LOOKING INWARD

India’s Government is trying to meld its Atamnirbhar Bharat Initiative towards its military aviation ambitions.

- Mike Rajkumar

India’s ongoing border face-off with China along the Sino-Indian border, near the disputed Pangong Lake in Ladakh and the Tibet Autonomous Region, has triggered the Indian Government into a troop build-up to strengthen defences on its Himalayan borders.

The urgent requirement to modernise India’s armed forces has been impacted by the slowdown in its economy due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This has forced the military to prioritise weapons acquisitions. The Government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is promoting a policy which provides an impetus to indigenous defence production under its ‘Atamnirbhar Bharat’ (Self Reliant India) drive to reduce the import of costly defence equipment from abroad.

Reducing imports The Government has been strongly promoting its Atamnirbhar Bharat initiative and in August, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) released a list of 108 systems and subsystems identified for design and development by Indian industry. The import of these systems would be banned completely by 2021. In December, the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) led by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh accorded its Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) for procurement of six Airborne Early Warning & Control (AEW&C) Mk-II aircraft under the ‘Buy (Indian-IDDM)’ category of the new Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020.