- Friday, April 19, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
While the Indian government under prime minister Narendra Modi’s leadership has vowed to make the country self-reliant in several areas, including defence, some official sources have issued a caution.
According to a report from Bloomberg which cited the informed sources as saying, the Modi government’s boost to domestic manufacturing of defence systems is hurting India as the country is becoming vulnerable to continuous threats from hostile nuclear-armed neighbours such as China and Pakistan.
India’s air force and navy, for example, can no longer import some critical military hardware to replace ageing ones, the officials told the publication and that could see the South Asian power running critically short of helicopters in another four years and a hundred of fighter planes in another eight.
Modi unveiled his ‘Make in India’ plan shortly after coming to power in 2014 to manufacture things — from mobile phones to fighter planes — domestically in order to generate jobs and reduce foreign exchange outflow.
More than eight years have passed since then and India, which is the world’s biggest importer of military systems, has not yet reached the position of manufacturing enough weapons at home to meets its needs with government rules creating obstacles, the report added.
Modi’s policy mandates home-made components between 30 and 60 per cent, depending on the kind of the military purchase or the buyer. According to the report, there was no such cap earlier and New Delhi used a system of plowing back a certain percentage of the purchase cost into domestic production.
India’s military readiness could witness a further slump while it faces serious threats from China and Pakistan. The country has in recent times witnessed a heated border confrontation in the Himalayas with the Chinese. According to one source, a weaker air force means India will have to double its dependence on foot soldiers to tackle Chinese aggression at the border.
Rahul Bedi, an independent defence analyst based in Delhi told Bloomberg that Modi’s import-substitution plans don’t consider the fact that developing world-class weapons systems needs billions in investment and long research.
“Make in India for defense isn’t thought through properly,” he said, adding, “It is a good slogan, beyond that there isn’t much to show as yet.”
