ET: Militarisation of the subcontinent continues unabated — and this trend has been further fed by India’s latest increase in its defence spending.
The Indian government has announced a 10 per cent increase in its military budget — pushing spending in this sector to a whopping 36 billion dollars. This increase is likely to trigger alarms — not only in Islamabad, but also in Beijing among other regional capitals. Yet it is the concern in Islamabad that is the one that is unsettling.
Just for some context, India’s increase alone — of over 3.5 billion dollars — equals Pakistan’s entire budget, which hovers around the four billion dollar mark. While it is not necessary that the increased budget is Pakistan-centric, perceptions in such cases are as important as reality. And the perception here is that most of India’s formations dot its western border.
China already has the largest army in the world with a huge budget. But a suspicious Pakistan cannot match the finances on conventional arms. Therefore, in turn, to compensate for quantity Pakistan has been pushed to ‘quality’ — and not in a good way — taking to developing smaller, quickly-deployable tactical nuclear weapons to counter the burgeoning Indian military machine. Aside from the dangers involved with such weapons, this trend is pushing an arms race between two countries with millions living below the poverty line.
Categories: Asia