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Today defence spending is being linked to national pride and patriotism

By the end of this month, India's finance minister will present his new Budget to the country. In the aftermath and euphoria of Kargil, he is sure to increase the outlay on the country's defence. It is likely that India's defence expenditure during 2000-2001 will once again exceed 3 per cent of GDP. In percentage terms it is not much, by world standards. However, in absolute terms the allocated amount will exceed Rs 50,000 crore for the first time, the largest slice of expenditure in the entire budget after debt repayment.

Ironically, this enormous amount will satisfy nobody. Most of it will go towards meeting the extra amount incurred due to pay and pension increase. There will, as usual, be a clamour from defence experts and also the armed forces to allocate even more money to enable modernisation of India's military forces.

The same budget will also allocate about Rs 5,000 crore, roughly a tenth of defence expenditure on education. It is a telling comment on the country's priorities that this meager allotment will not raise a whimper, either from the political parties nor the public.

Of course, education is a state subject and major spending on education will be incurred by the states. Even so, the total central and state expenditure on primary education, a cherished goal of the country for fifty years, will only be 1.5 per cent of the GDP, less than half the expenditure on defence.

Over the last decade India has spent nearly Rs 300,000 crore on defence related matters. Ironically, an average Indian feels far less secure today than he did in the eighties. Insurgency has increased, not only in Kashmir and the Northeast but in many pockets of the country. Our borders appear as vulnerable today as they were a decade ago. Militants and terrorists are capable of infiltrating and disrupting life with greater ease. Gangland shootouts, extortion killings and kidnapping are becoming commonplace in urban areas.

What is true of India is equally true of other South Asian countries. Where India's military expenditure has averaged about 2.3 per cent of the GDP during the last decade, Pakistan routinely spends about 7 per cent of her GDP in order to match India's military might. All countries of the subcontinent, with the possible exception of Sri Lanka, remain desperately poor, perennially appearing in the bottom one third of the UNDP annual human development index.

The two countries of the subcontinent are like two people drowning in a pool, both weighted down by the heavy boots of defence expenditure, and yet incapable or unwilling to shed their weights to swim to safety.

Defence expenditure in the countries of the subcontinent has a momentum of its own. It is fuelled by experience of the past, a certain amount of jingoism and political and military compulsions. The excessive expenditure is one cause of Pakistan's economic woes. Ironically, heavy defence expenditure is likely to defeat one vital goal of national security, the freedom of a country to make decisions. Economic bankruptcy, which will surely lead to approaches to IMF and the World Bank, inevitably bring in their wake tough demands and conditions.

The perception of security worldwide has undergone a sea change over the past three decades. National security has never meant only peace and tranquility on the borders nor deterrence of external armed aggression. It has always been accepted that the concept of national security is much wider and much more comprehensive.

It extends to virtually all the freedoms that a country cherishes and wishes to enjoy and to an uninterrupted and uninterfered implementation of all that a nation plans and intends to do. It has as much to do with economic viability and independence as to territorial protection. What has now become common acceptance is the fact that human security is as important as national security.

Two recent examples, Soviet Union and China, are sufficient to demonstrate that military might does not necessarily make strong nations. Over forty years of the Cold War the Soviet Union spent enormous amount of money matching the might of the United States, weapon for weapon, bomb for bomb and missile for missile at great cost to its economy and the aspirations of its people.

Neglect of human security eventually led to the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. China which built an enormous military machine in the sixties and the seventies, learnt the lesson well in time to concentrate on economic and social development and is well on its way to improving the lot of its people. One reason why the United States is following a conciliatory rather than a confrontationist policy towards China is because of the comprehensive nature of China's development.

Unfortunately, these lessons are totally lost on the people and policymakers of the subcontinent. Defence spending is today being linked to national pride and patriotism. Public pressure fuelled by jingoism and patriotic rhetoric has now been raised to such a pitch, that any dissent or doubts about defence expenditure will inevitably lead to a strong and sometimes even violent reaction in both countries. Rajiv Gandhi once declared that to question defence spending was to be unpatriotic. Thus Pakistan is now fully bent on "teaching India a lesson." And India's politicians, equally strong on rhetoric, promise to give their neighbour a bloody nose should it embark on a new adventure.

The patriotic rhetoric on the subcontinent is always converted into an unending pastime of "anything you can do I can do better." India raises her defence budget, Pakistan must follow suit. But, then she having raised her defence outlay, India once more feels compelled to increase her defence expenditure, whatever the strain on the nation's resources. There can be no end to this game of one-upmanship.

It should be inevitable that should the trend of defence spending of the two countries continue as described above, both countries would, sooner or later, exhaust their entire national wealth on defence preparedness.

Some years ago Pakistan spent $ 1 billion for the purchase of three French submarines, a cool Rs 1,500 crore per sub. Not to be outdone, India placed an order on Russia for three frigates and two submarines for the same amount. Ironically, in both cases the supplier countries that normally balk at passing on missile or nuclear technology to third world countries had no compunction in finalising the arms deals.

That countries try to emphasise an external threat to divert their people's attention from domestic problems is no doubt a cliché. Sadly, in the case of the subcontinent it is proving to be frighteningly true. Post-Kargil, the disappointing performance of successive governments in eradicating poverty, controlling population or making the people literate has more or less been forgotten.

In the September 1999 election in India, not one party, even those who perpetually claim to be "pro-poor" thought of making any of these a major election issue. Each one outdid the other in demanding a stronger defence, forgetting the simple truth that any country which shelters 400 million people below the poverty line can never be secure, however strong the external façade.

Both countries of the subcontinent are so obsessed with their defence apparatus that it is sometimes difficult to perceive what they are trying to defend. Is it the largest poverty stricken population in the world? Or is it their feudal way of life where more than 50 per cent of the women are illiterate? Or are we defending the more than 50 million child labourers in India?

Decision-makers in both countries are hell bent on building magnificent fortifications around their decrepit castles, selling the household belongings to strengthen compound walls. The entire process appears to have the inevitability of a Greek tragedy.

It is, of course, nobody's case that a country does not need to spend on defence. Each country has its own legitimate defence requirements. But other genuine requirements for meeting the people's aspirations have also to be met. Economic uplift, access to good and universal education, eradication of social injustices and gender equality are equally, if not more important, than defence of territory. One cannot mollycoddle one at the expense of other.

What is desperately needed in policymakers of the subcontinent is the realisation and acceptance that human requirements are as important as national security requirements and both go hand in hand. A nation's purse has to be finely divided between the two.

Less than a year ago, when both countries followed each other in exploding nuclear devices and proceeded to make progress towards acquiring nuclear weapons and delivery systems, it was expected that the possession of nuclear deterrence by India and Pakistan would lead to the next logical step, a mutual reduction of conventional forces and ultimately a slashing of defence expenditures. These hopes have been short-lived. Kargil put an end to all that. If anything, the relations between the neighbours have worsened and defence outlays have in fact increased, giving one more blow to human development in both countries.

Ironically, whereas both countries have failed to see the path of reason, it may eventually be left to foreign agencies to twist enough arms to force both nations to cut down their defence expenditure. The International Monetary Fund has already used its considerable power to force some such measures on Pakistan, which is seeking funds from it for a bail-out. But such measures have limited success. Ultimately it will have to be the policymakers in each country who will have to discard populism and take unpalatable but sensible decisions.

Admiral J G Nadkarni (retd)