TEJAS fighter is a prime example that showcases India's skills in manufacturing hi-tech weaponry

Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh is well placed, as a political heavyweight, to push through some serious reform in India’s armed forces, to enable India to play the bigger strategic role that the world expects of us. India has to modernise its weaponry across the board, prepare against cyber and hybrid warfare, give the navy true blue-water capability and create true inter-service coordination and cooperation, so that the armed forces work as one coherent unit, rather than as three separate services, each of which sees the other two as rival claimants to the limited budgetary allocation for defence as a whole. Localising a good part of defence production is one way to get a bigger bang for the buck in defence procurement and also to give Indian manufacturing a big leg up.

At a time when industrial capacity utilisation is not large enough to warrant big investment plans in capacity addition and private investment in infrastructure has dried up for a variety of reasons, one way to raise the investment rate, languishing below 30% of GDP for several years now, is to create a new line of private manufacture: defence production. The potential to produce locally a good part of what is currently imported remains unexplored for want of the needed political will to force the three forces to disaggregate their procurement to the fullest level compatible with integrity of the acquirement process and functionality of the equipment. Once such disaggregation is done, it is possible to create economies of scale in new lines of production capacity, say, high-velocity impact welding. India’s vibrant startup ecosystem can be mobilised for, as well as enlarged by, defence production, in addition, of course, to the not utilised offset obligations India has acquired through its huge arms import bill.

Another vital reform is to reduce the outlay on defence manpower. Scrap the orderly system. Institute defined contribution pension for defence personnel, with a state funded top-up, as has been done in the UK, with prospective effect. Release soldiers into the workforce when they turn 25, recruiting them at 18.