Guns, not butter

The National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), which has some excellent work to its credit, received its most intriguing commission when the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), as reported in this paper, asked it to identify, quantify and analyse its contribution to society, economy and industry. That decision was evidently a tactical counter-move to criticism of the DRDO, engendered in part by a multi-part series on the organisation in this newspaper last year. The DRDO wanted words of praise from credible sources to be able to tell the ministry of defence and parliamentary select committees that just because, say, a battle tank is in decades-long gestation, it doesn’t mean defence technology can’t have exciting spin-offs in civilian sectors. The internet, the DRDO can always say, came out of a US defence research project.

The crucial difference of course is that American defence research does its main job very well. The DARPA — Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — was set up by the US government the same year, 1958, the DRDO was born. DARPA is a first-rate, nimble research station that has a scientist/administrator ratio of 1.4:1. The DRDO is an ordinary, slow-footed sarkari daftar that employs five non-scientists for every scientist. The list of expensive failures in the DRDO’s research projects is well known. Indian armed forces commanders know the less publicised but perhaps more damaging DRDO ‘successes’ — the 105 mm field gun is one example.

Therefore even if NCAER’s study establishes useful forward linkages between the DRDO’s offices — where a handful of scientists work amidst armies of babus — and the economy, the central problem will not be addressed. Indeed, it is surprising why the defence ministry didn’t nix the idea. As our series and other authoritative studies on DRDO have shown, the only way out is completely radical reform. Cosmetic exercises at managing reputation can delay change, an outcome that will incidentally be welcomed by the DRDO brass. If the defence ministry is really serious about reforming the DRDO it should ask one question: how come India has produced world-class professionals in software, biotechnology, medicine, but is such a hopeless also-ran in producing defence researchers? You don’t need NCAER to come up with the explanation. The one-word answer is DRDO.