From a massive 18 per cent hike provided for the defence in the first UPA budget presented almost four years ago, Finance Minister P Chidambaram has moderated the defence allocation significantly as he presented the last full-fledged budget of the ruling coalition on Friday before the next Lok Sabha elections.

The allocation of Rs. 1,05,600 crore for the next fiscal year represents a 10 per cent hike over his last year’s allocation of Rs. 96,000 crore. It doesn’t seem likely that the Government will finalise procurement of major arms or weapons ahead of the elections, though the process for acquisition of 126 advanced fighter jets has been set in motion. The capital outlay for defence though was hiked from last year’s budgetary allocation of almost Rs 42,000 crore to Rs 48,000 crore. Significantly, the last year’s capital outlay is not likely to be fully utilised. According to the revised estimate of the utilisation of the last year’s allocation, there is likely to be a short-spending of about Rs 4,000 crore.

Curiously, one of the compulsions of massively hiking the defence allocation in the first budget of the UPA Government was because the Congress party had launched an aggressive campaign against the then NDA regime for neglecting the national security by successively short-spending the allocated funds for defence during its term in office.

It is not just a measure of the UPA’s confidence that the defence spending is no longer a key political issue. The UPA has aggressively shifted its political focus on wooing the farmers, middle class and weaker sections and P Chidambaram’s budget proposals mirrored this approach to the extent that the Government was confident enough to confine itself to making a modest allocation for defence.

The modest pattern of the capital outlay is equally reflected in the individual allocations for the three services – the Army, Navy and Air Force.