'India needs to develop competitive products'

India has become much more vulnerable, and its import bill for electronic products is likely to exceed the import bill of oil and hydrocarbon, according to Anil Kakodkar, member of Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).

“As electronic products have very low shelf-life, they need to be updated with technology in order to tackle security threats. Currently, India is hugely dependent on the import of electronic goods. In this regard, robust domestic research and development (R&D) activities and innovative electronic products are the need of the hour,” he said.

“India should develop competitive products, convert more laboratory products into commercially-robust products in order to meet the huge demand,” he said, after unveiling its programmable logic controller (PLC) in Hyderabad on Friday.

The PLC is developed by Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), a public sector undertaking (PSU) under the department of atomic energy.

“The high-performance, industrial strength PLCs are used to control security threats in electronic products, and will be targeted at atomic energy, defence, aerospace and homeland security domains,” said ECIL chairman and managing director Y S Mayya.

The Indian electronics market is currently dominated by foreign brands, which due to commercial reasons do not expose their designs and software for full verification. In this case, domestically-developed indigenous products are going to play a key role in India’s strategic growth, he said.

“These third-generation of PLCs consume less power, run cool, meet international standards and are equally well-suited for automation applications in thermal power plants, process industry, transport and manufacturing industry,” Mayya said.