India has established eight Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) whose responsibility is to provide the Armed Forces state-of-the-art equipments and at the same time enhance country’s self-reliance in defence production. However the performance of these Undertakings is not up to the mark, resulting in import of arms worth billions of dollars every year. A deeper insight into DPSUs’ production profile reveals that most of them are over-dependent on external sources for the production needs, and have a very low labour productivity level, negligible export, and a low R&D base. What the DPSUs need to do is to overcome these aspects and in turn make India truly self-reliant in defence production.
span