Tying defence expenditure to GDP is no substitute for policy making.

India’s defence expenditure this year is pegged at less than 2 per cent of the GDP which is lower than India’s defence spending in 1962 — 2.1 per cent of the GDP. After the Chinese debacle, it jumped to 4.5 per cent in 1964. By 1994, it was slightly less than 5 per cent of GDP and it has been on a downward path since. In the mid 1980s, there was a demand to peg defence expenditure to a minimum of 5 per cent of the GDP.  For the last few years, the Parliamentary defence committee, Eleventh Finance Commission, retired military brass and strategic analysts have been active in the media asking for that figure to be pegged at 3 per cent of the GDP.

GDP is an important measure for determining how much India could afford to spend on defence, but it provides no insight into how much India should spend. Proponents of fixing a certain percentage of GDP as the minimum defence expenditure are status quoists, who use this argument as mere rhetoric, rather than as an articulation of defence policy. After the Mumbai terror attacks, it is politically taboo to disabuse this notion of a GDP-indexed minimum defence expenditure. Any analyst, politician or policymaker who dares to publicly question this argument risks being labelled unpatriotic, soft on terrorism and anti-national.

India could spend a great deal more or great deal less on its military capability than it does today, but that does not mean it should choose either course due to a mathematical formula. When there are fewer threats, the defence spending would be less. When there are more threats, a nation spends more. As threats evolve, funding should evolve along with them. Defence expenditure should be determined according to threat-based analysis and there are many substantive reasons why a proposal to bind defence expenditure with a fixed percentage of GDP is totally misplaced.

1] Using GDP to compare current defence expenditure to figures in the 1980s is misleading because India’s GDP has increased substantially over the last two decades. India’s GDP now is five times the size of what it was in 1980 (in dollar terms). Arguing that defence expenditure today is at a historic low as a percentage of GDP, and should thus be increased, is like a landlord arguing that because the tenant received a well-deserved pay hike, their rent should also be increased.

2] In the current economic climate, GDP does not necessarily provide the reliability in defence budgeting that many cheerleaders hope for; especially if India was to enter a recession, like the US or Europe. If India’s GDP decreases tomorrow, would the Indian armed forces support a concomitant reduction in their budget. Perhaps not, especially if India was at war or facing a threat on its borders.

3] Tying defence expenditure to GDP would erode budgetary flexibility and might threaten the civilian control of the military. By rigidly fixing defence expenditure to GDP, the prerogative of the civilian masters in determining whether defence expenditure should be higher or lower is curtailed. Civilian control of the military, an inviolable principle of Indian democracy, is likely to be undermined.

4] Another justification put forth by the proponents of linking defence spending to GDP is the erosion of the Indian armed forces under Nehru in the years after independence. While inadequate defence expenditure did play its part, it had also to do with post-independence downsizing of the armed forces, Krishna Menon’s failure to successfully manage military morale and Nehru’s misplaced belief in Panchsheel, UN and peaceful diplomacy.

5] The defence ministry and the defence services have been unable to fully utilise the amount earmarked for them every year. Over the last four years, nearly 16,000 crore rupees have been returned unused by them. Tying defence spending to GDP throws more money at the problem but does not force the bureaucrats and the generals to find ways to streamline the acquisition procedures.

6] Pakistan spends 6 per cent of its GDP on defence while the corresponding figure for China is 4.5 per cent. Comparing the percentage of GDP spent on national defence by different countries represents a flawed analysis. The argument is that if India’s adversaries devote a higher percentage of their GDP to defence, it represents a threat to Indian security. It proves that India has to increase its defence spending to maintain a relative advantage over them. Leaving aside the fact that India is set to spend many times more on its defence than Pakistan (or many times less than China) in actual dollar terms, comparing India’s GDP to Pakistan’s or China’s GDP does not give an accurate sense of relative military capabilities.

7] The usual Guns versus Butter argument. Money spent on defence is money not spent on education, reducing fiscal deficit, infrastructure, public health and other important non-military priorities.

Defence planning is a matter of matching limited resources to achieve carefully scrutinised and prioritised objectives. Smart planning relies on requirements, tradeoffs and a thorough evaluation of threats, not GDP, to determine defence spending. Replacing sophisticated and rigorous analysis with rigid formulas severs India’s defence planning from the evolving threat environment and widens the chasm between policy, planning and execution. Retaining flexibility in defence expenditure should not be viewed as a weakness, but rather as being capable of adapting to the  rapidly changing security environment in this age of unprecedented, diverse and dangerous threats.

If the armed forces and defence ministry can make the case that the threats India faces justify larger defence budgets, then larger amounts should be allocated towards national security. Unfortunately, fixing defence spending at 3 per cent of the GDP is a lazy substitute for national vision, political will and coherent policy making at the national level. Such a step would, instead, shield the troika of inept politicians, inefficient bureaucrats and staid military brass from careful scrutiny and throttle a much needed debate on national security.

What is the biggest lesson from the Great Depression? In my view, it is that monetary policy and the financial sector play a crucial role in economic development. Let me put it more precisely: good monetary policy is unlikely to accelerate the speed of economic growth – after all we have more income year after year because mankind comes up with new ideas, with new products, with more efficient ways of producing output. However, bad monetary policy can easily derail economic development. It is true for rich and poor countries alike.

Why are financial markets and the banking sector so important? Banks fulfill a very important role in the economy by matching borrowers and lenders. When we deposit $100 in a bank, the bank keeps, at most, two to three dollars in its vaults (in fact the money is often in the central bank), the remaining $98 or so is lent to a borrower.

Most businesses require loans for their normal operations. When the banking sector does not work properly, businesses cannot get loans and they have to curtail their production and lay off workers. As they curtail production, they demand fewer products from their suppliers and therefore their suppliers have to reduce their output and fire workers. If manufacturers cannot sell their goods because the firm downstream does not need as many products as before, they cannot generate enough revenue to repay their earlier loans. Businesses go bankrupt and banks experience further problems as their balance sheet deteriorates due to non-performing loans. At this point, banks want to lend even less because of the uncertainty generated from bankruptcies. As they lend less, the vicious circle continues – with producers cutting production and firing workers. On the top of this, depositors start worrying about their deposits because the non-performing loans have made some banks go belly up – your bank has lent out your money to borrowers who cannot return it. Depositors start withdrawing their cash and banks have even fewer possibilities for lending as they have to hoard cash in case there is a run on the bank. If the financial sector does not work, the real economy can go into a deadly spiral and shrink by 30 per cent as during the Great Depression.

And one thought like Ilian that this would be obvious to all the policy makers. However all the lessons from the Great Depression seem to have been lost within three-quarters of a century. It seems, to paraphrase Marc Bard, that politics [especially of the petty and partisan variety] eats policy for lunch seven days a week.

Since then, the government has collected Rs.74972.36 crore as cess, but only Rs.902 crore has been allocated to the Oil Industry Development Board (OIDB) that is supposed to disburse the money to the industry.  In fact, the last allotment of Rs. 95 crore to the OIDB was done in 1991-92. The balance money has gone to the Consolidated Fund of India and added to other revenue accruals.

The cess was doubled in 2002 from Rs. 900 per tonne to Rs.1800 per tonne, and further increased to Rs. 2500 per tonne in 2006, on the ground of providing subsidies to LPG and kerosene. As per the Oil Industry (Development) Act, the amount collected by levying cess on indigenous crude is to be utilised for the development of petroleum sector; the cess was never intended to cover subsidies – either directly or through oil bonds.

Cess is only applicable to pre-NELP [New Exploration Licensing Policy] blocks or acreage given to national oil companies (NOCs- ONGC and OIL) on a nomination basis in which the licensee may be one of the NOCs. The blocks that pay cess on oil are: nomination blocks held 100 per cent by NOCs (for example, Mumbai High), joint venture blocks that were awarded as field development contracts (such as Mukta, Panna, Ravva), and exploration blocks that went on to production (such as PY-3, CB-OS/2).

Now that the petroleum sector has been deregulated and opened for private sector, there is no justification of continuing this cess at all. The private companies still pay about half the cess not paid to the government as increased profit oil [amount of production paid to the government under the production sharing contract] and corporate taxes. Recent newsreports indicate that-

The government is obtaining legal opinion for imposing a special oil tax on the domestic crude oil production under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP). The proposed tax is supposed to kick-in after price of domestically-produced crude oil crosses the $75/barrel mark. While public sector oil producers like ONGC and Oil India would have to fork out to the government 100% of additional realisation beyond the cut-off price, private companies like Reliance Industries (RIL), Essar Oil and Cairn India would be required to pay 40% of their windfall gains.[ET]

Cess, customs duty, excise duty, sales tax, education cess, pollution cess and now a special oil tax. Considering the amount of revenue collected by the government[central and state], the net subsidy provided  to the public on petroleum products is only a political statement, with insignificant net financial entailment.

Coupled with the charade of Oil Bonds, the cess imposed on the indigenous crude oil produced by NOCs is an implicit arrangement of meeting the subsidy burden and artificially containing government’s budgetary deficits. All these measures are but an indicator of the byzantine and befuddled nature of the government budgetary process. It is time someone took up cudgels to streamline and simplify the convoluted government fiscal setup, both of revenue collection and of expenditure.

Unorganised and organised retail must coexist and flourish in India…

After almost scaring the Tata Motors away from West Bengal, Mamata Bannerjee has now trained her guns on Reliance Retail. Well, Reliance Retail should be used to being targeted by feisty women politicians. Immediately after coming to power in Lucknow, Ms. Mayawati had earlier undertaken a similar exercise in UP.

All this is taking place when behemoths of international retail are trying to enter the Indian market. Tesco has chosen to come with Tatas, while Reliance has tied up with Wincanton. The big daddy of them all, Wal-Mart is coming to India courtesy the Bharti group.

In the September edition of Pragati-The Indian National Interest Review, Prashant Kumar Singh makes significant observations about the confusion surrounding retail industry in India. He rightly notices that-

The debate over retail in India has been fixated on the growth of organised retail, entry of international retailers and concomitant demise of the traditional retailer. The spectre of ogres like Wal-Mart gobbling small retailers has completely paralysed the government on the policy formulation front; not because of any real concern for small retailers but more out of their perceived political clout. This lack of policy initiatives for boosting and regulating organised retail is unfortunately based on the fallacy that modern retail and unorganised retail are necessarily antagonistic.

…Available data provides sufficient evidence that traditional retail is under no immediate threat from organised retail. With the present rate of growth of organised retail of 45 percent per annum, any structural changes brought about by gradual policy shifts will take at least a decade before unorganised retail feels the heat. This assessment is not to condone continued government stupor towards the unorganised sector on the issues of credit availability, access to distribution channels, and realisation of fair price for the produce. It is, instead, meant to spur the government to initiate concrete measures to support the traditional retailers.

…Given the benefits of organised retail, the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) needs to be analysed. It is fallacious to prescribe FDI as the panacea for all the ills plaguing organised retail. The eagerness of international giants to enter Indian markets can be attributed to saturation of the developed markets and low penetration of formal retail in India. The entry of FDI in retail will tilt the balance between suppliers and retailers, force smaller players to adapt and differentiate, and bring consolidation in the sector. The accompanying direct benefits are substantial: increase in exports due to high level of sourcing from India, incorporation of global best practices, investments in the complete supply chain–especially in technologies relating to cold chain, food processing and IT, increase in product variety and categories, increase in employment, and secondary benefits of modern agriculture and shopping tourism. Moreover, this FDI in retail will arrive without any sops and tax breaks from the government, unlike IT and auto-manufacturing sectors, where state governments have been bending backwards to attract investments.

Prashant Kumar Singh makes a strong case that with the right government policies in place, “the ecosystem of the retail industry in India will then adapt itself to accommodate the two seemingly divergent strands of retailing, evolving into an indigenous Indian retail model”. To read the complete piece titled “Retail in Doldrums“, download the community edition(pdf) of the latest issue of Pragati-The Indian National Interest Review.

There are three duties/ taxes collected by the government on the sale of petroleum products. The state governments collect the sales tax while the excise and custom duties go into the kitty of the central government.

Now, let us take a look at the actual revenue collected by the government from excise and customs and subsidies provided via the oil bonds and direct subsidies on LPG and PDS kerosene. During the last three years:

The government has now announced that it will issue oil bonds worth Rs 94,600 crore in the fiscal year 2008-09. If the revenue collection rises at the same rate, it would be to the tune of around Rs 77,000 crore in 2008-09. The subsidy for kerosene and LPG is at around Rs 3000 crore. So, the government will suffer a net loss of nearly Rs 20,000 crore in providing petroleum products to the citizens of India. Phew! 0.4% of GDP wiped out in one go.

These figures might themselves portray a wrong picture. For the first quarter of 2008-09, the government had decided to issue bonds worth Rs 24,500 crore while estimated losses of the Oil Marketing Companies (OMC) were at Rs 52,000 crore during the period. Moreover, the government’s share of meeting under-recoveries through oil bonds is now 57% from the earlier 42.7% of the total under-realisation on fuel sale. Another 33 per cent comes from upstream companies like the ONGC, GAIL and OIL. The remaining losses are borne by the OMCs themselves.

These oil bonds are a very neat short-term solution that pledge our tomorrow for a cosy today. The interest rates at these bonds are estimated at around 8.75 to 9.5% and reports suggest that the RBI has now stopped purchasing them under the special market operations(SMO). Under the SMO, the central bank used to buy the oil bonds directly from the OMCs and pay them the equivalent amount in dollars, allowing them to buy supplies. In the current year, the interest burden on the oil bonds is budgeted at Rs 5520 crore. With the  issue of oil bonds this year, this burden will become onerous and will cost the exchequer around Rs 13,000 crore in the next fiscal.

All this will add to the burgeoning fiscal deficit this year. But the finance minister, with his wizardry, of keeping the oil bonds out of the official fiscal deficit, will still be able to peg the the fiscal deficit at 2.5% of the GDP.

The more prudent mechanism of granting statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) status to the oil bonds has also not been accepted by the government. The SLR status gives immediate relief to OMCs by way of liquidity induced by participation of bigger players like banks, gilts and mutual funds, apart from existing pension, provident fund and insurance players that trade less and hold on to the papers till maturity (around 10 years). The SLR bonds are highly secured and liquid in nature as they are sovereign guaranteed. SLR bonds are those issued by the government at market rates to fund its various borrowing activities every year. Banks are required to subscribe to them, as they are mandatory requirement stipulated by the Reserve Bank of India. Currently, banks maintain 25% of their net demand and time liabilities in SLR.

Thus, while free pricing mechanism for oil products in India remains a pipe dream, granting SLR status to oil bonds seems to be the judicious course of action. However, the bonds that typically come under SLR, or statutory liquidity obligation, form part of the fiscal deficit. The government, bound by the FRBM act, is thus avoiding the SLR status for oil bonds like a plague.

There is big trouble with this sanctimonious approach of the government towards maintaining the fiscal deficit within the stipulated target. A similar exercise at fudging the balance sheets by a corporate house would have attracted the ire of the government auditors. Keeping the ethics of governance apart, the present approach has far-reaching implications for the oil industry. OMCs will continue to bleed and the cost of burden-sharing on the part of the upstream companies will rise. Both will become victims of a serious financial crunch, which will adversely hit their plough back and investment plans.

The government, too, will not emerge unscathed. This resort to oil bonds, besides being blatantly unethical, is neither fiscally prudent nor does it tackle the problem posed by spiralling oil prices, falling growth rates and rising inflationary pressures effectively.

Update – Vikram S Mehta in today’s Indian Express asks some pertinent questions on oil pricing:

…why does the government persist in appointing committees comprised of professionals to address what is essentially a political subject? Surely they must know that no individual worth his professional salt can help the government skirt the political conundrum of volatile petroleum prices. Why does the government not now contemplate kicking the ball into the court of the politicians? After all if there is to be progress it can only be if the politicians resolve somehow the political dilemmas of oil. My suggestion is that the next committee on petroleum should comprise of politicians and should be asked to come up with bold and practical suggestions on ‘how’ to implement what everyone knows must be done.

Update 2 (September 04) – Urjit Patel, writing in the Business Standard, highlights the dangers of RBI acting as an oil spigot and contends that the scenario is emblematic of the insidious distortions in virtually the entire energy chain.

It is estimated that oil bond issuance over the current fiscal could be about 2 per cent of GDP; therefore, the money due to the oil companies from the Union government is expected to be huge for the foreseeable future. Unless there is a sharp correction in oil prices or a policy combining adjustment in domestic retail prices and reduction in government duties, the oil companies will continue to require help to source the foreign exchange to import crude oil (although the SMO has been ascribed as a temporary facility). If demand does not adjust, supply will; reports of long lines at diesel pumps in several states show that the oil companies are responding in a manner that is feasible for them. In some parts of the country, demand for diesel for generation sets has increased after the recent price hike because electric supply shortages have intensified. The whole scenario is emblematic of the insidious distortions in virtually the entire energy chain in India.

Several conclusions and observations can be made. First, the dire fiscal situation that the central government finds itself in has now sucked the RBI in its vortex, but it is to be hoped that a durable alternative mechanism will be put in place with alacrity to ensure that the SMO is not further resorted to; it can be argued that some of the hard work over the past decade to ensure that the RBI’s proximate objective for conducting monetary policy is not compromised — by getting stuffed with government paper — has been undone. Secondly, we would be hard-pressed to name another country (even among those that subsidise fuel) that has had to resort to the central bank in this manner. Thirdly, praying for international crude prices to adjust sharply downwards soon does not constitute government policy, sound or otherwise. Fourthly, the proceeds of the oil bonds upon maturity will be in rupees, hence the RBI, if it wants to rebuild official foreign currency assets to make up for the decline on account of the SMO, will have to intervene in the market at the time and buy foreign currency at the ruling market exchange rate (the central bank shoulders an exchange rate risk if rebuilding foreign currency reserves is an objective).

I invite readers to take a journey with me into the future through the minds of multiple entrepreneurs, who by addressing the opportunities I see today, will perhaps shape the future of India.

It is a novel effort from Sramana. Wouldn’t it be great to engage more Indian entrepreneurs’ imagination around this series?

Other segments of the running series can be accessed at MIT India, Urja, Lucid, Darjeeling, Renaissance, Gangotri, Maya Ray, Elixar, Bioscope, Thakur, AdiShakti, Framed Ivory, Oishi,  Doctor At Hand, Doctor On Wire, and NCTV.

All non-plan expenditure heads excluding interest payment, repayment of debt, defence capital, salaries, pensions and the finance commission grants to states will be subjected to a mandatory 5 per cent cut.[IE]

Does it really matter? After all, the unutilised amounts of defence expenditure for the tenth plan [2002-2007] were 14.46% of the total allocation.

Chicanery, in its purest, unadulterated bureaucratic form…

Vikram S Mehta, chairman of the Shell Group of companies in India, provides the structure of the price build up for petrol and diesel by the public sector companies in India.

Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) calculates inter alia the landed import duty paid price of petrol and diesel every fortnight. This calculation is based on a formula that is linked to international prices. IOC’s landed price of petrol in Mumbai for the second fortnight of May was, for instance, Rs 38.1 per litre and for diesel Rs 48.8 per litre. The marketing companies had to, in other words, pay this amount to the refiners to buy the products. Next, the Central government imposes an excise and educational cess on the purchase cost. In May, this was Rs 14.4 per litre and Rs 0.4 per litre for petrol and Rs 4.6 per litre and Rs 0.1 per litre for diesel respectively. The total cash required by the marketing companies to purchase petrol and diesel in May was, therefore, Rs 52.9 per litre for petrol and Rs 53.6 per litre for diesel. The companies then sell these products at the ministry of petroleum mandated price of Rs 49.7 per litre for petrol and Rs 35.6 per litre for diesel (Mumbai prices). As such, they lose Rs 3.2 and Rs 18 for every litre of petrol and diesel sold respectively.

That, however, is not their total loss. They have to also pay sales tax to the state governments. In Mumbai, this tax is Rs 10.6 per litre and Rs 7.1 per litre for petrol and diesel respectively. Thus, the total cash loss suffered on account of the sale of 1 litre in Mumbai is Rs 13.7 and Rs 25.1 for petrol and diesel respectively. This is, in other words, the amount by which prices would have to be increased at the retail outlet for the companies to simply break even on a cash basis. Such a hike is, of course, out of the question.[Indian Express]

Many in the public domain believe that the imbalance can be redressed by reducing the central and local taxes to make the public sector oil companies profitable. However, it is actually not about reducing the taxes to bring the prices down. That is just an indirect way of maintaining the subsidies. On one hand, the balance sheets of the oil companies might look healthier and higher profits might allow theme to disburse handsome dividends. On the other hand, the government revenues would come down and higher revenue deficits will bring the finance ministry into the FRBM dragnet. It is not a Morton’s fork but a Hobson’s choice for the government — to link the retail rates of petroleum products with the market rates.

In case of most other commodities, the high consumer price checks demand. This helps restore the supply-demand balance. As prices are not linked to the rising market rates, oil demand is not checked commensurate with the price change. It obviously creates an asymmetry in the supply-demand balance and can be only restored at much higher prices. By then, it might be already too late for the Indian economy.

Now let us look at two sensible, yet asynchronous, viewpoints on resolving this pricing conundrum. In the same piece, Vikram Mehta prescribes the policy framework for a comprehensive petroleum policy.

First, we should accept that high oil prices are here to stay. This does not mean we will not see sharp declines from present levels. What it does mean is that we will not see prices stabilising at levels significantly below a triple digit number. Second, we must create a mechanism that leads to a ‘graduated’ reduction in subsidies, an orderly alignment of domestic prices to international levels and a more efficient disbursement of financial support to the poor. Third, we must reverse ‘dieselisation’. And finally, we must recognise that the sine qua non of energy security is a robust and competitive domestic petroleum and energy sector.

Fellow blogger Atanu Dey has a much simpler, but more innovative solution to offer to redress this perverse subsidy for the rich.

The basic economic truth is that there is really no such thing as a free lunch. Today’s subsidy comes at a cost that will only grow larger the longer the delay in pricing petroleum products at full cost. It is fairly simple to remedy the situation. Raising the price at the pump is the simplest but the most politically risky. The UPA government knows that and will definitely not risk losing power even if raising prices is for the larger benefit of the economy.

But those subsidies have to be reduced, if not totally abolished overnight. A start could be made immediately to reduce the subsidy to the rich while continuing it for the poor. A mechanism for doing so would be to impose a tax on car owners which would reflect the full cost of the petrol they use. Depending on the size of the engine and average fuel consumption, an annual fee could be assessed which has be paid to maintain registration. So if a particular make and model of car typically consumes, say, 1,000 litres of petrol a year, the tax could be Rs 10,000.

This type of a mechanism would leave all two-wheelers, three-wheelers, and buses untouched. Since it is usually the common man who uses public transportation, the common man would continue to enjoy the subsidy.[Deeshaa]

One can only wonder if Rs 200,000 crore in oil subsidies, nearly 2% of India’s GDP, is not alarming enough for the government to pay heed to such sensible opinions.

The events had their share of coverage in the mainstream media– Indian, African and western. However, the landmark event deserves much wider appreciation and analysis than provided by the perfunctory news reports covering the events.

On one hand, western analysts tend to see all major Indian initiatives on Africa, including this summit, through the prism of competition between the burgeoning economies of India and China. On the other hand, many African commentators have warned their own leaders about India’s intentions in what they have disparagingly labelled as a “second scramble for Africa”.

The key drivers for this summit and other Indian initiatives on Africa go beyond the traditional factors raised by most analysts. It is not limited to containing or matching Chinese economic interests in Africa or answering India’s impending quest for energy security. Unlike China, India has had a historical relationship with the African continent for centuries, based on trade with the eastern and southern coasts of Africa. The presence of a large Indian diaspora in Africa for over two centuries also provides India with a unique advantage over its Asian neighbour. India’s quest for energy in Africa, unlike China, is not a core component of the Indian government’s energy security policy; rather, it is part of its bid to diversify energy sources.

So what was the rationale for the India-Africa summit, if not mimicking the China-Africa summit last year? It is an obvious indicator of the renewed drive in the India – Africa story. Current global equations and recent Indian policies indicate that India’s engagement with Africa has shifted from the old issues of colonialism, non-alignment and South–South cooperation to issues of trade and economy.

Ever since India’s economic revival in the mid-nineties, India’s foreign policy has been increasingly driven towards finding export markets, attracting foreign capital and know-how. This policy shift is echoed across Africa as most of the economies there are going through economic reforms and liberalisation. The Indian diplomats have been working overtime to garner support for its quest for a seat in the UNSC in the continent. The Indian stand on the western agricultural subsidies at the WTO negotiations has been in consonance with the views of most African nations.

The recent improvement in India’s economic relations with Africa, however, cannot be attributed solely to the new focused approach of the Indian government. Another factor is the ‘outward-looking’ attitude of India’s private sector. Tempted by the easy availability of capital and driven by the search for new markets, Indian companies have been eagerly targeting those regions in Africa, in which they had shown little interest until recently. The economic boom in India and the success of both home-grown and NRI/PIO (Non-Resident Indian/Person of Indian Origin) companies in Europe and parts of South America have given Indian businesses the confidence to venture into Africa.

Indian companies’ increased activities in Africa have spurred the government to link its diplomacy in the continent more explicitly to its economic requirements. The Indian engagement reflects private-enterprise led bottom-up approach of its economy. In tandem with this policy change, India’s commercial ties with Africa have grown as the India-Africa trade volume has increased by 285 percent to 25 billion U.S. dollars in the last four years.

African countries hold India in high esteem – in particular, on account of its democratic institutions and the manner of its economic growth. India, as a democratic developing country, serves as a role model for these countries and is a source of support in various sectors, especially agriculture, services and small- and medium-scale manufacturing. Above all, it is the new image of India -– that of a leader in the information technology industry, biotechnology and telecommunications -– that has attracted Africa to India.

For their part, African political leaders would like their constituencies to believe that India and Africa are making a joint effort to improve the well-being of their peoples and societies. It is here that India’s real influence in Africa will emanate– from its success in achieving sustained economic growth and lifting many out of poverty in a democratic, post-colonial setting. It is for the Indian political and bureaucratic masters to remember that the right message to an external constituency in such an environment will be only delivered by a continued focus on domestic reforms. The Indian leadership will be judged by its African partners on how India progressively tackles various impediments to its economic growth in fields of infrastructure, education, labour and other roadblocks. It is imperative that India is perceived to be addressing its own developmental challenges successfully; only then will others, including Africa, consider it as an attractive and rightful partner for the future.

More than three percent of defence employees retire every year. The bulk of this group is of soldiers, who constitute 85 percent of the defence forces. There is an average in-service death rate of 1.2 percent for the defence employees, largely due to counterinsurgency operations. Early induction age and early retirement age implies a younger age cohort for 90 percent of the defence employees compared to their civilian counterparts.

Due to early retirement, the defence employees do not fulfill the government criteria of 33 years service to earn a full pension. This ought to reduce the defence pensions bill significantly. However, the high ratio of 1.68 defence pensioners per defence employee implies an extended period of pension payments, which offsets the lower rates of defence pensions. The other civil departments, incidentally, have a ratio of 0.55 pensioners per employee.

Moreover, Indian population above 60 years of age is growing at a rapid pace, at an annual growth rate of 3.8 percent per annum in the period 1991-2001, as against the annual growth rate of 1.8% for the general population. The improved health care and increased life expectancy will skew the pensioners to employees ratio even further.

The recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission are likely to push the defence pensions bill further northwards, if the example of Fifth Pay Commission is anything to go by. The implementation of Fifth Pay Commission recommendations had led to an increase in the defence pensions bill from 4947 Crore in 1997-98 to 10770 Crore in 2000-01.

It is believed that the defence pension bill has the potential to reach an unsustainable level, and perhaps even exceed the wage bill. This is borne out by the recent trends and is indicated by realistic assessment of such liabilities in the future years. The government has decided against introducing pension reforms in the defence services.

There is an immediate need to reduce the defence pension bill, which will otherwise continue to be a big drain on the national exchequer. This can be achieved by reducing the minimum military service requirements, pushing for early retirements with lateral absorption schemes and identifying a new model for defence pension reforms. These are desirable not only on the grounds of fiscal prudence and equity, but also to keep the military lean and young.