Amid tense border with China, India proposed on Wednesday 5.94 trillion rupees ($72.6 billion) in defense spending for the 2023-24 financial year, 13% up from last year's estimates.
India is the world's third-biggest military spender, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). In April 2022 SIPRI said the five largest spenders in 2021 were the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom and Russia, together accounting for 62 per cent of global expenditure.
The total Indian defense budget, estimated at about 2% of GDP, is still lower than China's 1.45 trillion yuan ($230 billion) in allocations for 2022.
Laxman Behera, a defense expert at government-funded Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, said the hike in the defense budget was "reasonable but not sufficient", considering requirements for military modernization. "The government has tried to allocate reasonable funds for defense forces while balancing other priorities during the pre-election budget," he said, noting India needed more funds in view of growing friction with China along disputed borders.
Relations between the world's two most populous countries are strained over border, trade and technology disputes, and India has tried to decouple itself from Chinese supply chains since a deadly frontier military clash in the Ladakh region in 2020.
India and China share a 3,500-kilometre (2,100-mile) frontier that has been disputed since the 1950s. The two sides went to war over it in 1962.
At least 24 soldiers were killed when the armies of the Asian giants clashed in Ladakh, in the western Himalayas, in 2020 but tensions eased after military and diplomatic talks.
A fresh clash erupted in the eastern Himalayas in December last year but no deaths were reported.
India still relies on longstanding partner Russia for most of its arms imports " other suppliers include the United States, France and Israel " and Sitharaman told parliament that the government was committed to promoting self-reliance in military equipment.
Domestic procurement would go up by 10 percentage points to 68 percent, she said.
