Defence indigenisation needs private sector participation

The opportunity for defence indigenisation in India offers ‘low hanging fruits’, but needs to incentivise private sector participation.

In an interactive session organised by the Engineering India Foundation and ProSIM R&D on Saturday, participants including Tamilmani, Director General of Aero, and Shamasundar, MD, ProSIM R&D, discussed the various opportunities that India proposes in defence indigenisation.

“Streamlined mechanisms, where the private sector players are guaranteed of the returns on their investment in development of technology has to be ensured,” said Shamasundar.  He further said that India needs an agency like DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which is responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military in the US.  

Appropriate partnerships, Tamilmani said, will help accomplish defence indigenisation. From the government’s point of view, an investment of Rs 10,000 crore, over the next 10 years will be sufficient to create essential testing infrastructure in the aeronautical cluster, said Tamilmani.

While the need has been realised, and initial steps have been taken, it will take a while for the ecosystem to respond, he said.  “The investment of Rs 350 crore in a 5,000 acre facility in Chitradurga, is one of the steps in the direction. The facility will be operational in 6 months,” he added.