Proposed Reforms for DRDO
Challenges and the Way Forward
Abstract
Economic liberalisation came in the defence manufacturing sector in 2001, 10 years after India decided to become a free market economy in 1991. The policy mosaic included 100 percent participation of private sector players in defence manufacturing and permitted Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) of 26 percent from global players.
This was in sharp contrast to Nehru’s socialist policy of 1956, in which military manufacturing, space, and atomic energy remained under the exclusive purview of the government. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) was created in 1958 to pursue Research and Development (R&D) in defence in order to reduce dependence on imports. From a fledgling set-up, the 1980s, under the stewardship of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, witnessed mega programmes like the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) for building a comprehensive range of missiles like the Agni, Prithvi, Akash, and Naag.
With 52 labs engaged in the design and development of small arms, Electronic Warfare (EW) systems, tanks, armed vehicles, sonar systems, missiles, and Command and Control (C2) systems, a team of 5,000 scientists is engaged in 900 projects, with 25,000 support staff, and a budget of ₹23,264 crore. The prototypes developed by DRDO are produced by Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) and the private sector. DRDO is the flag bearer of ‘Make in India’ as it will substitute imported technologies with indigenous ones. In this pursuit, time and cost overruns of many of these programmes and the low level of self-reliance achieved bedevil DRDO and have been a recurring concern.
Several committees have been engaged to bring out the innards of the problems that have ailed DRDO in the past, like the Kalam Committee in 1992 and the Rama Rao Committee in 2008. The latest committee is headed by Vijay Raghavan, who retired as a principal scientific advisor and is an old hand. This was in response to the report of a parliamentary committee that observed that 23 out of 55 high-mission projects are running behind schedule.
This paper aims to provide an overview of:
(a) major policy initiatives to bolster the military industry capability of India;
(b) committees recommending structural and functional changes in DRDO;
(c) critical challenges for achieving high self-reliance;
(d) contrarian voices; and
(e) the way forward.
