R&D FACES REALITY

From a room on the ground floor of the DRDO Bhawan in New Delhi—adjacent to the imposing pile of South Block—India’s former top scientific advisor K. Vijay Raghavan is speaking to a gathering of people involved in defence research.

- PRADIP R. SAGAR

Tasked by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), he is reviewing the role of the nation’s premier defence research agency, the Defence Research and Development Organisation or DRDO, with the goal to fully revamp it, and has a November deadline to submit his report. To assist him, VijayRaghavan has an eight-member team drawn from the armed forces and industry. However, the absence of anyone from the DRDO itself in the panel has raised eyebrows in the agency headquarters. Besides restructuring DRDO’s role, the VijayRaghavan committee—set up in the last week of August—is mandated to find solutions to attract and retain high-quality manpower through a system of incentives and disincentives and strict performance accountability. While embarking on this transformation of the DRDO, the Union government has in mind the example of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States. Set up in 1958—the same year as DRDO—DARPA is a funding agency that makes “breakthrough investments for national security” and works with academic, industry and government R&D institutions. The ultimate goal is to inject professionalism in the DRDO, maximise academic and startup participation and, through it all, address the chronic charges of delayed projects and cost overruns that tarnish its reputation.