Unless you are a Philip wannabe then do you know what does SA to RM means ??? The said person whom you are questioning so easily isn't producing stats from his musharraff but asked a national body to do the calculations for it and when the body gave him the figures that's when he went public with the same. Now maybe in your world like Philip's asking professional bodies to do a job in which they are good at might not be considered kosher but in actual world such actions matter, it's a totally different thing that you want to live in your make belief world about which I have no problem but that doesn't mean that you have a free pass to come and carry out a disinformation campaign on a public forum. All the guys quoted have been using the same old data which god knows is based on which survey carried out at what time ??? Here ex DRDO chief is being quoted from two different interviews where he was asked this specific question about the 70:30 ratio and he has give the same answer to both of them based on analysis done by a professional body. Now if you want to challenge this data being put out by him then you show a better analysis from another national body and people will accept. But quoting old articles who are using the same old data and hence conclusively saying that the ratio is still 70:30 is pretty dumb given that so many indigenous systems have been inducted recently and more are in the process of induction. Even the present SA to RM i.e. DRDO chief has said that the 70% indigenous content is well within reach. Now will you say that he is also wrong and our DDM or some retired army personnel have access to better data to actually gauge the indigenous content in our defence items ???anjan wrote:This is awesome. It is satire, isn't it? Otherwise this entire spiel about cherry picking data while going on to list the gamut of people you won't listen to (turns out that's a large part of the government, military, media, and legislature) while treating 1 man's word as factual truth is just... sad. BTW this isn't even a commentary on your position. Just the standard of debate on this subject.
Also there is a need to understand why having foreign items in indigenous content isn't exactly == doomsday for India. Here I quote Dr. Saraswat again from the link I posted previously
Here it can be seen that he is being honest in accepting that yes we have achieved this much indigenization but still we have some distance to go and that is being worked upon. So I don't see the need why I have to buy arguments from other people who have lesser knowledge about our defence industry than from persons who have worked there entire life creating the same.However, the fact is that we would like to aim for 70-80 per cent indigenisation. The need for indigenisation has always been strongly felt. We want it to happen. Imports of defence items are forced due to a gap in our capabilities. You can’t jeopardise the security of our country and hence we have to import in areas where we lack the indigenous capacity. It is not as if the need for indigenisation has been felt only now due to the recent painful episode. It has been in our blood for the last 30 years and more. Indigenisation in fact is the mandate of the DRDO. We have taken a whole range of measures to increase indigenous content in defence items. However it is important for us to define what we mean by indigenisation. 100 per cent indigenous content is not valid in the current global context. Even for commercial firms, producing electronic goods or even textiles, there is a considerable amount of foreign component. Today, there is a large global market with up and downstream linkages, and importing components is the norm.
Defence indigenisation must be considered in respect of capability to make the nation strong. The Geopolitical situation can deny you the much needed equipment and technology in critical situations. We must achieve a critical mass in terms of indigenous technology. This implies that we must be independent of all existing and future controls / restrictions and technology denial regimes. That is why the DRDO does not engage itself in production of easily available products / low cost high volume items, which are available from multiple sources. There is no fear that these supplies will ever get choked. The critical mass for indigenisation therefore focuses on cutting edge technology sectors like missiles, electronic warfare, radars, SONARs, special materials, Life sciences products etc that are specific to our terrain. Technology denial regimes and unwillingness of other countries to sell such items, makes it essential for us to develop our own in-house capacities. The aim is to keep us independent of controls. This implies developing the integrated sum of academic institutions, industrial capacity, national laboratories and DRDO to meet national objectives. There is a gap currently and this must be bridged in a big way.
