A strong committee will be set up by Modi Gov to review DRDO
To overhaul the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has formed a nine-member expert committee led by Prof K VijayRaghavan to review and redefine the department’s role and submit a report within three months, as directed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Prof. Vijay Raghavan is a former Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India and a key National Research Foundation (NRF) architect.
Here’s the list of other DRDO review committee members:
Lt Gen (Retd) Subrata Saha, former Deputy Chief of Army Staff, former Vice Chief of Navy Staff, Vice Admiral S N Ghormade, Air Marshal B R Krishna, former Chief of Integrated Staff, Sujan R Chinoy, Prof Manindra Agarwal of IIT Kanpur, S.P. Shukla, President SIDM, DG of MP-IDSA, J D Patil of Larsen and Toubro, Defence, Distinguished Scientist, Dr S Unnikrishnan Nair, ISRO, and Ms Rasika Chaube, Financial Advisor, Ministry of Defence.
While carrying Minister Rajnath Singh’s decision, DRDO Chief Samir V Kamat informed the committee members that the committee’s terms of purpose were:
Restructuring and redefining the roles of the Department of Defence (R & D) and DRDO and their relationships with one another, academia, and industry.
Increase participation of academia, MSME, and start-ups in developing cutting-edge technology.
Attract and maintain a high-quality workforce, including a project-based manpower system, through an appropriate system of incentives and disincentives, with stringent performance accountability, and weed out non-performers.
Make use of the knowledge of NRIs/foreign consultants and inter-country collaboration to develop cutting-edge and revolutionary defensive technology.
Modernise administrative, personnel, and financial systems to expedite project implementation.
The rationalization of laboratory structures and the process of evaluating their performance.
The reason behind the DRDO review:
The Modi government’s choice to review the functioning of the DRDO and the entire defence research and production eco-system was a much-anticipated development, as the Prime Minister himself was worried about the lack of accountability and delayed research in the organization that typically functions as a government PSU and views the entire defence process from research to development to production as its fiefdom.
Rather than assisting the private sector in the best procurement of hardware platforms for the Indian Armed Forces, the DRDO has frequently acted as a barrier in defence acquisitions in the name of developing the very product that was being imported and in the name of indigenization.
Among many others, anti-tank guided missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles are classic examples. At the same time, the DRDO has done some pioneering work in guided missile systems.
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