Comments on the article:Defence Procurement: Slow March to Indigenisation

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Brig GurmeetKanwal’sarticle titled, “Defence Procurement: Slow March to Indigenisation” is interesting and the need of the hour because it endeavors to point to the way forward. He has suggested several steps, some of which may work and some may not.He says, “All new defence acquisitions must have a ToT (Transfer of Technology) clause built into the contract even if it means having to pay a higher price.”  This route has been attempted by many of our private industries but only with limited result. The foreign seller has several options which they have exercised in the past; charge an enormous price which the country can ill afford; part with technology which is not the latest but, say, one generation older; deliberately insert a hardware or software bug in the transferred technology; include a clause that India may produce but may not export; and refuse to transfer at all. We should remember how we were denied access to the Cryogenic engine for the launch vehicles. (Incidentally only a month ago India successfully launched a satellite with a cryogenic engine component. This great achievement of ISRO was based on indigenously developed technology, and not technology obtained through ToT agreement.) The foreign producer invests thousands of man-hour in developing a technology and he is loathe to part with it easily for obvious commercial reasons.However, I truly appreciate his suggestion that “the armed forces should be givenfunding support to undertake research geared towards the improvement ofin-service equipment with a view to enhancing operational performance andincreasing service life”. This is a wonderful innovation in policy making and no less. Why do I think so is outlined below.

Brig. Kanwal is a retired army officer and he is well aware of the spirit of “leading from the front” inculcated in the army. In a dangerous combat situation our young army officers lead from the front and thus take much greater casualties. Of course, this is practicable only up to a certain level of seniority, say up to Major or Lieutenant Colonel. We need to infuse kindred spirit into our graduate engineers of all descriptions. I have spent many years in the west and have observed their engineers closely. Young graduate engineers have to get into a worker overall at the start of the day and work at the production front. Whereas in India the graduate engineers let the diploma holders and mechanics do the job while they sit behind desks and administer. At this stage the reader of this article should pick up the biography of the Wright brothers who first flew a powered aircraft or that of Thomas Alva Edison, the famous inventor. The Wrights were born to well-educated middle class parents – the mother was a mathematics graduate from a university in an age when women did not have the right to vote - but became bicycle repairers and in their repair work shop they attempted to produce gliders, engines, propellers and finally a complete aircraft. They had hired assistants but main work was done by the Wrights themselves. They were the ones who risked their life in many failed flights. They did not ask their assistants to fly.Even when well past seventy, Edison, once bitten by an idea, spent 6 or 7 days at a stretch in the laboratory, sleeping a few hours on a table and surviving on snacks, although he had hired hands. This is what I call “the spirit of leading from the front in engineering”, which is so sadly lacking in our young engineers, though due to no fault of their own. Right from their school days certain aptitudes and attitudes are not developed; I would use a stronger word, ‘discouraged’. What is encouraged is mathematical aptitude at the cost of practical hands-on aptitude. I do not wish to get into the area of education reform, as this article would become too big.

Sadly, what our army inculcates in its combat forces, it does not do so in its engineers. The MES (Military Engineering Services) engineers are no different in lacking the spirit of “leading from the front” than other engineers.  If the honourable Brigadier can transfer this spirit from the combat officers to the young graduate engineers of the MES, then his idea would win laurels for the country. Let me remind my readers that while passing through evolution, man developed an intelligent brain and a dexterous pair of hands equipped with nimble skilful fingers. It is this combination that engineered human civilisation. In our country, the intelligent educated brain is in one person while the skilled pair of hands is with a different person. They have to be brought together. Let me end by quoting an example from real life. I have seen the result of orthopedic surgery, done by an Indian surgeon, on an X-ray plate. Three pieces of the broken shin bone (lower leg) joined in a perfect straight line by a steel plate and six screws and all this while working within a severe time limit in the midst of pulsating flesh and blood. The surgeon is both highly educated and supremely skilful, and his skill is that of a mechanical technician. If our graduate engineers acquire even half of that skill and imbibe the spirit of “leading from the front”, India would make rapid strides in not only defense but in consumer goods manufacture also.

I give below a piece which was published earlier (but relevant to this topic) in these columns for the interested reader.

The article ‘The Missing Military Industrial Complex’ by HemantKrishan Singh and Sanjay Pulipaka draws attention to the sorry state of affairs of India’s defense production. They consider the ‘Military-Industrial Complex’ to be essential for a country’s defense and it is missing in India’s case as yet. They do not say what exists in its stead. In my opinion what exists is ‘Military-Bureaucracy-Politician Complex’ which promotes an unholy nexus between the armed forces top brass, bureaucracy, politicians on one hand and the foreign supply agents on the other. This term Military-Industrial Complex has a checkered history.It was coined by American president Dwight Eisenhower in the 1960s in the context of the Vietnam War. He alluded to this complex being responsible for promoting that war and many other wars around the globe. So the term originally had a connotation not so benign. The authors of the afore-said article, of course, are using it with a different connotation in the Indian context. They seem to think that PM aspirant of BJP, Shri NarendraModi’s idea of“Integrating national security and defense with technology incubation system” is likely to be the solution to India’s very deficient defense production. I am not so sure and here are the reasons.

Let us first look at India’s record of competitive manufacture of non-military consumer durables. Our car industry started with the factory of Hind Motors near Kolkata in 1952 when the model Hindustan, a copy of Morris Minor of UK, hit the market. Next they copied the Morris Oxford model and called it Ambassador. The Korean civil war stopped in 1963 and by that time the country was completely devastated by continuous wars for nearly 30 years which first started with Japanese occupation followed by World War 2 and the civil war. South Korea started industrialising in real earnest since the 1970s and the car industry was launched in 1978. Right from the beginning they pursued indigenous design of all the systems in the car such as carburetion system, ignition system, suspension system, brake system, overall structure etc. Only thing that they borrowed from the Japanese Mitsubishi was the engine. After a few years they stopped even that and produced their own engine. We observe that they took a very different route than India’s and now are far ahead. The same is the story with refrigerators; compare our Godrej with their Sanyo or Samsung. Our Bajaj had specialised in motor bikes and had the Indian market in their grips till 1991 when globalisation/ liberalisation became the policy. Thereafter the Bajaj company was forced to borrow technology from Tawasaki of Japan. Brazil’s aircraft industry is only 34 years old whereas ours is since World War II, that is, more than 60 years old. Embrayercompany of Brazil has since captured 30 percent of the US market in medium–sized (30 to 50 seater) aircraft segment. We attempted twice to produce a small passenger aircraft and this effort was in the public sector and failed. I can cite many more examples but I stop here.

The moot point is that there is something wrong with our engineering establishment that includes both education in our colleges and design/ innovation/ invention/ manufacture in our private and public industries. We have to first of all rectify our “technology incubation system” in the civilian sector of consumer-durable production. Only then we can think of extending that to defense production. Or perhaps we have to start by looking deep into our “engineer incubation system” which includes not only our engineering colleges but also our schools where basic aptitudes are developed. We can start by looking into the Japanese school system where hands-on practical and innovative aptitudes are imparted.

DrKunal Ghosh (Retd) is a former Professor and Ex-Head, Aerospace EngineeringDepartment, IIT, Kanpur. The views expressed are personal.