Budgeting for Indian Defence

Defence budgeting and financial management is an extremely complex subject at the best of times even in countries that possess adequate human, fiscal and material resources. For countries like India, this is made far more difficult by the fact that such resources (fiscal as well as technological) cannot be easily predicted and / or controlled, and ambiguities dominate threat perceptions. In addition, our challenges get multiplied by the fact that few person outside a small group in the government understand the dynamics of budgeting; and, similarly, an even smaller group which constitutes the final decision – makers is fully conversant with makes for military capabilities. The inherent conservatism of military organisation also works against finding solutions to even problems that are obvious. It is for this reason, among many others, that well established democracies rely on multidisciplinary civil and military bureaucratic staff for force development and budgetary planning.  

Indian defence expenditure appear to have a beneficial impact on growth and investment in spite of the fact that historically they have been a very heavy user of foreign exchange…

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