India's spending on space tripled in 10 years

India's spending on space research almost tripled from Rs 4,163 crore in 2009-2010 to Rs 11,538 crore in 2018-2019.
Abhishek Waghmare reports.

India carved its name in the elite club of four nations with a demonstrable capability of countering satellites in space on Wednesday, March 27. Russia, China and the US are the other nations.

Experts said this will act as a deterrent, especially against China, since India could increase the cost of aggression for any entity thinking of using space systems for the purposes of threats.

But how much does the Centre spend on space research from the taxes it collects?

The spending as proportion of total government spending was 0.46% in 2018-19.

While the Centre was close to this figure a decade ago, at about 0.41%, it had reduced to 0.3% to 0.34% in between, the data presented in Union Budgets shows.

Under this government, the spending has gradually risen from 0.35% in 2014-2015 to 0.46% in 2018-2019.

In absolute terms, India's spending on space research almost tripled from Rs 4,163 crore in 2009-2010 to Rs 11,538 crore in 2018-2019.

As a proportion of gross domestic product, however, India's space budget is lowest among other space powers, at 0.06% of GDP in 2018-2019.

The US and Russia spend almost 0.23% of GDP on space research and exploration, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development shows.

In recent years, the jump in spending on space research has mostly been through an improved focus in capital expenditure.

From 2014-2015 to 2018-2019, while revenue spending on space research grew 27%, capital spending quadrupled.

Most of the capital spending from the department of space goes to the Kerala-based Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre and the Ahmedabad-based Space Applications Centre.