The private sector should be brought in to tap, market defence technology

Now that India is a tested nuclear weapons state, what are the next steps? Are the command and control systems being constituted? How, then, do you see India8217;s nuclear policy evolving?

The tests that we conducted on May 11th and 13th, and India8217;s declared position as a nuclear weapons state, has been questioned by many. Both internally and externally, people have raised all sorts of issues regarding our tests. As far as the issue of necessary command and controlsystems is concerned, we will have that which is invoked today in other nuclear weapon states. After all, the devices that we tested on May 11 and May 13 were not suddenly created overnight. They are the results of a long research and development process. Likewise, the possibility of India having to take a course as we have taken has been under consideration even by earlier governments. Therefore, the institution of necessary command and control were also thought of since a fairly long time. The formalisation of these, however, is a matter that needs to be discussed at great length. Having said that, the question arises as to under what circumstances nuclear weapons can be used. And which units then may have to use them. More vitally, whether there will be any resultant restructuring of our armed forces.

Our stated position on the question of nuclear weapons, as it has always been in this country, is that we look at nuclear weapons as weapons of deterrence. And to that extent our conventional forces will have to be maintained at the requisite level. Any downsizing can only be related to the upgradation of conventional weapons, which is on the cards. However, for the nuclear weapons it will be necessary to have a strategic force. These are matters presently under consideration.

The meeting with the Confederation of Indian Industry was thought of byme within a week of assuming charge as the Defence Minister, in the last week of March. In the first week of April, I discussed the issue with the President of the CII, and the dates were firmed up, and preparatory work begun. My thinking is that the Defence Research and Development Organisation DRDO laboratories are the best of their kind anywhere and certainly the only ones of their kind in India.

Research and development by definition has multiple purposes. Because of the exclusivity that has so far been maintained, use of the technologies generated in these laboratories has not been put into civilian use; including medicine, information technology and super computing. And this is what prompted me to suggest that our private sector should be brought into the act along with the public sector to comprehensively tap this technology. That is only one part. The second aspect is that some of our defence production establishments are working with obsolete machinery. And upgrading them, modernising them willrequire considerable capital investment. And a thought which I have is that the private sector could be invited with equity participation in some of these units. The third purpose of this was to create a marketing establishment for defence products entirely in the private sector. The Ministry of Defence cannot have marketing expertise. And for a variety of reasons the production units, whether departmentally owned or public sector units, have their limitations. Private sector has the expertise. Some of our defence products have a market as evident by last years sales where we exported Rs 250-crore worth of equipment to overseas markets. With some effort I do believe that this can go up many fold. And a fallout of this is that we will operate our production units on economies of scale which will reduce the price both for the domestic user, our armed forces, as also for the overseas market. Essentially these were the issues that figured in the discussions. Since the conference was held after the sanctions wereimposed, it is but natural that there would have been a new sense of urgency and determination on display, both by Ministry of Defence and the private sector.

The services have been discussing the systemic changes, particularly in the aftermath of the Pokharan-II tests, that are necessary in the decision making process. My visit to Siachen brought me face-to-face on the need for well considered but quick decision making in the Ministry of Defence. I have since noticed in various areas indecision and inaction have cost us enormous amount of money. But that is a small matter when one thinks of the consequences of such indecision and inactionupon our security concerns. I will need a little more time to fully come to grips with this issue, which just now is amongst my priorities.