Forty ordnance factories, eight defence public sector undertakings, several defence research institutes and one of the largest arms industries in the non-western world, yet India is among the biggest buyers of foreign arms. While China, another big importer, has moved rapidly towards indigenisation, India is yet to take a big stride towards self-reliance.
India is showing no sign of a drop in its hunger for foreign arms, according to the arms purchase data for 2005-09 released by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) on Monday.
While China and India top the list of recipients of foreign military equipment inthe period, the volume of arms transferred to these countries, the biggest importers of the decade, “has decreased by 20% and 7 %” during 2005-09, the report says.
This means China is moving away from its dependence on foreign equipment. “Transfer of major conventional weapons systems to China has dropped significantly in the past three years. With the exception of a handful of helicopters from France and Russia, no major conventional weapons were delivered to China in 2009,” the report says.
India, by contrast, continues to receive several weapons systems from Russia, Israel, Europe and the US. The report points out that the “volume of deliveries to India and Pakistan has increased significantly in recent years and will continue to rise in the next five years”. India imports over 70% of its military ware. It wants to reverse this trend, but there is no clear road map to achieve it yet.
The decision making by the government is skewed in favour of imports. While the military system deliberately keeps the private sector out of most contracts, PSUs are largely becoming assembling units for foreign kits, or suppliers of foreign equipment. This policy has effectively sealed the capability expansion in defence sector, which is usually among the biggest employers in the organised sector in major economies.
According to some estimates, for every $1 billion purchase India makes from Israel, it helps the latter retain20,000 high-end jobs.
Besides the loss of employment and engineering capability, are the concerns of sanctions and problems with import dependence.
The report points out that “the volume of arms transferred to the top five major recipients for the period 2005-2009 has increased by 4% over 2000-2004.” The top five recipients accounted for “32% of the imports of major conventional weapons”. Of it, India accounted for 7% and China 9%.
For Russian systems, India was the second biggest recipient during 2005-09, behind China. However, China is no more a great importer of Rusisan equipment, while India continues to be.
Besides, India is among the top recipients of arms from Israel, US and the UK.
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