The recent news of Russian arms exporters paying 100 million Euros to a London based middle-man actually explains a lot that is wrong with our defense acquisition.Yagnasri wrote:Yes, Guruji. If we get a significant portion of the R&D work at India, it will be a great thing for us.
Question is - why would Russians pay bribe because more often than not, they're the only solution provider in their category? Also, why do others pay a bribe? Apart from the obvious of winning the contract for your party, I think there are multiple levels involved here.
1. Apart from cases where IA has clear-cut requirement, I think there are cases where agents of weapons manufacturers influence the Services to create a specific requirement. If the Acceptance of Necessity is accorded for this weapon system, the RFP will of course be literally tailor-made for such a system.
2. Other is the more straight-forward method - Genuine requirement exists, RFP is issued and it tends to favor a particular system. Reminds me of example in General V.K. Singh's autobiography - The tender for ULWH was literally tailor-made for Singapore Kinetics Pegasus gun. But for SK getting embroiled in OFB controversy, the gun would've gone through. When V.K. Singh assumed office, he pitched for M-777 and asked the Defense Secretary to modify the GSOR which had components not relevant to such a weapon system. The DS refused and that is how we heard reports for M-777 failing GSQR requirements.
3. The other high level avenue of corruption is the loose framing of the contracts - this gives an opportunity to the vendors to not fill their part of commitments like genuine Off-set investments as well as milk the contract for 'additional' work.
4. Slow production rate at OFB or other PSU - I've a strong sense that in many cases, the delays in production at OFBs and other PSU like HAL are deliberate. Because any delay in manufacture automatically leads to direct orders from Russians or OEM. Su-30 production at HAL and T-90 production at Avadi are two very important case in points.
IMO, Russians pay bribe for point no. 3 and no.4 above.
There are deliberate inefficiencies built into our procurement system to aid in corruption on massive scale.