The defence budget is relatively small if one considers all the extra duties that the military does.
YAMOUSSOUKRO, COTE D’IVOIRE: This is with reference to your article of December 28 titled “Resources for military hinder welfare schemes”.
The defence budget of Rs495 billion rupees (or around five billion dollars) is relatively small if one considers all the extra duties that the military does, such as law and order, assistance in disaster relief, security duties in crisis/conflict zones, on the borders and so on.
Also, this expenditure provides jobs to over a million Pakistanis. If the funds were taken away and, hypothetically speaking, the military was abolished, these one million people would have to be absorbed into the economy. That will cost billions as well. Besides, the police force will have to be expanded substantially to take over, for example, border protection duties and so on. Furthermore, a force will have to be raised to provide relief and assistance to people hit by natural disasters. Besides this, one can argue about what is being done to reduce the billions that are given in subsidies every year to loss-making public sector organisations such as Pakistan Steel Mills, Wapda, KESC, PIA and Pakistan Railways.
I would say that it is as much as financial mismanagement on the part of elected civilian governments, as it has lopsided priorities. Why doesn’t the English print media cover this debate from this angle as well, instead of always saying that military expenditures are necessarily a bad thing?
Shahid Butt
Published in The Express Tribune, December 29th, 2011.
