| Thanks to Pakistan and China,which have adopted unfriendly postures towards India, has been the main reason for India to become one of the five biggest military spenders. If one takes into account the Chinese allocations in the budget on defence and that of Pakistan one would not blame India for increasing expenditure on military. In fact India needs latest weapons, including missiles and long range guns which can be used during any misadventure thrust on India by China or Pakistan. India has emerged as one of the five biggest military spenders in 2017, a report by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) found.With an expenditure of USD 63.9 billion on military in 2017, India marked a 5.5 per cent rise from the figures in 2016. China made the biggest leap with an increase of 5.6 per cent (USD 12 billion) from 2016, and became the highest defence spender in Asia at USD 228 billion. Military tension between India and China may have driven India's defence expense, as indicated by Senior Researcher with the SIPRI AMEX programme, Siemon Wezeman. Wezeman said, "Tensions between China and many of its neighbours continue to drive the growth in military spending in Asia". The United States retained the top spot at USD 610 billion, with unchanged military expenditure between 2016 and 2017. Saudi Arabia emerged as the third biggest spender in 2017 at USD 69.4 billion, an increase of 9.2 per cent from 2016. India has been forced by Pakistan and China to allocate meagre funds for the sectors of education, health and industry,road connectivity and resolving energy crisis. People suffer from poverty, health problems and other problems but the Government has not been able to allocate heavy funds for settling these problems because in view of the integrity, sovereignty of the country is concerned India has to give priority to the defence sector. As far as Pakistan is concerned it banks on the military aid from China and the US and as far as China is concerned it has shown rapid progress in the manufacture of latest weapons, missiles. Though like China and Pakistan India is a nuclear nation but it cannot depend on its nuclear capability when Pakistan and China are not in a mood to strike with nuclear weapons first. This means that India has to depend on conventional weapons including war planes and missiles. The Indian scientists have developed new technologies for missile manufacturing with range of each missile raging between 400 kms and 1000 kms. The report has found a sharp drop in Russia's military expenditure that dropped by 20 per cent from 2016 to stand at USD 66.3 billion. Overall, the global military expenditure showed a rising trend as a marginal increase of 1.1 per cent in real terms from 2016, resulted in USD 1,739 billion expenditure in 2017. The drop in Russia's military spending since 2016 is the result of Russia's readiness for possessing latest equipments and its preparedness to measure muscles with any country. "The increases in world military expenditure in recent years have been largely due to the substantial growth in spending by countries in Asia and Oceania and the Middle East, such as China, India and Saudi Arabia," said Dr Nan Tian, Researcher with the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure (AMEX) programmend the spending on production of each missile is enormous that too when India does not bank on military aid from the super powers. Whatever may happen to the sectors of health education and industry or the energy p[roblem India has to remain alert with latest weapons and added manpower to meet challenges from its neighbours. |
