| Summary/Abstract |
In his speech presenting independent India’s first budget, R.K. Shanmukhan Chetty, India’s second finance minister (the first was Liaquat Ali Khan, who migrated to Pakistan in 1947 to become that country’s first prime minister), acknowledged, “India has never had an adequate navy or air force and the effect of Partition has been to reduce them still further”. The defence budget for 1947-48 was Rs 92.74 crores, just under 47 per cent of the budgeted government expenditure of Rs 197.39 crores. The Indian Navy’s (IN) share of the defence pie was less than 2 per cent. Comparing this with the 19.29 per cent of the defence budget allocated to the navy in 2012-13 and coupling it with India’s maritime outreach in the Indian Ocean and beyond, as well as the oft-stated desire to be a ‘net security provider in the Indian Ocean Region’, one could be pardoned for thinking that the nation’s leaders are at last paying adequate attention to the maritime matters and (IN) force levels are destined to rise.
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