NEWSLINKS
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTION 99
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

The Additional Burden

Speaking to a gathering of teachers in Lucknow on February 26, The Hindu tells me, Prime Minister A B Vajpayee said that "despite constraints, allocations for the defence of the country had to be adequately increased." Apparently he is sure this is a popular thing to say. For he also told his audience that "the way people... donated money in the wake of the Kargil conflict showed that the nation was willing to bear the additional burden."

Vajpayee's words were prophetic. Three days later, his Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha unveiled a budget that increases those "allocations for the defence of the country" by 28.5 per cent, or Rs 130 billion. That rupee increase is what the FM proudly called in his budget speech "the largest ever increase in the defence budget in any single year." That increase alone -- the increase alone, mind you -- equals what the good Mr Sinha plans to spend this single year on five basic social needs: health, education, housing, drinking water and roads. And yes, this single year, India will spend nearly Rs 586 billion on defence: nearly Rs 586 for every single man, woman and eunuch in India. Nearly one hundred rupees for every single man, woman and eunuch in the world.

Sinha also assured a no doubt anxious nation that "more will be provided whenever needed." I feel better already.

Is the nation "willing to bear the additional burden"? I don't know. But I returned to reading about Vajpayee's chat with the Lakhnavi teachers. He went on to muse about primary education in the country, allowing that "some states, which gave adequate attention to education, were now in [a] better form of development." Encouraging, that the prime minister recognised the link between education and development. But what he said next wasn't so encouraging. He was "not in a position to" put compulsory primary education into practice.

And why is that, honourable Mr Prime Minister? "In view," said Vajpayee, "of the stiff resource constraints."

"Despite" some unnamed constraints, we must definitely, yet again, as we have done ever since Independence, increase defence spending. And that by the largest amount ever. But "in view of" presumably the same unnamed constraints, we must definitely, yet again, as we have done ever since Independence, pay piffling attention to primary education.

Is the nation really "willing to bear the additional burden"? I still don't know. After all, resource constraints can't be all that stiff if they are so easily overcome when it comes to defence. Why the continuing, shaming, reluctance to spend on primary education? Why the unchallengeable, unquenchable, never-dimming urge to spend more and more, obscenely more, on defence?

Because we wrap defence spending in the cloak of bluster and patriotism that our leaders have persuaded us must never be questioned. In fact, questioning it is immediate evidence of the questioner's unpatriotic tendencies, and I'm aware some of you readers are already feeling patriotic pangs in your guts about these very words.

Nevertheless, if you're in search of some of that bluster, you need only do what I do every time a budget comes around: find the paragraph in the FM's speech that refers to the defence budget. It's usually near the beginning, and so similar are the words you'll find there, year after year, that you might suspect there are some skilled cut-and-paste jockeys hanging around the Ministry of Finance. This year, Yashwant Sinha put it this way:

[T]here cannot be any compromise on Defence. ... Government is committed to enhance the quality of our defence preparedness and to modernise our forces. ... We shall not shrink from making any sacrifice to guard and protect every inch of our beloved motherland.

"No compromise", "shall not shrink", "every inch of our beloved motherland": the same stirring words we've heard for years. As in every year that's gone, this year too they were greeted with cheers in Parliament. Our gang of MPs know only too well the power of patriotism as expressed in buying more guns and planes.

And yet, consider. We are committed to enhancing the quality of defence preparedness, sure. Yet a new report about defence purchases from the Comptroller and Auditor General of India is a sorry list of waste and skullduggery. It describes an advance payment of Rs 24 billion for 50 Sukhoi fighters as a "dead" investment because of various delays and "unrealistic assumptions." A further 12 billion rupees were sunk into 10 "inferior" Sukhoi fighters, of which only six have been delivered anyway.

We won't compromise on defence, no doubt. But Sukhoi also saw fit to supply us with "old, used, defective, unserviceable items valued at Rs 155 million." We paid some 400 million rupees to a Bulgarian firm for 122,000 AK-47s and ammunition, but had to turn to a Romanian firm to buy the guns because the Bulgarian one did not honour our contract. In any case, the Romanians did not supply the guns with ammunition, so they could not be used.

We pour money into what we think is defence, and here's nauseating evidence of how we spend at least some of it. Don't make me go on about the CAG report. Please.

And we shall not shrink from making any sacrifice to guard and protect every inch of our beloved motherland -- but nobody, not Sinha or Vajpayee, nobody, appears in the least concerned about the billions of inches that disappear into the seas every year. That loss, because of severe depletion of forest cover and the consequent erosion of topsoil that's in full swing right across the country.

Whatever the quality of defence preparedness is, such is the quality of bluster that our MPs cheer. The quality of the patriotism we are taught to swallow whole.

I ache for, I long for, I yearn for, the minister who will proclaim with pride: "despite constraints, allocations for primary education had to be adequately increased." And: "There cannot be any compromise on education." And: "Government is committed to enhance the quality of our schools and to modernise our education system." And: "We shall not shrink from making any sacrifice to see that every Indian child gets a quality education."

Wild Parliamentary cheers as these pronouncements flow forth. What a dream!

It astonishes me, as I ache, that elsewhere in the world there are leaders with a different vision. Let me tell you about just two.

Oscar Arias, once president of Costa Rica and winner of the Nobel Peace prize in 1987, wrote in the San Jose Mercury-News on August 6 1997: "We must begin to build a new security paradigm that gives precedence to addressing basic human needs for food, shelter, health care and personal safety rather than to amassing armaments and expanding arsenals. ... Human security, not just national security, must be our mantra for the 21st Century."

Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, wrote in the Times of India on March 8 2000: "Education is, quite simply, an investment that yields a higher profit than any other. It is what makes possible the development of entire communities, countries and continents. It is the most effective form of defence spending there is."

I know, as I ache still, that a man who speaks this language will remain a mirage in India. Because we are sure that tending to the needs, the aspirations, of ordinary Indians is no patriotism. Buying arms, and too often dud arms, is. And that is why if they have an Oscar Arias, we have a prime minister who is "not in a position to announce compulsory primary education."

Though in defence of AB Vajpayee, he did go right on to express "hope that within a period of five years, [compulsory primary education] would become a reality."

Evidently, our PM faces no "stiff resource constraints" on hope. Meanwhile, I wonder about "bearing the additional burden" of ministers like these.

Dilip D'Souza