence officials claim that 70 per cent of the military's inventory is over 20 years old and needs to be replaced. They speak of the urgent need to expedite defence deals and to develop a domestic manufacturing base.

'The Indian economy is expected to grow at 8 to 10 per cent for the next two decades. Expenditure on defence in absolute terms is bound to increase in equal proportion,' Defence Minister AK Antony said inaugurating the DefExpo 2010.

'Though we are traditionally known to be a peace-loving nation, at the same time, we are ready to meet any challenge to our territorial integrity,' he said.

Civil society organizations complain of excessive defence spending, pointing out that India continues to be a hungry, unhealthy, poor and largely illiterate nation after 62 years of independence.

The government spends 2.35 per cent of GDP on defence, but only 1.72 per cent on the social sector. The defence budget for 2009-2010 was 29 billion dollars, up 34 per cent over the previous one.

India ranks 134th of 182 countries on the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index. Meanwhile, United Nations reports estimate that 50 per cent of the world's undernourished population lives in India, more than in sub-Saharan Africa. Nearly 31 per cent of the billion-plus Indians earn less than a dollar a day, according to the UN.

'When people are dying of poverty and bad sanitation, what protection will arms provide them?,' said Binalakshmi Nepram, secretary general of the Control Arms Foundation of India.

'The global trade that fuels the epidemic of armed violence is not subject to international regulation. Therefore, we are calling for making the arms trade treaty happen soonest,' she said.

'The process of checks and balances, verification and scrutiny of military's needs are not working efficiently in Indian democracy,' defence analyst Ravinder Pal Singh said.

With security requirements competing with socio-economic concerns for money, the guns-versus-butter question has been further complicated by increasing terrorist attacks.

'There is a dilemma: Poverty needs to be eradicated to prevent men from taking to the gun, like Maoists (armed communist insurgents), but more funds for security means less money for poverty alleviation,' a Finance Ministry official said.