Self-Reliance
   Date :12-Aug-2020

Atmanirbhar Bharat_1 
 
 
THERE is no doubt that the concept of Atmanirbhar Bharat in defence production is a massive idea that has the capacity to change the whole picture of India’s ordnance industry. Defence Minister Mr. Rajnath Singh, thus, has done well to lay special emphasis on making efforts to achieve complete self-reliance in defence production. Such a call has been given on countless occasions in the past as well, by various top functionaries of the Government of the time. In deference to those calls, India’s defence industry also has responded favourably to build additional capacity to make indigenous defence manufacturing better and more comprehensive.
 
Thanks to that effort, the Government has just expanded the list of defence items banned for import because indigenous production has the capacity to match the demand. By any definition, this is a welcome development. However, India has to travel a long distance to reach the destination of complete self-reliance in ordnance production. In fact, this should have been achieved at least a quarter of a century earlier, say around the golden jubilee of Independence. Instead, India continued to be weak in this domain and kept relying on other countries for its defence supplies.
 
This overwhelming dependence on foreign powers certainly acted negatively on India and its defence preparedness came under stress on a few occasions. Even now, as the country’s Armed Forces started gearing up to face the possible Chinese challenge, they had to seek special permissions from the Government to avail more funds for instantaneous imports of necessary ordnance merchandise so critical to national defence. Of course, this picture will not change in an instant. India will take quite some time to achieve complete self-reliance in defence production. But the good news is that the Government appears far more serious than ever in pushing harder the ordnance industry in public and private sectors to do better. The goal of complete self-reliance in defence production, however, can be reached only if India launches a concerted, one-point programme spawning a whole sector across the country with massive infusion of funds and a well-coordinated effort to push across-the-board industry to manufacture every possible item India’s defence planning requires -- from bullets to bombs to aircraft to ships to sweaters to socks to shoes to goggles to whatever you name.
 
That will be the right way to achieving greater self-reliance. Such an effort will give rise to countless related industry sectors that would create newer jobs and in the process bring an unprecedented economic upliftment of the country. Even if such a concerted national programme is launched tomorrow morning, it will take something like 25-30 years to start making claims of greater self-reliance in ordnance and related production. That will alter the picture altogether. For, what India needs now is not an incremental growth in ordnance industry but an exponential one -- in leaps and bounds. Unless the Government plans it in that manner, it will not be able to achieve greater self-reliance in defence production in the near future.
 
Even though the Government claims to have made much progress in this regard, the factual picture does not agree with the claim. Despite the fact that India has stepped up its defence production considerably, its extent is very small in the larger picture. This is not the story India would like to tell itself at this stage. As India celebrates Atmanirbhar Saptah in term of defence production, it must make a concerted one-point programme in that domain so as to achieve exponential growth over the next few short years. Correspondingly, India will have to continue with its aggressive defence acquisition programme as well. But that activity will get a real and practical boost only if a nationwide programme of defence production is put in motion in the right earnest by pumping into it every possible resource the Government can make available from the national kitty.