By Amit Cowshish
In an abrupt move, the Government of India set up a nine-member committee late last month to revamp the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), primary governmental agency dedicated to defence R&D.
Considering that just in March this year, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence had appreciated the ‘large number of steps’ taken by DRDO to make ‘rapid progress’ in R&D activities by involving the private sector, it is unclear what prompted the move.
Headed by Prof Vijay Raghavan, a former Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, the committee has been tasked to redefine the role of the Department of Defence (R&D) and the DRDO. While the former is a department of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the latter is technically an organisation functioning under its administrative control, though this distinction is quite nebulous.
The committee is expected to recommend steps to maximise participation of the academia, start-ups, MSMEs in developing cutting-edge technologies; attract and retain scientists through a system of rigorous performance assessment, incentives and disincentives; rationalise the laboratory structures; and modernise administrative and financial systems to ensure speedier execution of projects.
Curiously, these terms of reference are analogous to those of Dr P Rama Rao committee, based on whose recommendations DRDO was overhauled not too long ago. By 2015, most of the committee’s recommendations had been implemented, including a major internal reorganization and re-clustering of the laboratories to make them result-oriented, and procedural changes to ensure greater involvement of the private sector in defence R&D.
Meanwhile, steps were also taken to arrest brain drain by introducing an elaborate system of financial incentives, fast track promotions, providing opportunities for acquiring higher qualifications at reputed institutions like the IITs and IISc as a DRDO sponsored candidate, and instituting Young Scientist, Scientist of the Year and other awards to recognise outstanding contributions to research work by the scientists.
One of the most promising steps taken was the institution of the Technology Development Fund (TDF) a few years ago to extend financial support and expertise to the private sector for upgrading existing, and developing futuristic, technologies.
As on date, 5368 companies, 1983 experts, and 1278 academics are involved in developing 164 technologies. Of the 5368 companies, 3146 are MSMEs, 1958 startups and 264 large industrial enterprises.
The sum of Rs 254 crore sanctioned so far may seem modest, but given the announcement made by the finance minister in her budget speech last year that 25% of the R&D budget will be earmarked for the private sector, disbursement from the TDF is bound to pick up once the finance minister’s promise is operationalised.
Viewed against this background, appointment of the Raghavan committee is anticlimactic, for it indicates that the steps taken in the last one decade have not yielded the desired outcomes. There is no official word on what those outcomes were and whether any dispassionate performance appraisal was carried out to conclude that DRDO required to be overhauled yet again.
There is intriguing opacity about what basic problems Raghavan committee has been set up to address, beyond the common perception that DRDO makes tall claims and corners every big project, is reluctant to involve the private sector in R&D, continues to operate in non-core areas of research like food and medicine, and the projects it undertakes suffer from acute time and cost overrun -in short, that it has failed to deliver.
Much of this criticism is valid and while DRDO has a lot to answer for, the problem is not entirely of its own making. Its performance is a direct consequence of the efficacy, or the lack of it, of the Department of Defence Research and Development which advises ‘the Government on scientific aspects of military equipment and logistics and the formulation of research, design and development plan for equipment required by the Services’.
At least till 2020-21, there also used to be a Defence Research and Development Council, responsible ‘for coordinating and indicating general direction of policy for scientific research relating to Defence and development of or improvement in material required by the Armed Forces’. Whatever happened to these higher structures that were supposed to formulate R&D plans and monitor their execution?
Apex-level management of defence R&D is not the only macro issue Raghavan committee will have to ponder over. At least three other major factors need attention. One, occasional platitudes notwithstanding, there has been a trust deficit between DRDO and the Services.
The DRDO, on its part, complains of ever-changing goal posts by the Services during the developmental phase of a project. Whatever be the truth of this traditional wrangle, it continues to be a virtually insurmountable issue.
Two, greater involvement of the private sector is widely seen as the answer to all problems besetting defence R&D, but little effort has been made to analyse whether it is true, and if it is, what more needs to be done beyond the measures already taken by DRDO towards this end.
Private sector’s involvement in defence R&D is now new. DRDO has in place a system of working with Development-cum-Production Partners from the private sector right from the inception of various programmes and, as mentioned earlier, it has been funding developmental projects through the TDF.
If, however, the existing arrangement is not working well and the private sector participation is to be scaled up, Raghavan committee will have to recommend a ready-to-be-implemented pragmatic scheme to achieve that objective, without diluting DRDO’s role as the primary government agency for coordinating all R&D projects, irrespective of the agency undertaking them.
It will be interesting to see if Raghavan committee revives the recommendation to set up a Board of Research for Advanced Defence Sciences (BRADS) to function on the lines of Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the USA, which was one of the few important recommendations of the Rama Rao committee that were not accepted by the government.
Established in 1958, DARPA is an agency within the US Department of Defense, responsible for successfully developing ‘technologies that maintain and advance the capabilities and technical superiority of the U.S. military’. Most of the defence analysts swear by its efficacy.
Lastly, structural reforms and greater private sector participation alone cannot produce the intended results with limited budget outlays. As a proportion of the total defence outlay, the R&D budget came down from 6.38% in 2018-19 to 5.1% in 2023-24, a sizeable chunk of which is anyway spent on salaries. Likewise, allocation for defence R&D has come down from a meagre 0.088% of the GDP in 2017-18 to 0.078% in 2023-24.
Considering that the Raghavan committee has been given three months’ time to make its recommendations, the suspense over what new reforms it would recommend will soon be over, but the financial constraints could cast their long shadow on its recommendations, long after these are made and implemented by the government.
The author is Former Financial Advisor (Acquisition), Ministry of Defence.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal and do not reflect the official position or policy of Financial Express Online. Reproducing this content without permission is prohibited.