Few but the boys club would find fault with the finance minister’s suggestion for the defence budget to be fully accountable. It isn’t at the moment, with just the one line indicating the total defence budget being read out. The military prides itself in being a far more professional organisation than the rest of the country. Well, adherence to financial accountability protocols are an integral part of the whole professionalism mantra. Going by the sheer and abject lack of it in the forces, one would be tempted to conclude that the country’s revenue apparatus, that den of corruption and incompetence, registers a notch above defence on the scale of professionalism.
Though the forces will not put up with talk of opening up military accounts absolutely completely or reducing the defence budget to begin with, analysts believe the latter is still the more achievable of these two tall orders.
It is interesting how one same fact can be used in rhetoric by two opposing schools of thought. Consider the current speculation that India is going to increase its defence budget by a quantum that is almost the same as that of Pakistan’s entire defence budget to begin with. The hysterical see this as an impetus to increase the defence budget. The peaceniks see this as an example in pointing out how futile it is to attempt to somehow keep up. There are no points for guessing which school held sway; the new budget has a 12 per cent increase for the armed forces, that too, in these times of great fiscal constraints.
The stark absence of civilians in matters military is distressing. The US runs, at the moment, a military juggernaut the likes of which the world has not yet seen in human history. That doesn’t exempt the generals there from questioning by even relatively junior civil bureaucrats from the financial services, what to speak of the elected politicians. Ditto for the Israelis, whose morals may be questionable but are the last word on how to run a tight ship in military affairs.
There isn’t much money to go around and they’re spending too much of it. Something’s got to give.
