ABSTRACT
India has arguably been a reluctant military power throughout its history as an independent nation. Despite its active armed forces being the third largest in the world, behind the United States (US) and China, its defence budget is less than one-third of China’s and infinitely lower than that of the US. Though in recent years, there has been greater focus on strategic issues, and, riding on a reasonably well-performing economy, India has made efforts in the past one decade or so to modernise its armed forces; the modernisation programme is seen as a case of ‘arming without aiming’ (Cohen and Dasgupta 2010). What makes it worse from a strategic point of view is the heavy dependence on import of the defence equipment and an inherently tardy procurement process.
