An important, though not unknown, lesson today needs to be learnt again from the horrendous paralysis of the decision-making in the Indian establishment in the recent past. Thus, any time escalation, whether owing to the delayed decision of the buyer, delay in development by the producer, payment dispute between the contracting parties, or delay in delivery by the vendor is bound to result in a cost or price push factor, the classic example of which is the case of a scandalous time and cost overrun with the aircraft carrier Gorshkov, now operating as INS Vikramaditya.

There is another adverse effect — technological obsolescence. India’s long-drawn defence-related decision-making process, pertaining to the medium multi-role combat aircraft again, could be referred to as a classic case study of defence mismanagement and the potential financial loss to the nation as a result. Thus, the French Rafale, which appears to have reached the final stage of Indo-French contract, was conceived in June, 1982. It took 19 long years for it to “enter service” in May, 2001, with the French air force. It is mid-2014 now; and it will take at least four more years for the first Rafale to be inducted into the Indian air force in 2018. What would or could be the technological and financial scenario? It is anybody’s guess.

Again, when the Americans were pushing to bid for their Lockheed Martin F-16 to the 21-st century IAF, it would have been a fighter aircraft, which began its “request for proposals” in January, 1972, thereby making it a more than 40-year-old “design and development” machine with the unit cost reported to be in the region of $ 50-55 million. Multiply this figure with that of the required 126 aircraft, and one gets to have a reasonably fair idea as to what it takes to be a helpless dependent on foreign manufacturers owing to a collective inability to indigenize military aviation.

Finally, there has to be aviation-minded civil servants for the highly technical subject of aviation in the ministry of defence. It is time to put ideas into effect. The government’s defence management in the 21st century cannot afford to be seen basking in the self-glorification of early-20th-century civil servants’ attitude and the actions of the colonial rulers. As there are several engineering and technical institutions spread across the country, is it that difficult to identify talent and innovative thinking in the existing, vast human resources in India? Also, if only the 20 top Indian minds in aviation could be found and recruited from anywhere across the globe, things will be better than what they are today in the nation’s most high-tech and expensive arena of defence preparedness.