India's growing military muscle
In recent years, while world attention has focused on China's military, India has begun to refashion itself as an armed power with global reach: a power willing and able to dispatch troops thousands of miles from the subcontinent to protect its oil shipments and trade routes, to defend its large expatriate population in the Middle East and to shoulder international peacekeeping duties. "India sees itself in a different light not looking so much inward and looking at Pakistan, but globally," said William Cohen, a secretary of defense in the Clinton administration who in his new role as a lobbyist represents American firms seeking weapons contracts in India. "It's sending a signal that it's going to be a big player." A more robust military is also vital for protecting millions of Indian workers in the Gulf, who are from time to time threatened by political volatility. But the most pressing motivation may be the fast-moving Chinese. It is modern India's first military outpost on foreign soil. India also appears to be positioning itself as a caretaker and patroller of the Indian Ocean region, which stretches from Africa's coast to Australia's and from the subcontinent southward to Antarctica. "Immediately after independence, true, we had to engage ourselves for developing our country economically, politically because we were exploited under colonial rule for more than 200 years," Pranab Mukherjee, India's External Affairs Minister (a former Defence Minister) said in an interview a few years ago. Now, he said, things have changed: "Naturally, a country of this size, a population of this size we will be required to strengthen our security forces, modernize them, update them, upgrade our technology." "We are ready to play a more responsible role," he added, "but we don't want to impose ourselves on others." "What is important," said Rahul Gandhi some years ago," is that we stop worrying about how the world will impact us, we stop being scared about how the world will impact us, and we step out and worry about how we will impact the world." Middle-aged Indians remember a time when their country would watch thousands of Indians in jeopardy in a foreign land and know that there was nothing their military could do. In 2006, when conflict between Israel and Hezbollah threatened Indian expatriates in Lebanon, four Indian warships happened to be in the Mediterranean. The navy rushed the vessels to Lebanon and brought more than 2,000 people on board, not only Indians, but Sri Lankans, Nepalese and Lebanese eager to escape the fighting. When a tsunami throttled Asia in 2004, including this country's own southern coast, the Indian Navy dispatched 16,000 troops, 32 warships, 41 planes and a floating hospital for rescue operations, according to news accounts. Such changes bring pride to many Indians. But some also fear that India may become the kind of swaggering power it has opposed since it became independent from Britain in 1947. India is buying armaments that major powers like the United States use to operate far from home: aircraft carriers, giant C-130J transport planes and airborne refueling tankers. Meanwhile, India has helped to build a small air base in Tajikistan that it will share with its host country. China has recently raised its military budget to 11.1% per cent (more than $100 billion) and naturally India will follow in its budget. It is reported that India has been the world's biggest importer of arms and China, the world's top arms importer for much of the past decade fell to the fourth place on an annual list. This statistics was published on March 19, 2012 by the Sipri. The Institute's report shows demand from emerging economiesin particular India-drove the volume worldwide arms transfers between 2007 and the last year to a level of 24% percent higher than in the previous four years. India recently said that it would increase its military budget by 13% per cent next year (2012-13) to $38.4 billion as it seeks to counter Chinese build-up. Indian purchases range from naval to aircraft to ground forces. It is reported that India is getting Russian-made 120 Su-30MK and 16 MiG-29K fighter jets. The Paris-based Dassault Aviation is understood to be in final talks on a contract to supply at least 126 Rafale combat planes to India to clinch the first-ever export deal for the jet. By some estimates it is reported that India will spend more than $1049 billion on weapons and systems in the next 15 years. Manoj Joshi, a security expert in New Delhi reportedly said that India was trying to overcome decades of underinvestment: "There is a huge back-log and India is not so much racing as running as hard as she can to stay still." Alongside India, the five largest arms importers today are all Asian countries, the data show prompting fears of an arms race in a region still blighted by deep poverty. It is interesting to note that while India assesses its defence requirements in relation to China, Pakistan defines its defence capability in relation to India. This triangular interaction gives rise to the arms race in South Asia. India is slowly but steadily maturing into a conventional great power. Times have changed when India which gave the world the idea of Gandhian non-violence and, has long derided the force-projecting ways of the great powers is now showing military muscle to demonstrate that India is "rising" and should be given the role in world affairs commiserating its size, resources and population.
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