Laxman Kumar Behera

One area where the 2015-16 defence budget is likely to hurt the most is in capital acquisition, which has already been under acute pressure in recent years due to the overwhelming share of the ‘committed liabilities’ arising out of contracts already signed

• Published: March 02, 2015
• Issue Brief

The ‘Make in India’ drive of Prime Minister Narendra Modi offers a way of improving the country’s self-reliance in defence production. But for the MII to succeed in the defence manufacturing sector, the government needs to address some legacy issues.

• Published: February 05, 2015
• Policy Brief

What the Strategy for Defence Export tries to achieve is to create institutional mechanisms and establish clear-cut procedures within the overall ambit of the Foreign Trade Export for facilitating arms exports through export promotion/facilitation and export regulation.

• Published: September 17, 2014
• IDSA Comments

Under the earlier policy, the foreign portfolio investment in Indian defence industry was either banned, or capped at an arbitrary level for certain companies, causing a lot of dissatisfaction among several listed Indian companies which had pleaded their genuine helplessness in controlling such investments given their nature of flow.

• Published: September 01, 2014
• IDSA Comments

The 10 per cent growth in the interim defence budget although looks impressive from outside, it has a poor outlook on the modernisation front. Much of the hike in the interim budget is consumed by the increase in salary, leaving very little to meet the defence modernisation requirements.

• Published: February 23, 2014
• IDSA Comments

It is commonly viewed that in an election year, the incumbent government is tempted to present a populist budget. In that scenario, the MoD would have reasons to be unhappy, particularly so when the modernisation requirement of the armed forces has reached a stage which is now contingent upon substantial additional resources to remain on course.

• Published: February 04, 2014
• IDSA Comments

The Office Memorandum has created a debate among various stakeholders, particularly the Indian IT and software-related companies which see a loss of business to the tune of $10 billion.

• Published: July 24, 2013
• IDSA Comments

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.

• Published: May 06, 2013
• Issue Brief

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.

• Published: April 25, 2013
• IDSA Comments

A GDP growth of less than seven per cent combined with the fiscal consolidation path that the Finance Minister has articulated in his budget speech means a lot of pressure on the defence ministry whose plan for current and future expenditure up to 2017 is based on past GDP growth rate of 8 to 9 per cent.

• Published: March 04, 2013
• IDSA Comments