Guns vs Butter-II: Indian military's quest for indigenous weaponry

The second of a five-part series takes a close look at the military's push for acquisition of defence equipment from domestic sources rather than from overseas

The 37th report of the 17th Lok Sabha’s Standing Committee on Defence, which was tabled before Parliament on March 31, reveals that despite the government’s encouragement of defence procurement from domestic sources, almost 40 per cent of the defence capex Budget has been expended on foreign military equipment over the preceding decade.

Extrapolating from the report, which scrutinises defence expenditure from Financial Year 2012-13 (FY13) to FY22, the expenditure from foreign vendors exceeded 35 per cent in seven of those 10 years. In the remaining three years, foreign capex exceeded 40 per cent — on one occasion going up to