Group Captain Vinay Kaushal (Retd.) was Consultant at Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. Click here for detailed profile.
The Defence Planning Committee needs to activate its ‘Plan and Capability Development’ Sub-committee and task them to review the 13th Defence Plan in a time bound manner.
The government decided to do away with the five year planning process in 2014. Therefore, there is no 13th plan. Despite this, MoD has gone ahead and formulated the 13th five year plan and submitted it to MoF for information only. Thus, the dilemma of defence planning and budget continues.
Innovative ways will have to be examined and existing systems, practices and procedures need to be questioned for finding optimum solutions to relieve budget stress.
The past decade, and in particular the Twelfth Plan period, have been challenging times for the Indian defence budget. Strategic foresight demands that India’s military strength and capabilities relate to diverse challenges by way of a not unlikely two-front war, the attendant imperatives for a ‘Cold Start’ capability, non-conventional challenges from non-state actors, counter-terrorism capabilities and unavoidable internal security responsibilities.
If the defence expenditure relationship to the GDP of 1.65 per cent is maintained, we may see a budget estimate (BE) for defence expenditure of Rs. 285,000 crores, against the current year BE of Rs. 249,099 crores.
The presentation of the Union budget on February 1 is expected to ensure full utilisation of allocated funds and will ensure that ‘New Schemes’ can be processed, approved and contracted from April 1, 2017.
The Army needs to comprehensively review the existing SoP for this exercise, liaise with MORTH and NHAI and jointly develop a software which can generate traffic data reports that would be accurate and useful for its planning purposes.
The underutilisation of allocated funds suggest that the meagre funds available in the modernisation budget after catering for committed liabilities have not been fully utilised. Thus, a thorough introspection for better expenditure management is needed.
The Need for a Mid-Term Review of the 13th Defence Five Year Plan
The Defence Planning Committee needs to activate its ‘Plan and Capability Development’ Sub-committee and task them to review the 13th Defence Plan in a time bound manner.