India’s 6.3 per cent hike over the outgoing year’s defence spending is disappointing. With pensions and salaries consuming half of India’s budget, capital procurement suffers even as a menacing China-Pakistan nexus thrives in the neighbourhood. This incremental, piecemeal approach is perilous. Complacency can’t be a strategy that India can afford.
Budget 2025 shows privatisation is dead in the water. Govt has no new ideas
Income tax relief in Budget 2025 brought the glitz, but a lack of true reforms has revealed a certain drabness. The one big recent reform—privatisation—is dead in the water. There’s an increasingly pervasive sense that the government has no new ideas, and lacks the will, courage to look.
Budget 2025 corrects anomaly in nuclear liability law. It’s an offer to transactional Trump
Budget 2025 finally corrects an anomaly in nuclear liability law. It’s Modi government’s pragmatic offer to a transactional Trump. Yes, it was BJP that forced the anti-business supplier clause . But it’s a new world now. And Modi knows consistency for the sake of it is the virtue of fools.
Has India given up diplomacy altogether in dealing with two nuclear armed neighbours. No dialogue with Pakistan for a decade, not even a High Commissioner in residence. A tense standoff with China in Ladakh since the summer of 2020. Smaller neighbours, including Bangladesh, do not pose a military threat but all those relationships are frayed. What beneficial outcome are steadily increasing defence outlays meant to achieve. Unable to hire conventional soldiers, now turning to Agnipath, which even Nepali Gurkhas do not accept.