Of course therein lies the Rub, when you go into the details about companies that have been black listed due to corrupt practices you will find it was local officials demanding the backhanders.
If Indians could cry over their defence procurement, their tears would create a deluge in Pakistan and Bangladesh. St.Anthony wanted to keep his hands clean, blacklisted firms and suspended procurement merely on the allegations of bribery. I don’t have a problem with that procedure, it’s the absurd extent they went to blacklists parent corporations, sister corporations and even distant cousin corporations. So while bribes were paid in helicopter procurement, the MoD can’t deal with the naval systems division ? When the economy was booming, the armed forces couldn’t exhaust their capital budgets, now all the pent up procurements stand in their way and there’s a budget slump.
Then there’s the indigenous development quagmire. Don’t issue any long term procurement plans lest MoD allocate funds and an indigenous option be available (the more basic the requirement, the more advantageous it is to hold it up, for the government firms will automatically fail to deliver on time with complex systems), don’t issue requirements till it can be labelled an emergency purchase (*cough* basic trainer *cough*), write up a note seeking emergency purchase, enjoy the bribes because government firms can’t bribe.
Case:1 Army issues requirements for air defence guns, DRDO comes up with a gun as per SQR, Army changes SQR, the developer matches it and then it is changed again. 11 changes in SQR in 9 years and the DRDO tells the army to stuff it and refuses to play the game anymore. Army goes for several rounds of AD gun procurement, bribes are exchanged, everyone gets blacklisted and is now back to indigenous suppliers to procure guns.
Case:2 Army Artillery. Don’t issue requirements to domestic manufacturers, deny quick incremental and cost effective upgrades to existing systems, go out for a dozen rounds of failed procurements, get everyone blacklisted, come begging to local manufacturers for incremental upgrade they were pushing for a decade back and recommend MoD to release funds for local product upto their requirements. But wait, there’s more, grape vine tells me that the SQR issued for the local gun are quite ambitious, so much so that the best guns available in the market will fail, let alone a domestic product which might need a few iterations, which will make a case for ’emergency procurement’ with diluted SQR all over again.
And it all happened under the last defence minister A.K.Antony. St.Antony dressed in white, won’t do wrong and won’t do right.
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