From: bkannan@HA24.ENG.UA.EDU (Balaji Kannan)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: Fighter-Jet Production
Date: 7 Apr 92 22:54:12 GMT



In article <35814@ogicse.ogi.edu>, partha@mse.ogi.edu (R. Parthasarathy) writes:
> 
> 
> 	This thought has been occuring in my mind for a long time.
> Though the title seems to suggest that my article is only concerned
> with fighter jet production, I am instead trying to look at all
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> aspects of our society and its stagnant state in many areas. Fighter
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> jet is just a convinient example that I chose. I know that there
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> are lots of you out there who have similar feelings and better ideas.
> I'd like to discuss in this forum with interested people what is
> it that's been bogging us down - there are certain obvious answers
> and many unknown grass root level reasons. 


        In International trade, countries buy goods because it is cheaper
  to do so than to manufacture them at home. Most often, we buy products
  whose indigenous production would require an exorbitant amount of time
  training and capital as investments. Normally,this holds good for the military
  industry too. As long as the Russians were willing donors of their top-
  of-the-line military hardware there was very little necessity for India
  to invest in fighter-jet production etc. Infact it would have been suicidal
  for our economy to have done so. Agreed,there is a lot of prestige assoc-
  iated with doing such a thing. For that matter even commercial-jet production
  has tremendous prestige associated with it. But as long as there is a
  "Boeing" or an "Airbus Industrie" that can produce planes cheaper than
  it would take most "third world" nations to, it does not make sense to
  produce them ignoring cost considerations. 
   
    With a change in the global military scenario, India is realising
  that it is better to give this line of thinking a hard look. There is
  too much pressure on the Soviets now to stop armamemt sales to third
  world countries( that they are not relenting is a different matter).
  We have seen how overdependence on other nations for military equipment
  can throw the regional military balance into disequilibrium. Fortunately,
  our neighbors are having similar problems that our military is facing.
  It is in the light of this, that India should start producing weapons
  at least to serve its own military, if not to become an exporter. For
  a resource-starved nation as ours this option might seem bitter to
  digest, what with other pressing developmental projects begging for
  money but the reality is that the sooner we become self-reliant in the
  military sector, the better it is for the nation's security.

     As for the serious problems associated with these Projects (most
  of them are scrapped before they see the light of the day), as someone
  pointed out earlier, it is more a management problem than a failure
  to adapt Scientific Research to suit our needs. Even Science and tech
  nology are not exempted from political interference and beuracratic
  bottlenecks in our country. Not that developed nations like U.S do not 
  have such interference but the reason we do is to score personal
  points and for political vendettas(Sam Pitroda is a case in point).
  Of late NASA seems to have been infected by the "Indian bug".

  Of course, there have been isolated instances of our programmes working
  well despite these odds. The IGMDP is an excellent example of this.
  Within a decade, we have become major players in the Missile technology
  area, that U.S is now applying pressure on us to "go slow". Indian Research
  to indigenously produce a birth control vaccine has been hailed by most
  Western Nations as an excellent example of "Conceptual-Leapfrogging".
  Dr. Talwar who is spearheading this Research (as also the vaccine against
  leprosy) was awarded the Highest Scientific Award of France. The National
  Chemical Laboratories at Pune are doing pioneering work in Catalysis. They
  have cornered projects from China to modernise their plants despite compet-
  ition from some of the best labs of the World. In the field of Meteorological
  Research, India is catching up with the rest of the world at a tremendous
  pace. We might be 30 to 50 years behind most of the developed nations
  in key areas of Science, but we have made an excellent start and are
  begining to realise that the payoffs of a succesful endeavor are too
  big to be ignored.

    Yes, bunglings are not merely confined to Scientific Research but are
  deep-rooted in the manner in which we tackle the problems of the commoner.
  It beats one's reasoning as to why the water problem in Madras has not
  been solved despite the State government's  desperate efforts(apparently) 
  to fix it for nearly three decades. The "Veeranam Scheme" and the "Telugu
  Ganga-Project" are glaring examples of the muddledheaded policies of
  our leaders and their excellence in mismanagement. Though, the parallel
  might seem too distant these are symptomatic of aspects of our society.
  There are numerous such examples (local to each state) where a little
  bit more planning, a little bit more vision and an unflagging tempo could
  have solved most of our day-to-day problems that do not even require huge 
  investments in Scientific and Technological Research.


  Balaji Kannan
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian