Armed Forces get a modest hike

Under the Rs 94,588 crore capital expenditures that are likely to follow, the Army will be spending approximately Rs 26,300 crore on buying equipment.

In the ongoing financial year, the government underspent on the modernisation of the forces.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley made a budgetary provision of Rs 2,46,727 crore for the defence forces, 7.74 per cent more than the budgetary allocation of Rs 2,29,000 crore in the last fiscal. The provision for capital expenditure — the much needed component for modernisation of the forces — remained more or less unchanged at Rs 94,588 crore as against last year’s budgetary estimate of Rs 94,587.95 crore. In fact, in the ongoing financial year, the government underspent on the modernisation of the forces by Rs 12,622 crore as shown by the revised estimates.

“Defence of every square inch of our mother land comes before anything else. So far, we have been over dependent on imports, with its attendant unwelcome spin-offs. Our government has already permitted FDI in defence so that Indian-controlled entities also become manufacturers of defence equipments, not only for us, but for export,” Jaitley said in his Budget speech even as he stressed on the “Make in India” policy to achieve greater self-sufficiency in the area of “defence equipment, including aircraft”.

Adding that his government has been “both transparent and quick” in making defence equipment-related purchase decisions, “thus keeping our defence forces ready for any eventuality”, Jaitley said he has provided “adequately for the needs of the Armed Forces”.
As against his speech in July, his first after having taken over as the Finance Minister, Jaitley’s speech made no specific mention of One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme or creation of war memorial for which a provision of Rs 100 crore was made during the government’s maiden Budget. Speaking later, Jaitley said, “The methodology of calculating One Rank, One Pension is an issue pending between the services and the Defence Ministry.”

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In fact, some of the heads which were announced in the previous Budget — for instance defence railway network which was given a budgetary provision of Rs 1,000 crore in July — was allotted Rs 500 crore.

Under the Rs 94,588 crore capital expenditures that are likely to follow, the Army will be spending approximately Rs 26,300 crore on buying equipment. The Air Force will spend about Rs 33,000 crore while the Navy will spend about Rs 24,000 crore. While the ministry underspent the money it had received the provision for 2014-15 by about 12,622 crore, the capital allocation for the next year will decide how the modernisation of the defence forces, which are in dire need of modern equipment, shapes up.

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