ELECTIONS '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Never Enough Courage

In P Chidambaram's Budget, 1996: Defence expenditure is set at Rs 277.98 billion. In the course of his Budget speech that year, he promises that no expense will be spared to ensure the "security of the nation." He also promises that additional funds from outside the Budget will be made available, if necessary, to "keep our armed forces in fighting fit condition."

In P Chidambaram's Budget, 1997: Defence expenditure was set at Rs 356.2 billion. In the course of his Budget speech that year, he promises that no expense will be spared to ensure the "security of the nation." He also gives Parliament a "solemn undertaking" that he will "adequately provide for any additional requirement."

In Yashwant Sinha's Budget, 1998: Defence expenditure will be "increased substantially" to Rs 412 billion. In the course of his Budget speech on June 1, he declares that there "can be no compromise in our defence preparedness." He also says that he "will consider further increase in the budgetary support during the course of the year, if necessary."

I wonder, what happens to a finance minister when it comes to spending on defence? Do they all become parrots? Because whoever he is, whatever his party, there are three things you can count on in the part of his Budget speech that has to do with defence. First, he announces an increase in spending (14 per cent this year), one that handily outstrips inflation (currently about 6.35 per cent). Second, he makes the mandatory declaration to the effect that there "can be no compromise in our defence preparedness", a declaration all MPs feel obliged to applaud just as they did the year before. Third, he announces that "if necessary", even more money will be set aside for defence during the year.

Whatever else is in the Budget, these three features remain fixed and immutable. Also, actual spending on defence always ends up being higher than first revealed in the Budget: In 1996-97, it was actually Rs 294.98 billion (after the original budget of Rs 277.98 billion), in 1997-98 it was Rs 363.63 billion (Rs 356.2 billion).

What will it touch in 1998-99?

I don't know. I do know that several writers made an interesting point after the nuclear explosions. They urged the government to use the euphoria set off by the bombs to get started on many too-long neglected national tasks, to push through various badly needed reforms. I would argue that the euphoria itself was sadly misplaced. But since there was some, it did make for an excellent opportunity.

Now there's nonstop bluster about the prime minister's courage in going nuclear. Real courage would have been in getting down to true nation-building, to the unpleasant jobs that no government in the past has shown an interest in. Even now, the PM can show us the stuff he and his government are made of by using the euphoria to tackle some of these tasks.

But there are few signs that the chance was even noticed. Apparently Yashwant Sinha did not stop to think: "I'm told the bomb has made the nation more secure. Good! So we certainly don't need to spend so much on defence this year. Why don't I, at a minimum, dispense with the yearly hike in defence rupees?"

Instead, Sinha fell back on the same rhetoric about, the usual increase in: defence spending.

But back to defence in a bit. Consider what he might have tried to tackle with the dose of euphoria he had at his disposal. For one, he might have gone after the bank and insurance employees unions. In fact, he might have gone after much that is expensive and unproductive in the public sector, but for now, I'll pick only on these unions. They remain stubbornly opposed to reform and any move to privatise, content to condemn us to the same shoddy service they have given us for years, forcing us to pay for their poor productivity and enormous losses. Why should this travesty, this drain on our economy, continue?

Yes, Sinha did announce the tentative step of opening up insurance to private Indian companies. It sounds good, even suitably swadeshi. But exactly which Indian companies are lining up to enter the ring against the public sector insurance giants? As P Chidambaram writes in the Economic Times: "I do not think there is any Indian company with the resources or the technology to challenge LIC & GIC." You see, Sinha is just pretending reform -- for which he will expect acclaim -- while practicing status quo.

"Education is the key vehicle for social transformation," Sinha told Parliament on June 1. Congratulations to him for saying so, and also for increasing spending on education from Rs 47 billion to Rs 70 billion: nearly 50 per cent. Congratulations, but a closer look finds some holes in that rosy 50 per cent too.

Over half that increase -- Rs 12.8 billion of it -- is for higher education (up from Rs 9.5 billion to Rs 22.3 billion). Fine, except that of the Rs 12.8 billion, Rs 9.5 billion goes to pay for increased salaries for professors in universities. That apart, the really urgent educational priority for India is not higher education, but primary education. That's where we have failed our own people, that's the Constitutional promise we have most shamefully trampled on, that's what will truly engineer social transformation.

Sinha does propose an increase in spending for primary education: from Rs 22.7 billion to Rs 27.8 billion. Five billion rupees: what you might call watching that "key vehicle for social transformation" go motoring on by.

Not that I'm suggesting that allocating the money alone is likely to result in more of an emphasis on primary education. But the government is also entirely silent on the other kinds of reforms -- bureaucratic ones -- which we will need to improve the state of primary education. Again, the joy of the bomb might have been useful to push through those reforms. It has been wasted.

Besides, Sinha also had this to say about education: "We are committed to raising the total resource allocation for education to 6 per cent of GDP in a phased manner." That's a commendable goal, a level education spending in India has never even approached. But take a look at the figures. Today, the GDP is estimated to be about Rs 16,000 billion (Rs 16 trillion). Six per cent of that is about Rs 960 billion. Would Yashwant Sinha like to spell out for us the "phased manner" in which he is going to move from Rs 70 billion to Rs 960 billion, including how long it will take to get there?

Again, it's just more of the same. Sinha pretends concern for the things that are dragging India down, but the concern is little more than just words. Numbers, if you like.

This is the context in which I'll remind you about defence spending and the way it increases every year, always well ahead of inflation. We steadily refuse to "compromise on national security", but somehow we never seem to get to a point where we feel any security. To a point where we can say to ourselves: enough. Enough, because we did not compromise on national security last year and the year before and the year before that ... so this year, we are secure enough.

No, we never hear that from any Finance or Prime or any other Minister.

I suspect that happens because, refusing to compromise and mindful of what our neighbours are doing, we raise our expenditure on defence. Seeing us do so, our neighbours feel insecure themselves. They refuse to compromise too, and raise their spending on defence. We see them do so and feel insecure in turn. So we refuse to compromise once again and raise spending once again.

On and on it goes, and it will never change.

Unless we find ourselves a prime minister, a finance minister, leaders in general, who will look past being parrot-like. Leaders who will tackle the country's urgent tasks with the same uncompromising spirit that is so applauded when applied to defence.

Leaders with the courage to say about spending on defence: enough.

How Readers reacted to Dilip D'Souza's last column

Dilip D'Souza