SOURCE: ET
The Draft Defence Production Policy 2018 seeks to indigenise manufacture across the entire range of equipment and platforms, in a time-bound manner. The stated objective is to boost defence production from just over Rs 55,000 crore last fiscal to Rs 1,70,000 crore by 2025, including Rs 35,000 crore in exports. But what is left unstated in the policy document is how exactly to shore up innovation and research and development when Indian industry is not exactly forthcoming on new thinking and R&D.
India is heavily import-dependent in defence hardware, and must better leverage the mandated offset obligations on arms suppliers to transfer technology and help local firms absorb it. The policy seeks to build a revamped and cost-competitive ecosystem for defence production with improved ease of doing business, and broad-based sourcing and vendor lists.
Small and medium enterprises and startups would be especially encouraged to foray into the defence sector. The proposal is to map capability and technology in priority areas to step up engagement with industry and build up domestic expertise.
Further, two new defence corridors are proposed, with dedicated clusters to shore up innovative capacity. What is also called for, rightly, is revamped infrastructure for quality control and assurance. Also, close tie-ups and regular interactions with top-end academic and technical institutions are planned, to improve knowledge and creativity.
A new aviation university is planned, and an 80-100 seater civilian aircraft, besides a chip-fabrication plant. It remains to be seen how and to what extent innovation can be speeded up in Indian defence production. The point is to incentivise innovation and R&D in industry in general and not strive too hard for a putative innovation enclave in defence.
India needs to spend more on R&D, both government and industry, and involve university departments in the process, so as to make these hubs of creating new knowledge, to underpin sustained research, of the basic and applied kinds, from which defence, too, would gain.
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