Homeland security spend increases in India

The budgetary allocation for the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for the year 2013-14 was just under $11 billion and is expected to near the $20 billion mark by 2017-18. Of course only a part of that contributes to the overall homeland security (HS) market in India.

Nevertheless, according to estimates the Indian internal security industry is also slated to be worth at least 20 billion US dollars by 2018 with the central government accounting for a third of this spend. Even beyond the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and its move to upgrade central paramilitary force capabilities, it is clear that Police departments in India too are no longer being equipped with only hand me downs from the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the MHA. While the Centre would want state governments to do more with respect to modernising police systems under their purview (Police after all is a state subject in India) at the very least the utilization of funds under the Centre’s modernisation of police forces (MPF) scheme is on the rise across Indian provinces.

The HS market in India can be thematically broken up into the following broad segments considering the sources of demand as it were terrorism prevention and management, critical infrastructure protection, border security, maritime security, police modernisation, city surveillance, intelligence and cybersecurity.