Budgetary outlays for national defence need a careful autopsy for a general understanding, which has otherwise been kept out of a national debate. This apathy must change for the very simple reason that a subject which accounts for 14 per cent of the total government expenditure and is not kept under the planned category needs to be appropriately examined. First, defence expenditure has witnessed only a modest hike this year.
Trends in defence expenditure denote certain clues to assess, especially the military component of a state’s comprehensive national power. Components of national power, in turn, are intricately linked to a state’s grand strategy - the latter connotes the desire of a state to achieve its rightful place in the global community. In brief, trends in defence expenditure tend to objectively assess aspects of a state’s military capability, although a lacuna remains as even the very concept of military capability is often value-laden.