I t can be safely deduced that this country’s military security challenges both on short term and long term basis, as such, came into unintended focus due to its impact last year and unfortunately during the peak period when we were battling with COVID pandemic, on our eastern sector in Ladakh, China posed to us a grave challenge resulting into a standoff which only recently has started getting resolved while belligerence of Pakistan especially the low intensity conflict albeit its terror proxy war against us in Kashmir and allied issues lent great credence and strength to enhancing our defence capabilities to defend the country fully from the two hostile neighbours. Modern era, that of the demise of the cold war has set new goal posts for settling disputes between the countries that of who is how much capable and powerful militarily and economically. That speaks largely about the reasons behind China virtually eating a humble pie and withdrawing its troops and other infrastructure from Pongong areas in Ladakh to be followed by similar disengagements at other ”friction points”. Prime Minister, taking a holistic view of the weapon manufacturing scenario in the country on comparative grounds, has very recently raised an interesting question about there being numerous ordnance factories even before independence in the country and exports on large scale having taken place during both the world wars, what is it that this system was not strengthened (after our independence) and why we resorted to imports from other countries. The fact of the matter, however, is that even this time too the country continues to be the biggest importer of not only sophisticated weaponry but even small arms. It is another thing that now both the private as well as the public sectors are engaged in manufacturing weapons on a large scale and the situation is fast changing but much needed to be done. Bold initiatives, as avowed defence policy in manufacturing defence equipment, like delicencing, de-regulation, export promotion, foreign investments and the like in the said sensitive sector need to be further strengthened. We can rightly call them reforms oriented administrative policies which definitely were going to give a boost to our defence production and procurement with an indigenous -Indian -touch. When the proverbial push coming to the shove starts giving a feel of the heat of the problem like when we required ventilators and even PP Kits and on emergency basis, the available talent in the country demonstrated its strength and manufacturing started on a large scale and soon health institutions in the country were virtually flooded with these equipment to treat the corona virus infected people instead of importing them. Tejas light combat aircraft, one of the best in the world, could be manufactured indigenously only under the spirit of ”we can do it” or moving towards self-reliance as much as possible. Like this, our defence requirements products shall not only suffice the needs of our armed forces to a larger extent but we shall emerge as one of the major exporting countries rightly in the spirits of being capable of envisioning to touch Mars and why not the production of best weapons in the count
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