While the government is widely seen as investor-friendly, investment decisions, however, are made on more tangible considerations – ease of doing business, security of investment and intellectual property rights, and returns on investment.

The national aim should be to make India a design, development, manufacture and export hub. India must study the Chinese concepts of “leap frogging” of technology across several generations and “civilianisation” to exploit dual use technology.

The Indian defence industry needs procedural clarity and simplification to be ingrained in the “Make” procedures, as the rules are presently silent on a number of important operational aspects.

Widespread problems have made the operating environment ‘dysfunctional and inefficient’. Some of this is on account of inscrutable issues like ‘integration of the services with the MoD’ or ‘civil-military relations’ but, in large part, the immediate problem lies with MoD’s inability to resolve more mundane issues.

There is no single agency in MoD to deal with these issues holistically. Generally, matters related to administrative powers are processed separately for each service by the administrative wings concerned with little concern for commonality.

For the mantra to become an all-pervasive reality in defence acquisitions in India will be to multiply manifold the onset, frequency, range and depthof its industry engagements.

Replacement of the Avro is an approved requirement. Scrapping the on-going process could delay acquisition of the transport aircraft by at least a year or two as it would inevitably involve revisiting the qualitative requirements (QRs) before restarting the tendering process.

Of Agents and Agency Commission in Defence

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.