Ashok Parthasarathi: PPP requires equals

The huge technology gap between the public and private sectors makes a full-fledged partnership difficult.

It is completely incorrect to state, as Ajai Shukla does (Bringing the private sector into defence, April 11), that "India's vast network of 39 ordnance factories and nine defence public sector companies wander in the low technology wilderness of spares and components, small arms and ammunition and the assembly of relatively

simple weapons platforms". These entities are actually operating in high-tech equipment and complete systems needed for all the three defence services, ranging from the Prithvi surface-to-surface missiles, the Russian T-72M-based Ajeya main battle tank, the indigenous main battle tank, Arjun, to a whole range of fire control and night-vision equipment for these tanks, which have been designed and developed in the laboratories of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), which Shukla maligns as "performing dismally".

Incidentally, the Arjun tank is a big feather in the cap of the DRDO as it involves ab initio design, development, field-testing and handing over to the Army by the Combat Vehicles R&D Establishment (CVRDE) after volume production by the tank factory in Avadi on the outskirts of Chennai. CVRDE's major achievement of uprating the 700-horsepower Soviet engine powering the original T-72s to 1,500 horsepower in nine months as part of the overall upgrading of the Soviet T-72 to the Indian Ajeya has been a remarkable achievement. There is no private sector company which can come anywhere near to achieving such a feat.

A second major area of strength is the long-range surface-to-air missile, Akash, the anti-tank missile, Nag, and the Agni I, II and III long-range strategic missiles "" again designed, developed and operationally tested by the DRDO, and accepted by the Army and Air Force for operational deployment over the last five years. As complete systems, these missiles are far too complex for even a consortium of companies. However, several large, medium and small-scale companies have been given sub-contracts by the DRDO for sub-systems and components for these missiles and, by and large, they have developed such sub-systems and components successfully.

The upgrading of the Russian 130-mm artillery pieces to 155 mm artillery and ammunition by the DRDO and the simpler sub-systems and components by the private sector is a good example of public-private partnership.

The Tejas Light Combat Aircraft project, for which the Air Force has only recently placed a commercial order for the first operational 120 aircraft, has also used private sector vendors for numerous sub-systems and components. However, in the case of the hi-tech "head-up display" and flight control computer, both of which are developed at DRDO laboratories and manufactured by Bharat Electronics, the public sector is streets ahead.

In the case of ground-based radars for our air defence system, while the first two types of radars were manufactured by Bharat Electronics in collaboration with Thomson-CSF of France, low-looking Indra II radars for air defence and the Phased Array Rajendra radars, which form integral parts of the medium range ground-to-air Akash missile system have been totally developed by the Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE) of the DRDO, and are in regular production at Bharat Electronics. There are hardly any electronic engineers in the private sector who have the knowledge of electronic warfare systems such as the electronic counter measures needed to protect Tejas, the air defence missiles and the Arjun tank.

In the case of the Navy, the Office of Naval Designs working with Mazagaon Docks has developed, manufactured and put into service a range of such surface vessels based on the state-of-the-art "stealth" technology, which makes the vessels practically undetectable by enemy radars. The same is the case with the deep penetrating, high-speed, new-generation torpedoes, which the NSTL is successfully developing.

I'll now come to the specific example that Shukla has referred to in his article, namely, the technology transfer agreement which Bharat Electronics concluded with WB Electronics of manufacture of (most probably, tank) harnesses. It is a long-standing practice in the defence ministry that both the ordnance factories and the defence public enterprises tie-up technology transfer agreements with foreign manufacturers of defence equipment meeting service requirements/specifications without the procurement going through domestic tendering procedures. However, I do agree that in the case of relatively low-tech products such as harnesses, the Department of Defence Production and Supplies should have gone through an open domestic tender in which BEL also can bid along with private companies.

The private sector is being used/drawn on for defence products within their capabilities, but as sub-contractors and component suppliers. This needs to be extended to complete equipment, given the growing maturity of the private sector, and this has been done recently in the case of the Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launcher developed by the DRDO jointly with Tata and L&T, and to be manufactured by these private companies.

I do not know if Shukla is aware that while the construction of the important Sea Control ship is being undertaken by our largest shipyard, the Cochin Shipyard, the hull of our nuclear submarine is being fabricated by Larsen and Toubro at their Hazira shipyard. But it's important to know that when the light combat aircraft (now called Tejas) was on the drawing boards in 1986-87, the late Rajiv Gandhi had called a meeting in Bangalore with all the big captains of industry "" Ratan Tata, Rahul Bajaj and many others "" and pressurised them to take on the prime responsibility for Tejas. They all said that Tejas was far beyond not only when it comes to technical capabilities, but also their project management capabilities.

With my fairly intimate knowledge of our defence design, production and procurement capabilities, I can say the present state of affairs, where the ordnance factories and the public sector companies (not just the nine in the Department of Defence Production, but large PSUs such as the Electronics Corporation of India Ltd) undertake total systems responsibility in terms of design and development, prototyping, field trials and bulk manufacture and the private sector complements them with sub-systems and components, is the best combination for the nation.

The author is former Science Advisor to Late PM Indira Gandhi and former secretary to several scientific departments.