Honestly man...many of us expected a big turn around in the above aspects with a more nationalistic administration at helm. What a big let down it has been so far.JayS wrote:Agreed, I have pointed out this issue myself many times. ADA has only about 700 scientists working. A lot of whom are into program management. Any organization such as this should have at least 3x highly qualifies man-power.tsarkar wrote:More than under-funding, under-staffing is a more serious issue.
Due to GoI freeze on staffing - that should've been directed to bloated department & ministries - there is an acute shortage of manpower across projects. Today ADA is focussed on Mk1 FOC, so not much work has happened (jointly with HAL AR&DC) for Mk1A. Even less work has happened for Mk2. One of the reasons I was told Navy withdrew its support for Tejas Navy Mk2 is because of lot of design work to achieve desired outcomes is unfinished.
Mk1 FOC, MK1A, Mk2 IAF, Mk2 Navy, Trainers....these require multiple teams.
Not expanding ADA - and overall DRDO - staffing for the sake of financial austerity is another sense of misdirected priorities.
Even for DRDO, only about 7000 scientists are on staff. As I have mentioned multiple times on BRF, in 2014 DRDO said they have 2000+ unfilled posts. I was very hopeful that Modi government would lift ban on DRDO placements. But it never happened. GOI tried to use an approach which is more suitable for lethargic babus in Zilla Parishad offices than highly qualified white-collar workforce. It was never going to work. No real structural changes have happened in past three years which will empower DRDO for tomorrow's projects.
Another issue I have with our RnD establishment's recruitment policies in hiring of temporary workers at peanuts as salary and making them work on menial jobs only. And gross absence of lateral placements. This way they become a closed echo-chamber kind of place with not much new ideas or ways of working being introduced nor they can retain talent properly. They hire a guy at 15k salary, spend time to train him, use him for 2 years and then fire. How will they even get any decent quality of people in that amount..? Even some good folks who go there due to lack of jobs elsewhere are let go in a year or to. This is a significant erosion of manpower. There is neither quality input nor any consolidation of whatever good that comes in. Only a very small percentage would get absorbed.
But lets not forget, recruitment comes with funding. Even now DRDO's demand for funds is 20k Cr while GOI only provided 15k Cr and this is almost 50% increase in budget compared to 3yrs ago. Look at the example of CSIR. Modi government left them to fend for themselves. Now CSIR has declared financial emergency. They have literally no money left for work after paying salaries. I think next year they will not be able to pay even salaries. And CSIR is our most premier research organization with overwhelming majority of total national research output coming from CSIR. I simply don't understand what is Modi government thinking while doing all this non-sense. They seems totally clueless on what needs to be done. My biggest contention with Modi government is that they neither seems to know how to handle technology areas (particularly the long term things) nor they are willing to delegate it to people who could do it. We can't wait until 2019 elections for every big change.
If people who can influence policy decisions are reading the above post, please please do convey the above concerns to PMO & MoD etc.
Most of the pain points wrt to domestic R&D have been beautifully articulated.