As India embarks on a quest to boost its arms exports, the Latin America-Caribbean region offers India both markets and potential partnerships. Though India is not a stranger to the region, it needs to have a more systematic and coordinated approach.
Should GRSE and GSL deliver satisfactory services to their export customers, there is considerable potential for India to position itself as a competitive supplier of small and medium warships and patrol crafts.
It is rare that a foreign company makes a huge investment to produce major platforms in a third country with a view to make that country an export hub.
The United States, once the dominant influence over the armed forces of the region, is now in danger of losing that position to China and has already lost it in countries like Bolivia and Venezuela.
While it may be tempting for the Niti Aayog to make deep inroads into defence planning, it would be wise to focus only on those areas that do not disturb the core function of defence preparedness.
The Task Force has not extended the principle of Strategic Partnership to the whole gamut of big contracts in which the private sector is supposed to play a major role. And it visualises strategic partners as poor cousins of state-owned entities.
The article deals with the issue of the necessity of identifying and maintaining equilibrium between the two key constituents of the higher defence organisation (HDO) of the country, namely, the civil bureaucrats and the service officers. In India, the military and the bureaucracy share a very delicate relationship. Though the protocol issues between the various appointments have been defined by the government, there is a requirement of greater clarity in the working relationship between them.
Introduction of the ‘Buy (Indian-IDDM)’ procurement category, the revamped ‘Make’ procedure, structural change in AAP, and higher and flexible indigenous content requirement in certain procurement categories are all likely to deepen the involvement of domestic industry in defence production.
