Defence Budget 2021 : There are a lot of expectations from this budget, one of which is that a substantial budget will be given to the Ministry of Defense. Considering the tension on the eastern borders in the last years, there are many expectations from this budget as to what the Nirmala Sitharaman’s box in the Ministry of Defense met. It is expected that this time there will be a big increase in the defence budget.
The deployment of the army in Ladakh will definitely be kept in mind while making allocation for the defence budget. Due to low defence budget allocation for the last 3 years, there is a problem in making strict military arrangements in Ladakh immediately.
In 2020, the Ministry of Defense was allocated Rs 4.71 lakh crore, but a large part of it went to pension only, which was around Rs 1.3 lakh crore. From the military’s point of view, the revenue and capital allocation in the budget was a bit lost. More than 82 per cent of the army remained in revenue and very little budget was left for modernization and capital expenditure.
This time the military expenditure is expected to increase rapidly because about 50 thousand soldiers have been deployed in Ladakh. The Chinese army was trying to infiltrate the border, which is why the government has tightened the arrangements on the border. Apart from Ladakh, there has always been a huge deployment of troops on the borders with Pakistan, because infiltration is also frequent from there.
If we talk about China, then China is ahead in terms of military hardware as compared to India, because it invests heavily to strengthen its forces. China’s annual expenditure on defence is about $ 261 billion, or about Rs 19 lakh crore, while India spends only $ 71 billion, which is about Rs 5 lakh crore on the army.
According to the estimates of the Ministry of Defense, the budget allocation and the projection of the force has seen a continuous decline of 25%. In 2017-20, the Ministry of Defense estimates were around Rs 13.4 lakh crore, of which only Rs 8.39 lakh crore was received, which was about Rs 5 lakh crore less than the estimate.
