Our comments on the 'Wire' article:--'By boasting about indigenising nuts and bolts MoD again misses forest for  trees '
 Link of the article is:-    https://thewire.in/government/defence-ministry-indigenisation-atmanorbharta-nuts-bolts

The author very rightly raises a pertinent point that by focussing on such items we are missing the point ie developing comprehensive capability to manufacture weapon system. We as a nation lack this specialisation and acquiring same will go long way to cut our perinnial dependence on Imports of Weapons. Besides this specialisation adds to our National Capabilities.
Therefore there  is necessity to develop skill and facilities for complete weapon design involving conceptualisation, designing, developing prototype, conduct trial and prove the weapon system. This process will enable us to get experience in systems design just like India has emerged as power house of electronic systems design . Design capability is the surest way to quickly get insights in the comprehensive  system design . The designers alongwith producers should formulate reliable , efficient and cost competitive supply chain considering the domestic & global sources. This process will provide opportunity to MSME etc to come forward to develop and produce components which are the best in class. The competition with global peers will bring out the best in the domestic Industry. On the contrary if domestic industry is protected then its quite likely that its products will not be benchmarked against the best. Yes Govt if it desires may consider some preference to domestic products in comparison with global ones. However outrightly ruling out global products may not be wise. Here it is worthwhile to mention how the domestic Ambassador and Fiat car did not make any substantive improvement for long as they did not face competition with their global peers.
Further the existing policy of indigenising individual component may not lead us anywhere except that it will provide some orders to the industry which will depend on flow of orders from the Armed Forces. However if Armed Forces require any new type of weapon then this policy may not be of much relevance. Say if you  indigenise all the components of any imported equipment then what is the next step. Do we have a roadmap for same. How will the knowledge gained in indigenising components will help in coming up with next generation weapon? Therefore there is urgent necessity to focus on acquiring capacity for comprehensive system design.