The objective of the TPCR is to give an opportunity to the Indian industry to draw up business plans for developing technologies which could be transformed into capabilities required by the armed forces.
The temporary abeyance of ‘services’ as a valid means of discharging the offset obligation could prove to be exasperating for the foreign vendors and the prospective IOPs.
Buy (Indian)’ the most important policy decision introduced through DPP 2013 suggests that it should be the first option or the most preferred category. It, however, gives rise to many questions.
Most developed economies are already feeling threatened by increasing equity investments sponsored by foreign government-owned and/ or foreign government-controlled entities in the defence and high-tech industries. A coordinated government response for supervision of foreign investments will emerge on the horizon sooner than later.
On April 20th, the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) of the Ministry of Defence announced 15 major amendments to the defence procurement and production policies, with the hope to incentivise indigenous defence manufacturing while promoting transparency and efficiency in the procurement process.
Defence acquisitions are always much debated and scrutinised. The criticism ranges from a lack of direction in procurements to needles procedural complexities and from corruption in defence deals to bureaucratic apathy. The Defence Acquisition Council, chaired by the Defence Minister, has taken some bold and much needed decisions on April 20, 2013 in an attempt to address some of these issues.
Like many other developing counties, Brazil also believes in self-reliance in arms manufacturing and has articulated comprehensive national defence policy with a strong support of its armed forces. There could possibly be some lessons for India.
FY 2013-14 has transited into the annals of the MoD but picking up a few messages from it and carrying forward the unfinished agenda to the next year would be the greatest tribute to the year gone by.
Parameters, dimensions and operational requirements specified by the user must be evaluated exclusively by the user trial team, while DGQA must concentrate only on the testing of quality encompassing the product design, the material used and the manufacturing process in addition to the environmental testing of the product under simulated conditions.
By now making software development ineligible for discharge of offsets we might be depriving ourselves of what was considered necessary only a couple of months ago. This could also prove to be a setback for the Indian software industry.
Technology Perspective and Capability Roadmap 2013
The objective of the TPCR is to give an opportunity to the Indian industry to draw up business plans for developing technologies which could be transformed into capabilities required by the armed forces.