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Arming the Indian
Arsenal: Challenges and Policy Options
The 1999 Kargil conflict, the last major military operation undertaken by the armed forces, revealed serious deficiencies in almost all spheres, be it small arms, ammunition and personal clothing or communication equipment, vehicles, artillery and force multipliers. The Indian military is heavily dependent on foreign suppliers, which has been a cause for concern to many. The aforementioned issues apart, a fundamental and persistent problem facing modernisation as brought out during the Kargil conflict and underscored by the then Army Chief, General V. P. Malik, in his forewoerd, is the nation’s inability to develop and produce the bulk of required weapon systems and equipment indigenously. Though there have been some successes in missiles, small arms, electronic items and low technology equipment, majority of the major weapon systems envisioned by the Defence Research and Development Organisation, the premier R&D institution, are facing serious time and cost overruns. Defence public sector units and state-run ordnance factories have been a mixed bag while the contribution of the industry towards national defence has been meager. The book attempts to lay out the broad problems in India’s military production and procurement efforts and to examine these in the context of the larger security framework of the country. It examines the development of the defence industrial sector in the country, assesses its past performance and current status and suggests some policy options for the future. The author, a research scholar and a columnist, starts off by exploring the trends in global industry and their implications for India, touching upon the military-industrial developments in the US, European, Russian and other notable markets. These developments have a direct as well as indirect impact on India in terms of strategic decision-making, joint ventures and co-development, offsets and exports. The evolution and growth of the Indian defence industry, which has come a long way over the past 60 years, and the experiences of indigenous and licensed production are discussed. He is of the opinion that India’s quest for self-reliance so far has produced mixed results and private participation in the defence industrial sector has come after a long delay. From the early 60s till mid-80s, direct purchases and licensed production was the predominant form of weapons supply, resulting in what some experts argue, a three-decade-long gap in indigenous design and production. Licensed production came at the cost of indigenous technology. The book also delves into the ongoing reforms in the defence sector, defence expenditure trends, procurement procedures and recommendations by various committees to synergise acquisition, ending up with recommendations which the author hopes would lead to further deliberations on fine-tuning modernisation through self-reliance production and procurement. While the ball has been set rolling by opening the defence sector to private participation, streamlining procurement procedures and laying greater emphasis on indigenous research and development, it could still be some time before the Indian defence industry comes of age.
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ARMING
the military is an onerous task. At stake is the ability to achieve
defined national objectives and the factors that come into play in the
process of procurement are multifarious. For decades, modernisation of
the Indian Armed Forces has been bogged down by indecisiveness,
financial implications, allegations of corruption, lagging research and
development and inadequate industrial participation. This has kicked up
numerous debates and raised questions about the state of the services’
operational preparedness.