SCREW-DRIVER MONKEYS

Recently the private sector appears to have caught the fancy of making forays into the specialised production of Defence ammunition hardware and equipments, through media campaigns making irrational and baseless allegations against the Defence Public Sector Units (DPSU)and the Indian Ordnance Factories (India Inc Nowhere, The India Today, February 26, 2007)..The genesis of having DPSUs and the Indian Ordnance Factories , which form an integrated base for indigenous production of Defence Hardware and equipments in India, under the government control was to achieve self-reliance in Defence production by Independent India. The private sector claims of competency in the Defence production appear to be a tall one, if not a hum bug, considering their experience and the belated entry into this field. Defence production demands high level of specialisation, complex production process, poses unique technological challenges, close tolerances and high accuracy for manufacturing and testing the highly sensitive and hazardous hardware and equipments.
There is little sense in calling the DPSUs names like “screw-driver monkeys” for indigenising the foreign technical know-how as the very private sector is expected to borrow the foreign technology and sell it to the Indian armed forces at a high premium after neatly pocketing a hefty profit. These private companies may even bargain with the government during the exigencies of time in future for more profit if the supply chain of the ammunition hardware and equipments is monopolistically controlled by them. The DPSUs and the Indian Ordnance Factories have been doing an unenviable job in a very satisfactory manner in meeting the voluminous requirements and quality benchmarks of the armed forces with the limited resources within the tight rigmarole set by the government to safeguard the exchequer. Whenever the external security of the Republic was under attack from the neighbour, the DPSUs and the Indian Ordnance Factories were always in the forefront to meet the emergency supplies at a short notice at the same cost within a record time without compromising on the quality.
As far as the Defence preparedness is concerned, the state PSUs are far ahead of their private sector counterparts who have neither the technical know-how presently nor the noble intention and inclination to serve the nation without extra profit considerations and an assured market. They seem to have been driven by the primary motto of carving out a share in the demand pie and ensure a share of their profit in the estimated Rs 36,000 Crores Defence spending over the next decade.