#dnaEdit: Defence dilemmas

It is surprising that the parliamentary standing committee for defence’s fifth report on the demand for grants (2014-15) on ordnance factories and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is quite mild in contrast to the strong comments made by the committee in its interaction with members of the DRDO. The special report carried in this paper citing the observations made during the meetings reveal that the DRDO has been remiss in more ways than one. It is not just the inordinate delays in the completion of projects that are at issue. 

What the committee criticised was also the shoddiness of the defence scientific establishment’s approach. It was noticed that most of the time the DRDO has been indulging in ‘reverse engineering’. That is, disassembling the imported equipment to understand how it has been made and replicating the process. There is no original work involved in this. There have been other loopholes too in the workings of the premier defence research organisation. Members of the committee had also noticed that the DRDO has gone off on a cranky research project based on a man living on air, without food and water. The DRDO wanted to check out whether the man’s method can be mastered by the soldiers. That is, enable the soldiers live on a diet of air! 

The fault is not entirely of the DRDO as the scientists explained to the committee in the course of their interaction. They had told the committee that the armed forces would come back after their foreign jaunts and present them with the literature on the latest technology available with the international arms manufacturers, and demand that the latest technical features be incorporated in the indigenous project. These are real problems and they need to be addressed and debated.

For this to happen it would be better if the standing committee’s reports to the Parliament should include the actual proceedings and the frank exchanges in the final report as well. It is true that the standing committees did not like the suggestion made by former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee that the hearings of the committees should be televised and they should be made public as it is done with the hearings of the congressional committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the United States. It is possible that on sensitive issues relating to security issues, the committee would prefer to hold their hearings in camera.

The differences between defence scientists and the armed forces, is real and inevitable. The differences have to be sorted out, if need be through a committee comprising representatives of the forces and the scientists. The secrecy over the clash between the two sides will not be helpful — not to themselves —and not to the country at large. Both sides should air their views openly, perhaps not on television news channels, but through in-house journals, where reasoned arguments are put forward on behalf of the scientists and soldiers.

The armed forces’ preference for latest technologies and the new generation of weaponry cannot be dismissed out of court. But there is need for close scrutiny about the usefulness of sophisticated gadgetry in the Indian situation. It is unfair to demand that the DRDO should replicate at home and at a lower cost the new weapons and technologies. It would be better if the security forces buy the stuff off the shelf. Meanwhile, the DRDO should be allowed to work on weapons and systems that the country needs. The DRDO cannot be involved in the catching-up game, and at the same time produce original stuff. The country is mature enough to debate these issues openly.