There is nothing pretty in the spectacle of wealthy global defence suppliers urging poor countries to spend on exorbitantly priced weaponry, but that is what India's premier defence exhibition, Defexpo India 08, is all about. Behind the glitzy displays, the glossy handouts emblazoned with names like Lockheed Martin and Rosoboronexport, and the easy talk about "strategic partnership" and "spreading insecurity", is India's failure to identify its defence needs and build up the capability to meet them cheaply and indigenously. Without a carefully debated long-term procurement vision, a process for identifying and developing key technologies, and a plan for marrying the capabilities of India's defence public sector with the dynamism of private enterprise, the government has created a happy playground for the international arms majors. Despite that, Defexpo India 08 echoes with complaints from both international and Indian exhibitors. They complain that the government has undermined the very purpose of a defence exhibition ""- which is to put buyers in direct touch with sellers ""- by failing to announce the new defence procurement and offsets rules that it has promised for over a year now. A clear set of rules is essential for substantive business to be transacted, and for a slew of non-binding memoranda of understanding that have already been signed by Indian and global defence companies, to be translated into actual contracts. Instead of clearing the decks for such business by announcing policy changes at the high-profile platform of Defexpo India 08, A K Antony, the defence minister, merely repeated his promise to announce the changes in April. Exasperated exhibitors "" both foreign and Indian "" can be forgiven for wondering aloud why, in that case, Defexpo wasn't postponed to April. | |
| The government's delay stems from fundamental flaws in its approach to equipping the military. South Block's procurement philosophy rests on laying down a set of rules, which bind the military and the bureaucracy, for purchasing new equipment. While good rules are useful, especially in guiding civil servants with a usually inadequate background in defence and security, the search for watertight regulations not just delays but often derails defence planning. Equipment procurement is an inherently subjective process, it cannot be reduced to merely buying the world's best piece of kit from the vendor who quotes lowest. Procurement is naturally and inevitably complicated by issues like time sensitivity, threat scenarios, equipment compatibility and vendor reliability. Identifying the world's "best" equipment is seldom the most important thing in defence procurement planning; far more important is the subjective judgment of what is sufficient for one's own needs. But that seems far beyond the defence ministry. At an opening-day seminar at the Defexpo, the ministry had no answers to exhibitors' requests for clarifications on taxation and policy issues. Instead, a series of senior defence officials lingered over the 2001 opening of defence production to the private sector and the defence procurement policy of 2006, which is about to be superseded. |
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| Despite the frustration over the ministry's lack of clarity and the delays in key pronouncements, the global defence industry has arrived at the expo in record numbers. It was left to a seminar speaker from the British defence ministry to sum up the Defexpo: India needs global technology, and the global defence majors need India's market. |
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