‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ needs private sector, not bureaucracy, to soar

Sixty years ago, replying to a debate in Lok Sabha on Chinese invasion in East Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh on November 8, 1962, then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said: “ I hope this very crisis will make us always to be remembered that an army today, a modern army, fights with modern weapons which it has to manufacture itself in that country.”

Yet, decades later after this speech, India continues to be one of the largest importers of arms in the world with its foreign policy inadvertently getting skewed towards its main weapon suppliers like Russia, or for that matter US and France, due to the hardware leverage. The issue has got more complicated as India faces a rising global superpower to the north and its client failed state towards the west. There is a fully blown economic crisis in Sri Lanka, Maldives with Nepal hanging on a thread. Even Bangladesh has sought IMF loan to tide over economic situation.

Fact is that despite political leadership in the past laying emphasis on boosting up domestic hardware production at least in words, little was achieved till 2014 with India exporting ₹900 crore worth of arms and ammunition to other countries. It is due to serious perseverance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India has moved towards indigenization with exports now touching some ₹14000 crore and some 300 items put on no import list. At the inauguration of Aero India 2023, PM Modi talked about exports touch a figure of more than ₹25000 crore by 2025 with number touching ₹19000 crore this year. Why did it take so long?

The answer to this question is rather complicated as neither the defence research nor the defence public sector undertakings or the private sector lived up to their potential. Given an India-baiter on the western border and expansionist China on the north, the Indian armed forces also preferred proven technologies from Russia and west due to capital expenditure and cost-benefit constraints rather than believe in indigenous design, development, and production. The idea of even opening the defence sector to private entities was seen some political parties as selling of family heirlooms so what if the defence PSUs were more focused on providing employment than churning out hardware platforms. The brutal fact is that the cost and man hours of Russian Su-30 MKI fighter produced by HAL is more than if it was directly imported from Russia before Ukraine war.

Even during the present Modi government, the in-house research and design has protected its fiefdom and tried its level best to stymie any private venture to produce high tech weapon such as shoulder fired anti- tank guided missile system or drones. The inhouse agencies used simple technique of writing a letter to the highest level of the government informing that they were on the verge of developing a similar system and thus there was no need to look at the private sector. That is a reason why countries like Turkey and Iran are exporting armed drones while India is still trying to catch up on this unmanned stand-off weapon technology. The indigenous hardware production has also been hit by tedious procurement procedures of the government including long delays in registering of patents as a result of which the private sector does not invest into research and development but only goes for proven technologies. Simply put, if the government is not going to buy from its own private sector then why should the world. Given the cost of production overheads (read bureaucratic corruption) in Indian states, the government should be grateful that the private sector is still invested in defence manufacturing in India.

While there is no doubt in PM Modi’s commitment to “Aatmanirbhar Bharat”, the path-breaking initiative can only become a success through participation of Indian private sector and not by placing hurdles by the vested military-civilian bureaucracy. Even basic amendments of allowing private sector a 51 per cent equity in a joint venture with Indian PSUs has been hanging fire for the past years as the fortress of defence PSUs will be breached by this one single move.

The Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) has done commendable work in development of strategic and convention missiles and has contributed a lot to India’s strategic autonomy posture. But the problem is that the DRDO is sprawled all over Indian defence sector and wants to develop everything in the name of indigenization. It would be best if the Modi government did an audit of the DRDO so that the organization focuses only on identified core areas rather than setting up Covid hospitals in the past and preparing specialized meals for our soldiers posted in high altitudes. The non-core sectors should be opened to private sector and even core sectors should have time-lines or else private sector should be given a chance.

While it is true that countries into high tech arms exports are vary of sharing technology for tactical leverage and huge USD profits, the Indian private sector is now showing signs of pushing “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” to the next level with big arms majors in India tying up with friendly partners in west to manufacture aircraft engines, submarines and fighter planes. It should be a sobering thought for both China and India that no country can be called a superpower if it cannot design, develop, and produce fighter engines. Even today, majority fighters of China and to a large extent Indian fighters are powered by Russian engines. The diplomatic and political consequences of this gap can be seen in global arena. Modi’s “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” is the sole key to India becoming a developed nation by 2047, provided the Indian bureaucracy allows it.