By Fourth Eye.
[The Guest blogger, Fourth Eye is a retired Indian Air Force officer, who holds a postgraduate degree in Operations Research from a foreign university. He has undertaken many studies on the subject while serving with the Indian Air Force. This is his response to the blogpost here on the way we allocate our [...]
Incremental budgeting for defence expenditure by the government demolishes all talk of budgeting based on capability-based, long-term integrated defence planning.
Amidst all the pretentious talk about LTIPP (2007-2022), five-year defence plans, forward planning, capability based restructuring and more such gibberish put forth by the defence services, defence ministry and myriad strategic commentators on allocations for the [...]
A correction. 36.6 percent of allocations for new defence acquisitions has been returned unexpended this year.
Indian Express report quoted by this blog yesterday was slightly off the mark. It assumed that all the money — Rs 5221 crore — being returned out of the defence budget of 2009-10 was from the capital expenditure account. After [...]
Only 27 percent of budget earmarked for new defence acquisitions has been returned unutilised this year, compared to 38 percent last year.
In the financial year 2008-09, the defence ministry had surrendered 38 percent of its budget earmarked for new defence acquisitions — 7482.35 out of 19636.2 crore. This year, the plan till January was to [...]
The issue of effectiveness should always trump the questions of efficiency and quantum, when it comes to defence spending.
As we look forward to the defence budget for the coming year, just consider these facts.
In the year 1999-2000, the total defence budget of this country was Rs 48,504 crore. In 2009-10, the allocation for pay [...]
An exclusive focus on legacy efforts of military modernisation has done a huge disservice to national security.
When the new defence budget is announced in a few weeks time, we will again witness — to paraphrase Richard Betts — that the sluice gates of military spending have been opened not because it is the [...]
There is an urgent need to take steps to have a better ratio of capital to revenue expenditure in the defence budget.
For the current financial year (2009-10), the capital expenditure as a percentage of the defence budget is planned to be a rather modest 39 percent, the balance 61 percent being earmarked for revenue expenditure. [...]
38 percent of the amount earmarked for new acquisitions was surrendered in 2008-09.
Most of us have noted — with great concern — that certain portion of the defence budget is returned to the government coffers unused every year. Those who go into slightly more detail are aware that this unexpended money is usually from the [...]
Nearly eight years after it was first proposed, the defence ministry has not yet embraced this very sensible idea.
For the uninitiated, here is a primer to understand the concept of Zero-based budgeting. United States implemented it in 1977, the Chinese claim to have done so in 2004. In fact, there have been renewed calls in [...]
The report needs to be made public.
In his guest post on why India needs to reconsider the creation of a Chief of Defence Staff, BeeCee lamented the lack of information about the Committee on Defence Expenditure[CDE], chaired by Arun Singh. Arun Singh, as most would recollect, was Rajiv Gandhi’s MoS for defence in the mid-1980s. [...]
This is a symptom of the malaise.
In a sense, the procurement of golf carts from operational funds by an army commander is an old story now. It has travelled to far corners of the world, being reported about in The Times of London and The Irish Times, among others. For all the attention the story [...]
It was about central pay scales, not about military and its personnel.
[This guest post has been penned by this blog's favourite guest blogger, BeeCee. His earlier guest posts on the SCPC imboglio are here, here and here.]
The debate on the Civil vs Military aspects of the VI CPC report, it seems, will continue to simmer, [...]
On utilisation of funds for procurement of defence equipment.
In reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, the defence minister has provided the following details.
The allocation of funds (Rs. in crores) for procurement of defence equipments and their utilization during the last three years and current year are as follows:
Year
Revised Estimates
Actuals
Savings(+)/Excess(-)
% age utilized
2006-2007
26774.39
26900.44
(-)126.05
100.47
2007-2008
28110.01
27903.42
(+)206.59
99.27
2008-2009
30614.64
29994.03*
(+)620.61
97.97
2009-2010
(As per Demands [...]
From Anit Mukherjee and Nitin Pai.
Anit Mukherjee, an ex- army officer and now a scholar based in the US, in the Seminar magazine [the complete article can be accessed online next month when full issue will be available on the web].
While there are many issues that need to be addressed in the nature and form [...]
The defence budget figures are the same.
If our soldiers are not overburdened with money, it is not because they have a distaste for riches; if their lives are not unduly long, it is not because they are disinclined to longevity. ~Sun Tzu
So, Pranab Da did nothing new with the defence portion of the Union [...]
Talk about practice, it is not even there on paper.
In theory, the acquisition of capital assets and defence modernisation flows from 15-year Long-Term Integrated Perspective Plan [LTIPP] to a Five-year Defence Plan and ultimately to the Annual acquisition plan. The period of the latest LTIPP was changed at the last moment while the Eleventh Defence [...]
Sans a national strategy review.
From the Report of the Estimates Committee of the Parliament in 1992-93 (Paragraph 1.65):
The committee is apprised that the force level under the Ministry of Defence is determined by the dynamic perspective of the security scenario coupled with the annual availability of resources within the plan period, competing demands of other [...]
Clarity in defence budget essential to steer Indian armed forces.
When the tide goes out, you learn who’s been swimming naked. ~Warren Buffett
The Union budget will be unveiled in a few weeks from now. It is certain that the budget speech of the finance minister will contain a lot of platitudes and bromides when it comes [...]
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