Defence Budget May Be Unchanged, But India Is Serious About The China Threat — Allocation For Border Roads Is Proof

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today (23 July) tabled the budget for the financial year 2024-25 in Parliament.

This year's allocation for the Defence Ministry of Rs 6.21 lakh crore has remained unchanged from the interim budget announced in Parliament last February.

This is a nominal rise of just 4.72 per cent or Rs 27,000 crore from last year’s budget of Rs 5.93 lakh crore.

The spending on buying new weapons like tanks, ships, fighter jets, and submarines saw a meager hike of just Rs 10,000 crore, up from Rs 1.62 lakh crore last year (BE 2023-24) to Rs 1.72 lakh crore (RE 2024-25). This, however, remains unchanged from the allocations announced in the interim budget.

Similarly, the revenue and pensions budget has remained largely unchanged at Rs 2.82 lakh crore and Rs 1.41 lakh crore, respectively.

The revenue budget is the budget allocated for funding the salaries of personnel and for the day-to-day functioning of the armed forces, while the pensions budget, as the name suggests, is for the pensions of retired soldiers.

The almost nonexistent to minimal hike in the defence budget has disappointed many, especially in these times of a highly unstable geopolitical environment.

Defence budgets of most countries, from Europe to Asia, have seen a major rise owing to the aggressiveness of the Chinese in Asia and the Russians in Europe, apart from the simmering Israel-Hamas conflict.

This is even more so since Indian troops have been engaged in a standoff with the Chinese in the Himalayas, all along the China border, for four years, and there are no signs of either side disengaging.

Questions are being raised about how the Indian government plans to equip the armed forces for a potential conflict with China — a country with the world’s second-largest gross domestic product and the largest military — with a minimal increase in the defence budget, especially on capital expenditure.

Although these minimal changes might give the impression that the government is not serious about the China threat, this is not the case.

The government is very serious about the China threat, as evident from the 30 per cent hike given to the Border Road Organisation (BRO), taking its allocation to Rs 6,500 crore. This has been a consistent theme in the recent budgets of this government.

BRO's budget has seen a rapid increase in its allocation in the past three to four years.

Last year, it got a 43 per cent hike to Rs 5,000 crore against Rs 3,500 crore in 2022-23. This was on top of another 40 per cent hike a year before that (FY 2021-22) to Rs 3,500 crore.

According to the Ministry of Defence, from the two years since FY 2021-22, BRO's budget has doubled.

This has also helped BRO increase its pace of construction of roads, bridges, helipads, advanced landing grounds, and infrastructure in the border areas.

Since the Chinese have way better infrastructure on their side of the Line of Actual Control, it is a prudent decision on the part of the government to focus on the areas where India lacks.

This rapid increase in basic infrastructure in border areas will allow the forces to mobilise quickly in case of any misadventure by the Chinese, foiling their plans. This will also force the Chinese to think twice before planning to do anything like Galwan.