Er. Rajesh Pathak
Once upon a time an ex Major General of army struck sensation when he said that the decade of 1980 saw the two brothers belonging to one of the top families at the helm of the ruling party then were mutually in tough competition as to how they could outmanoeuvre each other and get their respective companies have contract of defence deals in order to get away with their share of commission. As such country was not taken ahead in the direction of being self-reliant in defence sector deliberately.
But now the things have gone transformed. This financial year country saw a record defence production worth as high as 1 Lakh crore. Notably, India now goes to be having capability of exporting the products linked to space and defence sector as well, the target of which having been set 5 billion dollar by the end of 2025. The defence export of India during last decade has increased 23 times touching the figure of 16,000 crore. Overall 85 countries responded in a great way to brace up their defence system with Brhamos and Akash missiles; Tejas fighter planes; Radars; Pinaca rocket and launcher. Even France , Russia and Israel now prefers to purchase offshore petrol vessels; body armours; mine-protected vehicles; avionics and such other exclusively from India, more notably.
Notably, making no mistake to overlook the lesson that the strategic fallouts of Ukrain episode offered, Japan has soon increased its defence budget from 1% to 2% of GDP. Philippine also could not afford to rely on America for more, as it is now engaged with Britain to deal with Houthi-Hijbollah combine in red sea. Disgusting frequent incursion of China in its territory in South China Sea brought it closer to India to strike defence-deal with it. It even went steps forward pursuing self-reliance in self-defence with the acquisition of world’s fastest Brahmos supersonic missiles from us. Brahmos could be launched from submarine, ships, aircraft and land alike, notably
This boom in the rise of self-reliance in production and subsequent export is seen also due to 4,666 defence related items have been made notified to be not imported from abroad. It is because of this that the amount of license for the production granted to industries in the defence sector has increased as high as 200% . FDI is made more accessible with its limit being increased up to 74%. Two new defence corridors are recently developed in the states UP and TN . Innovation for defence excellence (IDEX) scheme is launched, under which the start-ups and MSMEs engaged in manufacturing sectors are exhorted to be innovative at the domestic level itself. In Bangalore an unit of helicopter factory belonging to HAL(Hindustan Aeronautics Limited ) has recently been inaugurated by Modi.
The deal for building the 83 Tejas fighter planes under make-in-India is termed as the biggest one so far with total amount to be incurred around 48,000 crores. The coming days will see in all 5000 components more to have gone indigenisation or Swadeshikaran, says the sources close to defence sectors. These steps will naturally benefit 24,000 MSMEs engaged thereof in the country.
