Part 2
The Light Combat Aircraft

Part 3
Arjun and Pinaka

Part 4
The Missiles

Part 5
The Man Behind It All

Part 6
Time For A Clean-Up

'DRDO is like the Indian cricket team'

George Iype

Vision: DRDO will get transformed into a technological leader of world class with corporate structure and with a mission of making the nation independent of foreign technology in critical spheres "

Mission: Design and development which will lead to production of state-of-the-art weapons and equipment and other support systems as required by the Indian defence services from time to time.

Lofty statements indeed. But nearly half-a-century after its birth in 1958, DRDO is today a mammoth organisation that needs radical restructuring before any effective indigenisation programme can really take off.

Some DRDO labs are white elephants where no productive defence research and development takes place. For instance, four DRDO labs exclusively carry out research into foods and agriculture and one institute is engaged in business management.

Should defence labs carry out research into vegetables when the Indian Council of Agriculture Research and its affiliates are engaged in similar work? What is the rationale of DRDO studying management techniques when such studies are being done in detail by other institutes across the country?

"DRDO is like the Indian cricket team. They have been pampered with money and praise that they cannot just deliver," remarks Major General (retd) Ashok Mehta.

He says some DRDO factories are just a drain on the defence exchequer that it is high time the government closed them down. "Thus, in the pursuit of technology, DRDO should imbibe a modern culture of research and development for its defence technological base to grow," he says.

For years, defence experts and New Delhi-based Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis have been demanding that DRDO be restructured, its R&D improved and indigenous defence design and production stepped up.

They say the main problem that DRDO confronts today is that its R&D has shifted from factories to laboratories. Indeed, there is nothing wrong in the concept, if technological innovations take place in factories.

"Many DRDO factories are just junk [outfits]. No productive work takes place there. The labs continue to do research with no [proper game plan]," charges one DRDO official.

"In DRDO laboratories, no high-end research occurs. In our factories, no high-end production occurs," he says.

In the 1960s, DRDO was a small agency, with just 10 laboratories. But in the last four decades, it has grown multi-directionally with a number of factories and laboratories springing up.

The defence ministry is still sitting on a few proposals to revamp the country's premier defence research organisation. The salient points of some of the in-house proposals: