India must be wary of defence imports: Narayanan

KOLKATA - West Bengal Governor M.K. Narayanan Saturday made a scathing criticism of the Indian military and the defence production industry and said there was a vested interest in “buying than making” the needed equipment at home.

The former national security advisor blamed the military for its deep seated complex about using indigenous equipment, and said the country needed to be careful about importing defence hardware as foreign companies were “highly capricious” and “largely influenced by their government’s viewpoints towards India”.

Addressing a Conference on Industry-Defence Linkage 2010 organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry here, Narayanan said India needed to change its mindset to endorse and use indigenous defence equipment.

Opposing the idea of procuring defence equipment from the developed countries, Narayanan said: “India has expertise to produce the same indigenously. But there is a deep seated complex in the military about the indigenous ability.”

“This mentality needs to be changed and the military must show and display greater faith in our indigenous capabilities,” said the former national security advisor.

“The defence bureaucracy blames the defence public sector units for delays in manufacturing and delivering military hardware. But there are delays across the world. The foreign defence vendors are notorious for cost escalation and delay in delivery. There is a vested interest in buying than making,” said Narayanan.

“Foreign manufacturers are highly capricious and largely influenced by their governments’ policies and view point towards India. So we need to be careful about importing military hardware,” he said.

“It is estimated that 35 percent of country’s total defence acquisition comes from indigenous sources. However, a major portion of that consists of components of smaller items. Currently 65 percent of it comes from imports. Though the government has aimed to reverse the situation to 70 percent of indigenous products, yet there is scope for more to be done,” he said.

“India is one of the very few countries in the world capable of building an aircraft carrier and its first indigenous aircraft carrier is expected to be launched by 2015,” he said.

Adding that several defence modernisation plans have run into serious problems of late, since many foreign companies, including Bofors, HDW, Dennel, IAI and Singapore technologies, often were seen to violate the stringent conditions laid down by the government regarding acquisition, he urged: “Defence PSUs need to adopt a more flexible approach to capable private players because of their high technological knowledge base.”