Indian Naval Despatch Vol.4 No.3 p 81-94 “Charting the Track towards an Atmanirbhar Navy by 2047” by Cdr Rajiv Lochan.
The author has provided an incisive analysis of inadequacies in the way indigenisation itself is evaluated. This is especially needed because the actual strides made in indigenisation by the Indian Navy have been quite high compared to the other two services. Yet, this writer feels that to some extent a degree of exaggeration on actual indigenisation and the value of that effort may have worked against more credible and real indigenisation. Many naval leaders have highlighted the need to move up from “float” to the “move and fight” spheres of indigenisation. It is in the “fly” part especially that the IN has hardly made progress. Admiral Sadiq asks pointed questions in the beginning: “what should constitute indigenous content (IC)?” and is IC just a numerical target expressed as a fuzzy percentage figure? Yes, his analysis is also on the mark that the convenient, self-complimentary percentages attached to IC are not necessarily helpful. Questionable IC sometimes gets conveyed as increased self-reliance/ Atmanirbharta. Although not a totally apt analogy, the much-publicised Apple I-phone manufacturing in India is an example from the fully commercial sector. It is true that almost 15 % of I-phones today are manufactured in India. Or is it? Would “assembled” in India be a better and truer way of describing it since many key components are imported and put together here? This proportion may gradually increase, but genuine value addition, especially in terms of chips, software codes and IPR may be low. This is not to say that assembly does not add to jobs and wealth creation, but indigenisation in defence hardware must honestly look at value addition.
IC verification is difficult as the author points out in the fuzzy nature of claims of IC percentages in the float, move and fight areas. The fuzziness is not fundamentally driven by intended “spin” in the sense that there is no malintent. The DAP, as he says, excludes some costs like transportation, import duty, taxes and so on from foreign component costs. This improves the indigenous bottom-line, of course and looks good in media releases. Does it really help, though? The author is right to point out that among the consequent problems “is the freedom it provides to the vendors to orchestrate the IC” and makes useful recommendations to set things right in the processes. It is a concern that 40-50 percent is the year-on-year imported content and much of this in high-value and critical areas.
In one area, the author’s arguments seem to be on weaker ground. While he has a point in saying that the Services are not necessarily equipped to increase indigenisation. I feel that had the Navy, at various levels in the past few decades not pushed for indigenisation, we might have been quite astern of where we are now. In an ideal world, one could agree with his contention that “it is the responsibility of the DRDO and has to be industry-driven…except in exceptional cases…” He does not provide examples or explain which are the exceptional cases. DRDO ought to be furthering self-reliance and especially engaging in new areas of weapon, sensor and platform development. Indeed, it does do that, but help, encouragement, ideas, pressure from the IN cannot be harmful. Likewise, what are the examples of indigenisation being industry-driven relevant in our case? There is no objection to industry taking these initiatives, but examples are perhaps rare. The same industry is part of the eco-system that can take advantage of convenient interpretations of IC as may be by PSUs and DPSUs.
A further suggestion for us to consider is that indigenisation is not necessarily the same as self-reliance. The latter seems to be a better way to push for value-addition than the import-substitution that improves IC. Self-reliance pushes Indian “IPR” in a sense which indigenisation may not. Likewise, we also tend to overplay the term innovation due to conflation with improvement, or sometimes improvisation (for which the Indian word jugaad is a good synonym). In earlier days, and as evident in the older editions of the Seamanship volumes, improvisation was called “jury rigging”, a most apt term.
Finally, the author also suggests in his concluding point “that the IN should almost completely disengage itself from indigenisation and innovation except generating lists of items required to be innovated or indigenised. Indigenisation and innovation need to be steered by professionals in the DRDO or Industry and not the Armed Forces. WESEE, which has independently achieved significant and credible indigenisation through its unique model, could remain an exception.”
This thought certainly requires some counterarguments. Considering the role that naval officers of all branches have played in both indigenisation, import substitution and improvements as well as improvisation, this observation is puzzling. It is not only the development of sonars, (Commodore Paul Raj is a shining example) but some weapons, modifications to fire control systems, combat systems integration, action information systems, data links, and also machinery improvements the influence of naval personnel and civilians embedded in the Navy have been visible and, in some cases, remain in the classified domain. Not only that, officers have also played roles in tactical innovation, improvements and improvisation much to the Service’s benefits. To be fair, this is not only true for our Navy but also for other navies. It is equally true for most organisations including companies. Many examples of innovation have come from within and not borrowed from outside the framework. To confine a Navy to merely generate lists of things to be done is a very bureaucratic approach and one that limits innovation.
In the early days of the development of gunnery fire control systems in the Royal Navy and in the US Navy as well as the Italian and French navies, officers, mainly gunnery qualified, developed not only the mathematical problems to be solved, but also the simpler electromechanical devices for trigonometric calculations. In the Royal Navy at the coming peak of the battleship era, officers like Percy Scott and Dreyer and civilians like Arthur Pollen were working on solving problems that enabled high-calibre long range guns to fire more accurately, faster and at longer ranges. This required not only developing technologies but also training methods and tactical thinking. Often, flag officers were their enthusiastic supporters as well as detractors. In the US Navy, then Lieutenant Sims did much to develop gunnery FCS and efficiency. In later years major examples were Hyman Rickover for nuclear propulsion, Rayborn for IRBMs and ICBMs and others for the Aegis family of radars as well as for networking. In our Navy there was even a misperception that the Soviet era “Sine Cosine Rotary Transformers, known in the Russian alphabet as SKVTs—remember “EsKayVeTey”? —were something uniquely Russian whereas they were at the heart of FCS developed much earlier for gunnery and then for torpedo fire control. Of course, in our times the moving parts have reduced, and almost disappeared and digital algorithms do most, if not all, computing.
A final counter-argument flows from the author’s assertion about WESEE. He is right that it has worked in many areas of indigenisation and done creditably. However, he argues against his own point that naval personnel should not involve themselves in indigenisation when at the core of WESEE are precisely such officers. What WESEE does—and arguably needs to do better—ought to be continued. One wonders if the author’s thought is based on Branch bias? Certainly, WESEE is not a “unique model” should not “remain the exception.” In fact, the IN has been right in broad-basing innovation and indigenisation. Confining it to one Branch’s turf, or to the turfs of DRDO or industry would militate against the very ways in which innovation primarily germinates in individuals rather than in organisations. The key is in organisations and their subsets encouraging it by providing the environment for successes and failures in experimentation. A final thought about indigenisation, improvement, improvisation and innovation. All these, have been, in John Boyd’s paraphrased term about “People, Ideas and Things…in that order.” All organisations sometimes fall into the trap of thinking of things as innovation and not the trio together. People, more than a Service or organisations within or indeed in other agencies, matter most. In a convoluted way, disorganisation, rather than organisation(s), may help innovation most.
