New Delhi: At a time when the nation should be bracing for war on a ‘minimum’ of two fronts, 75 per cent of the military hardware available to the Indian armed forces is redundant, believes Bharat Verma, editor of Indian Defence Review. 
In an interview to Manu Sood, editor of 8ak.in during Def Expo 2010 which concluded in Delhi February 13, Verma slammed ‘non-accountable’ bureaucrats for letting things come to such a pass. The Numerous fault lines and prevalent ‘babu culture’ in the Ministry of Defence had compounded the mess, he said.
Strongly advocating more FDI in the defence sector, he said no international company was willing to transfer key technology to India, since the 26 per cent ceiling was not a lucrative enough figure to attract them.
If the figure was increased to 49 per cent, international arms companies would willingly come with the latest technology, since it would create a level playing field for them. Apart from that, successful JVs would marginalise tough sanction regimes automatically over a period of time, he argued.
Attacking the Defence Ministry’s ‘obsession’ with indigenisation, he said: “Against offsets, import of technology must be allowed as we need basically technology more than anything else. However, the Ministry of Defence’s contention that it is unable to evaluate technologies to put a price on them is weird. All you have to do is create military cell comprising of three services and scientist to identify sunrise technologies and evaluate what is the price you are willing to give depending upon how critical that technology is to helping the armed forces in meeting the future threat. Otherwise, India will remain import-dependent always – imports have gone up from 70 per cent to 75 per cent because of the MoD’s lopsided policies!”
Describing this as a ‘strange policy’, he said the need was to have technology, and whether it was imported or local should not be a cause of concern.” The Defence Research and Development Organisation, or DRDO, had failed India and its armed forces in a big way, and the government should give a new thrust to encourage the private sector and allow more joint ventures in the field of defence, he said.
As for the Def Expo, Verma said that even though the event was satisfactorily organised, the dilly-dallying over whether the FICCI or the CII would organise the event had caused a lot of inconvenience to the vendors, especially foreign vendors, who plan for such things at least a year in advance. This clearly exhibits the lack of decision making ability in executing an event that has been planned a year in advance, he said.
Watch the entire interview in two parts: Part I | Part II
(Article courtesy www.8ak.in)
Bharat Verma columns on Sify.com
