Self-Reliance in Defence: From Pragmatic Restraint to Strategic Autonomy

By : Amit Cowshish

Page No: 169-185

Abstract
Resource constraints and commitment to Non-Alignment historically explain India’s limited expenditure on defence. Moreover, it remained so despite the country’s periodic wars with hostile neighbours in 1962, 1965, and 1971. The signing of the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation in 1971 was an important landmark in India’s quest for self-reliance. It marked the start of the co-production and co-development of varied defence platforms, including through Transfer of Technology (ToT). It is estimated that more than 200 industrial units in India currently have ties with the Russian defence industry for local manufacturing, repair, and maintenance of Russian-origin equipment. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought home the hard reality of import dependence and geopolitical uncertainty, underscoring the urgent imperative of self-reliance in defence procurement. An important path suggested was to gradually raise the indigenous component in defence procurement. The Kargil war of 1999 came as a reality check. For the past five decades, the country had more or less followed the same lackadaisical policies concerning defence production, Research and Development (R&D), planning, and resource allocation, citing the same reasons such as economic constraints, anodyne threat perceptions, and politicobureaucratic procrastination. Defence production was in the hands of public-sector companies, and defence-related R&D suffered from a lack of funding.The Kargil war was a wake-up call. Concerted policy measures were taken towards raising the level of ‘self-reliance’ in defence procurement in the years following the Kargil war. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his maiden Independence Day speech on August 15, 2014, from the ramparts of historic Red Fort in Delhi, gave a call for ‘Make in India’. Since then, ‘Atmanirbharta’ has become the mantra underlying various defence policy initiatives, as in many other sectors of the Indian economy. ‘Atmanirbharta’ in defence production is deemed a necessary prerequisite for exercising strategic autonomy. In the true sense of the term, self-reliance in defence implies the ability to use one’s own resources and capabilities to design and develop cutting edge technologies, remain ahead of one’s adversaries in technological advancement and innovation, access raw materials required for defence production, and harness these resources to manufacture state-of-the-art equipment, platforms and weapon systems, including critical components like aeroengines. It also implies ensuring an uninterrupted supply of rare earth elements and critical minerals, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, and titanium, all of which are essential for the manufacture of advanced defense systems. The changing nature of warfare, and rapidly increasing role of AI-driven autonomous weapon systems, or ‘killer robots’, has added a new dimension to India’s quest for self-reliance in defence. Judged by this yardstick, there are several notable gains; but import dependence on critical components also remains. It means, there is a lot of catching up to be done. Self-reliance remains a long term project. It is not simply a function of ensuring local manufacturing of defence equipment and maximising the IC in locally manufactured products, if such manufacturing is critically dependent on the import of raw materials, components, assemblies, or technologies. In the end, it is investment in R&D which holds the key to self-reliance in design and the development of major military platforms and weapons which, in turn, guarantees  some measure of strategic autonomy.

Author
Amit Cowshish, Ex-Financial Advisor (Acquisition), Ministry of Defence, Government of India.
 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32381/IFAJ.2025.20.3.1