In 1962, China militarily humiliated India due to lack of defence preparedness. In 2012, with existing mindsets at the highest political levels and the slippages that have taken place in the defence outlays, India risks a repeat of 1962 performance—if not an outright military debacle, at least, a ‘strategic diminishment’ in the global arena.

A nearly 17 per cent increase in this year’s defence budget may appear to be a bold move on the part of Finance Minister Pranab Mukerjee, saddled as he was with the problems of a comparatively slower economic growth, climbing global prices of crude oil and a burgeoning fiscal deficit; but the big question is: has it really adequately delivered vis-à-vis the urgently needed modernisation plans of its armed forces to safeguard India’s security interests? The customary assurance that immediately follows the defence budget pronouncement, that if required, more funds would be provided to meet the defence needs, has begun to sound like a jaded repeat of the previous years, never to be fulfilled.

The fact is that India’s defence budget has yet again followed the recent ominous trend of straying to less than two per cent of the GDP. A similar dip was seen in the early 1960s, which resulted in India suffering an ignominious and shameful defeat at the hands of the Chinese. That was also the time when India’s political leadership had refused to address the country’s military vulnerabilities. India lost to the Chinese not because the Indian armed forces failed to measure up to the adversary, but owing to the refusal of the ruling establishment to acknowledge the ground realities. Notwithstanding the political rhetoric, in reality, the UPA Government yet again failed to realise the ever-increasing security threats and challenges. While the old adversarial threats due to unresolved borders remain, new threats and challenges have also added to the old inventory of security woes. Terrorism in all its manifestations is a palpable threat and India also faces insurgencies generated both externally and internally. Likewise, proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir, fostered and supported in all respects by Pakistan, continues unabated.

It is a well-known fact that building military capability is a long-term exercise and therefore, defence expenditure should be linked to a long-term holistic plan, taking into account existing and emerging challenges and threats and based on trends in warfare, induction of new technologies and new methods of war fighting. When computed as a percentage of GDP, defence expenditure provides a clear indication of the investment a country is willing to make to meet its security concerns. This is a clear yardstick and a universally accepted norm. It is in this context and evaluating the threats and challenges India is likely to face, that major defence/security think tanks and analysts have recommended a hike in the defence budgets linking them to three per cent of the GDP till the necessary military capabilities are built up. Even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had in the not too distant past issued a categorical statement that with India witnessing high economic growth rates, the defence allocations could be increased to three per cent of the GDP. This was also echoed by Defence Minister A.K. Antony who saw no reason as to why the defence budget couldn’t be increased to three per cent of the GDP if India continues to maintain a high economic growth rate. However, even after achieving the desired growth rate year after year, the ministerial promises remain firmly in the realm of mere rhetoric.

Against the Indian rhetoric, consider its hostile northern neighbour China whose defence budget 2012 announced in the first week of March significantly has drawn attention not only in regional terms, but at the global level too. China has shot through its defence expenditure over the $100 billion mark, making China’s military expenditure at the global level, second only to that of the United States even in official terms. As it is known the world over, China covertly spends two-and-a-half to three times the overtly allotted sums on its defence preparedness; in 2012, its defence expenditure is likely to be in the region of $250-300 billion. This would bring China close on the heels of the United States, especially, when viewed in the context of sharp cuts in the US defence spending necessitated by Congressional mandate. The day may not be far when China is able to effectively challenge the world’s sole superpower US, even in military terms.

Regionally in Asia, steep hikes in Chinese military expenditure cannot but cause multiple strategic and military concerns for China’s neighbours. Contextually, China’s recent aggressiveness and military assertion on territorial disputes foisted on virtually all its neighbours, multiply these concerns. But it is India, which having already fought a disastrous border war with China and continuously being subjected to festering border dispute by China, should be extremely wary of and strategically most sensitive to the rising ‘China Threat’. The recent Chinese utterances which include its top political leadership should be a cause of genuine alarm for India. Justifying the Chinese vastly growing defence expenditure, the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiao Bao said recently, “We will enhance the armed forces capacity to accomplish a wide range of tasks, the most important of which is to win local wars under information age conditions.” The stress on winning local wars needs to be noted as this is a reference to China’s peripheries where territorial disputes abound and which most ominously includes India.

It is ironic that despite the credibility and potency of ‘The China Threat’, India’s apex national security establishment continues to de-emphasise this threat and knowingly get tricked into China’s protestations that China’s rise is a ‘peaceful rise’, despite regular warnings from its military establishment. The Indian top political leadership must realise that, ‘the China threat’ to India is more real than to other nations, also because China perceives that India is its sizeable and comparable strategic and military Asian rival and could impede China’s rise and emergence as the undisputed military power in Asia.

Then there is Pakistan, literally a vassal state of China which is known to devote abnormally large percentage of its GDP on military spending, despite getting military aid on a large scale from the US and generous supplies of Chinese military hardware at friendly prices. With their friendship being mutually lauded as ‘higher than the mountains’ and ‘deeper than the oceans’, both China and Pakistan (individually and collectively), pose the gravest of security threat to India.