No short-cuts to becoming an arms hub

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr

Senior Journalist

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, in a recent article in a leading newspaper, has for the first time made a clear declaration that India wants to be an arms exporter, and that the aim is to not only make arms for India in India but also for the world. For once, there is no ambiguity on the policy and moral fronts.

The Modi government had decided from the day it came to office in 2014 that India must make its own arms and not depend on other countries in this vital matter. But it became apparent quite early on that you cannot make arms just for your own needs, especially if you want the private sector to come in.

The private sector would not have found it profitable to manufacture arms for just domestic needs. There was a compulsion to export to make profits and keep the business going.

We shall not at this point ask uncomfortable questions as to whether the Indian private sector can produce sophisticated arms that could be sold at a good price in the foreign markets and also remain competitive.

Perhaps, in the beginning, India may want to concentrate on selling ammunition, rifles and armoured cars. Of course, it will take a decade and more before India could count itself as a reasonably big player in the global arms market.

One of the strategies that the Indian government and the private sector could adopt is to forge foreign collaborations with manufacturing facilities in India. The cost factor would weigh in India’s favour. And it should be able to develop a skilled force needed in the sector.

Singh expressed the desire that India should become a defence manufacturing hub. It is an ambitious desire indeed, but there is no harm in being ambitious if it can spur economic growth.

The military-industrial complex that American President Dwight Eisenhower spoke of in negative terms in the 1950s is sure to develop in India as well. But it may not become the evil force that it had become in the American economy because India lacks the money and scale of operations to become a big arms exporter. The beginnings will be modest and the foreign exchange earnings through arms exports will be small but substantial.

It could be argued that would India manufacturing arms and turning into an arms exporter influence its foreign policy? India has tried to be the peacemaker, though it has not had much success. India has been hobbled by its own external challenges from the two hostile neighbours, Pakistan and China. India is sure to lend its voice to the cause of world peace because the largest arms exporters, like the United States, do speak of peace and development in eloquent terms.

There is no need to bother about the contradictions inherent in the arms exporters preaching peace. All that one has to do is to read George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara.

Except for the diminishing number of peaceniks and antediluvian Gandhians, most people would celebrate the decision of manufacturing for our own defence as well as for those who want to buy arms for their needs as the right step in our new journey of virile nationalism.

It would be futile to indulge in chest-thumping nationalism if we could not make our own guns and tanks, fighter planes and battleships. And, it would create a lot of jobs as well.

The hitch, however, would be that India would need to have cutting-edge technology to do well in arms manufacture if it has to help itself and be able to sell arms wares to others.

So far, India has not displayed that flair for breakthrough technology which marks the American, Japanese and even Russian and Chinese enterprises.

So far, the Indian industry has shown its ingenuity in absorbing and adopting new technologies and even improvising on them. That is good as far as it goes, but that is not good enough to keep ahead of the curve. No social scientist has tried to make sense of the mental makeup that drives Indian science and technology.

More than half a century ago, American sociologist Edward Shils tried to make sense of the Indian intellectual outlook and found that there was less fresh thinking and more of exegesis.

In the field of science and technology, this would translate into more of adaptation and less of breakthroughs. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been struggling to break this mould through his experimental hackathons, but so far, he has not been successful.

India needs huge investments in regular research and development (R&D) in universities and research laboratories. There are no shortcuts here. India has been unable to invest as much as it should in R&D. There has been either unwillingness or we have simply lacked the resources.

There is also the further complication that to be successful in arms manufacture and exports, India must be an overall thriving economy. It should be vibrant in many other sectors and not just in arms manufacture. It is a big economy that makes a country a big power, and not just its military might.

It is the lesson that the Soviet Union did not learn during the Cold War and paid a heavy price. It is a lesson that China learnt and strengthened its economy. China is considered a big power today because of its economic clout.

So, India and its neo-nationalists may have to rein in their nationalist enthusiasm, verging on frenzy, and get going with the general economy which would require greater ideological flexibility.

Beating the war drums is exciting, but it is necessary to remember the dictum attributed to Napoleon: that the army marches on its stomach. It is a strong economy that supports a good war machine. It does not work the other way round.

A strong armaments industry does not make India a big power, either militarily or economically.

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