Are India's armed forces shrinking?
Some of the spending is indicative of the government’s wariness about China.
Dear Member,
India has been beset by foreign invaders for a 1000 years that has put Hindus in danger. In the New India, Hindus are standing up to China, imperial powers, and everyone else that wishes India harm.
This is a common refrain from a more stridently nationalist India today. The armed forces and pride in India’s jawans is centre-stage of this, for example when pushing back Chinese troops at border skirmishes over the last few years.
But the defence share in the national budget has consistently fallen since 2017. Shekhar Gupta from ThePrint says for the first time this year, defence counts for just about 2% of GDP. That depends on exactly how you measure it (Reuters has a different estimate below), but the direction of travel is clear.
This doesn’t fit the nationalist narrative, but it’s driven by various wider factors, including a wide budget deficit and lower-than-expected GDP growth over the last few years. An earlier newsletter talked about the personnel recruitment in the Army. This Policy Watch goes through the highlights of the budget allocations.
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