Decreasing defense expenditure and increasing social expenditure is the need of the hour

Seeing the myriad problems in our nation, right from denial of basic education to proper sheltering, lack of nutritious food to less agri output, bad infrastructure to very minimal R&D investment, its quite true, that defence expenditure must be reduced saving lakhs of crores of money and using it for other productive purpose that would increase the life expectancy of our people, provide them with better living conditions, better environment, proper education opportunities, jobs and employments, etc. Buying huge caches of arms and ammunition would make us strive more and more for it. That too for a war that looks very uncertain. Ofcourse there should be national deterrent defense capability, but investing too much on them is denying basic rights and facilities to our own people of our nation where millions don't have their own home, toilets in their houses, don't have food to eat two times a day, don't have money to educate their kids, and provide them higher education in good colleges. Are we not doing injustice to them. Yes, safeguarding our territory from foreign attack or invasion is paramount and preparedness to that should be inevitable, but can't we find better ways to deal with that instead of spending billions in buying Arms from Russia, USA Israel and Uk. We can enhance greater trades with our neighbour who probably is our enemy. Y can't we encourage a situation where India takes a project in Pakistan, funds it, develops it and gift it to them and vice versa. Should we not increase people to people contact, or increase tourism between our nations. This all would help us to dissipate the air of hatred and war among us.

China's defense budget this year is 132 million and ours is just 36 million so we can compare easily that we should reduce defense budget or not, we should not forget Chinese incursions in Indian territory last year, and also china is supporter of Pakistan too so now decrease in defense budget means threat on our national security so condemn this discussion that we should reduce our budget.

We all know god has given us such friendly neighbors. Our little notorious brother Pakistan. Respected Sri Lanka our friendly competitor China. Not to forget our baby boy Bangladesh.

All sides we are surrounded by such "peace-creating" countries that we need a lot to spend on our defence budget. Think again what will happen if we decrease it!

Deal with a country is kind of dealing with a human body. If we are sick and suffering from a disease we need to cure the disease first instead of nutrition the body. Stopping the destruction is much more important than building up. In the same way. Defending the nation from bugs is much more important. Social welfare comes next. So I support to concentrate on defense system social afterwards.

Hi friends, At first I have to say that India is currently expending nearly $46 m in its defense. It is necessary due to the exterior attacks from our neighboring countries in some of our key cities as well as border areas. It is also important to face internal warmongers like Maoists, Jihadists.

It is very sad to see in Mumbai terror attack that we still do not have adequate armories with respect to the ones used by the terrorists. Besides this, there is a constant threat of China in our North-eastern areas. So decreasing our defensive expenditure is clearly a No No.

But I do not think that social expenditure has to be decreased either. Because after all we have a nation to defend and at the same time we must not forget that it has to be made stronger internally. We can utilize our social expenditure by bringing black money back.

At the same time we must not use public money to bear expenses of criminals like Kasav. Instead we need to pay attention to those who are in actual need. Only maintaining balance between these two, India can prosper.

Today the world is having a tough time against terrorism. The Peshawar attacks reveal the grisly and inhuman attitude of the terrorists. At this juncture it is mandatory to have a strong defense against any mishap that may likely occur. If people can't sleep peacefully, what is the use of living in a modernized society. We can live without malls and hotels but not at the cost of mental peace and well being.

Both should be balanced because the in India half of the tax is going to defense forces, we need to concentrate on social as well as defense forces.

Right now, I think India has its hands full on both fronts. As India is growing and at one of the fastest rate in the world, a larger economy like China is slowing down and looking at India as a threat to its power in South Asia and the world. Pakistan is also trying to pull India down so that it feels safe about its own power, considering it wants to be seen as India's equal. In this situation, India has no other options but to bulk up its defence expenditure as just becoming a bigger economy won't help India to seen as a global power. It needs to be seen as a military power in proportion to economic growth. In terms of social expenditure, India spends a lot in form of subsidies, loan waivers, rural development, and many different govt plans. I don't feel India needs to increase social expenditure but to start managing it better. With 60% population only contributing 17% of GDP is a very bad ratio and one of the major components that are a burden on our economy.

Hello friends.

According to me we have to increase expenditure in defense sector rather than social. Now a days India is facing many terrorism attacks and fear of country's like USA and China because they are more alert in defense sector and have active militant power.

So, India also have to increase their expenditure in defense sector, so that all soldiers standing on border to protect us have a better resource to defend ourselves and can teach USA and China that India is no more a looser in defense sector.

In football, if your defence is weak opponent's strikers will easily enter in your d-box, score so many goals and you will lose the game do badly.

A similar thing happens if it is a matter of two rival countries. Firstly we should increase our defense with some courageous army officers, we should train them properly.

Thank you.