MORE HEFT AND FIZZ

Will India’s latest Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020 speed up military capability - building through indigenous efforts, help in achieving the turnover of ₹1,75,000 crore and exports of ₹35,000 crore by 2020- 25 as per the targets enunciated in the draft Defence Production Policy 2020? AMIT COWSHISH answers

- AMIT COWSHISH

It is hard to encapsulate 650-odd pages of Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020 (DAP-2020) released by the Ministry of Defence on September 30. Like its predecessor, Defence Procurement Procedure 2016 (DPP-2016), this document is a curious mix of good intentions, ambitious policies, and Byzantine procedures.

It took the 12-member committee set up by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in August last year to align DPP-2016 with the government’s atmanirbharta abhiyan (campaign for self-reliance), which has now subsumed the ‘Make in India’ call given by the Prime Minister in the course of his Independence speech in 2014, and finalise the new draft.

Considering that DAP-2020 is the outcome of extensive deliberations involving the civil and military bureaucracies, Indian and foreign industry, and many other resource persons, it would be fair to expect that the policy and procedural changes incorporated in this document will spur indigenous defence manufacturing, reduce dependence on imports and hasten acquisitions. However, this expectation engenders a sense of déjà vu.

The DPP-2016 was also promulgated based on the recommendations made by a Committee of Experts after extensive interaction with various stakeholders, and it had similar objectives as DAP-2020. Evidently, however, the changes made in 2016 were of little help in reducing dependence on imports despite a steady increase in domestic production.