NEW DELHI, Feb 28: In the country's first post-Pokharan Budget, the allocation for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been increased by 11 per cent over 1998-99 and for the departments of space and atomic energy by 16 per cent and 32 per cent, respectively.The defence budget now stands at Rs 45,694 crore, up from Rs 41,200 crore in the revised estimates for 1998-99. With this increase the proportion of allocation to defence in the Central Government expenditure comes down from the earlier 15.4 per cent to 14 per cent.While the finance minister announced a tax break on pensions for gallantry award winners, the total pension bill for the MoD now stands at Rs 7,348.65 crore.A significant step has been taken with regard to ordnance factories. Combining with the defence minister's incentive to the private sector to participate in production and marketing with the ordnance factories, the allocations in this sector have come down from Rs 664.35 crore in 1998-99 to Rs 134.14 crore for 1999-2000.Althoughdeployed entirely for internal security duties, the Rashtriya Rifles continues to squeeze a big amount out of the Army's budget, and this year the allocations have gone up by more than Rs 200 crore to Rs 586.70 crore.However, the Army's decision to suppress the intake of manpower by 50,000 is beginning to pay dividends and its capital outlay for combat equipment has gone up to Rs 2,763.91 crore. The Air Force has been allocated Rs 3,200 crore for aircraft and aero-engine purchases as part of its capital outlay, up from Rs 2,715.33 crore. Defence research and development finds Rs 711.54 crore in the capital outlay, with Rs 2,068.46 crore in the revenue side under the Army's major head. While the revenue budget has increased from Rs 1,736.80 crore in the revised estimates of 1998-99, the capital outlay has increased from Rs 570 crore.The significant research and development increases, however, are in the atomic energy and space departments.In the capital projects heads for the Bhabha Atomic ResearchCentre (BARC), the allocations have increased from Rs 58.20 crore in the 1998-99 revised estimates to Rs 179.20 crore.BARC is the premier nuclear science and technology institute in the country, and the capital projects allocations will cover the development of advanced plasma devices, intense particle beams generation and studies to produce intense radiation source using these beams. A waste immobilisation plant is being set up at Trombay to process and solidify liquid wastes from the research reactors. Some undisclosed new schemes are also to be pursued in the Ninth Plan programme.The Department of Space also finds some significant increases which are likely to have a long-term impact on the country's future in mastering space. The plan capital outlay on satellite system gets an increase from the Rs 16.09 crore in the revised estimates to an indicative Rs 60.49 crore. The plan outlay on space research, likewise, gets a whopping increase from Rs 145.49 crore to Rs 325.39 crore.On the developmentside, the indigenous C-20 Cryogenic stage development programme, for the future Geo-Synchronous Launch Vehicle, gets a more than double hike in allocation, but still a modest Rs 9 crore. There is, on the other hand, an eight-fold increase for the second launch pad at the Sriharikota from Rs 10 crore to Rs 83.25 crore in order to cater for the requirements arising out of the Polar Satellite and the Geo-Synchronous launch vehicles.The G-SAT 2 & 3 satellites, to be flown on the GSLV development launches, get a boost from 1 crore to Rs 10 crore. At the same time the second stage of the Indian Remote Sensing satellite programme gets an even greater boost from Rs 0.01 crore to Rs 14 crore.
