Zeeshan Haider
India, the world’s second most populous country whose large section of population lives well below subsistence level, has emerged as third top military spender of the world.
According to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), India became third biggest spender on defence in 2019 after the United States and China.
The SIPRI report “Trends in World Military Expenditures, 2019,” said Indian military spending rose by 6.8 per cent to 71.1 billion dollars last year as against 70.7 billion dollars in 2018.
The report has very interesting findings for the top defence spenders in these two years.
The United States has maintained its top slot in the military spending ranking followed by China in 2018 as well as in 2019.
In 2018, Saudi Arabia held the third position while Russia held the fifth slot. But in 2019, Saudi Arabia slipped to the fifth position as India shot up to the third slot leaving Russia to grab the fourth position.
According to SIPRI report, it is for the first time that China and India are among the world’s top three military spenders though New Delhi has maintained its distinction of being the largest defence spender in South Asia.
China is estimated to have allocated 261 billion dollars for its military in 2019 – 5.1 per cent more than its defence budget in 2018.
As widely believed, the report cited India’s uneasy relations with China and Pakistan as the main reasons behind its huge defence spending.
“India’s tensions and rivalry with both Pakistan and China are among the major drivers for its increased military spending,’ Siemon T. Wezeman, SIPRI Senior Researcher.
It sounds ironical, though, that ties with Pakistan are cited as a major reason for India’s huge military spending as Islamabad ranked 24th in the list of military spenders.
Though a large part of the Indian army is deployed on borders with Pakistan, Islamabad has opted out of any arms race with India and has traditionally designed its defence budget to maintain its minimum deterrence capability against any kind of aggression. A clear manifestation of that policy was made last year when Pakistan shot down two Indian fighter aircraft in retaliation to Indian air aggression during the Pulwama attack standoff.
As far India’s ties with China are concerned, the two countries have a long-running border and territorial disputes but over the past several decades Beijing has literally frozen its disputes with New Delhi and has preferred diplomatic means to defuse tensions with New Delhi.
It was evident last year when India forcibly annexed Jammu and Kashmir and in a big provocation to China changed the status of Ladak region on which Beijing also stakes a claim. But China, which inflicted a humiliating defeat on India in a war in 1962, did not make any military overtures to get Indian provocative action reversed and instead confined itself to diplomatic demarches to lodge its protest.
China has been consistently following the policy of non-aggression against its neighbors and has been making bold moves to build economic and commercial ties with bordering countries, including adversaries, as well across Asia and beyond. However, it has genuine security concerns like Taiwan and the South China sea to maintain a huge military.
In recent years China has cut down its troops, approximately 30,000, and diverted the resources to modernize its military and carry out advanced research and development in the defence field.
India, on the other hand, despite its whopping defence spending has failed to modernize its military, which is largely dependent on Soviet era hardware, The major reason for India’s failure to modernize its armed forces is the numeral strength of its military which is second largest in the world. Around 60 per cent of Indian defence budget goes to the salaries and pensions of its military personnel.
Moreover, China’s enormous defence spending is closely matched by its economic growth over the years. Though coronavirus pandemic dealt a major blow to the Chinese economy but the world’s second largest economic giant plans to pump trillions of yuan of fiscal stimulus to try to offset pandemic impact but India’s already bruised economy is expected to be battered further by the pandemic setbacks.
The writer, a senior Islamabad-based journalist, can be contacted at zeesh.haider14@gmail.com
