Six Years And Not A Single Bullet-Proof Jacket?
The arms procurement processes of the army and ministry of defence are so badly broken that they cannot even procure bullet-proof jackets in time for our soldiers.
The army is supposed to have approximately 3.5 lakh bullet-proof jackets (BPJs) in total. Way back in 2009, a good six years ago, there was a shortage of approximately 1.8 lakh BPJs. If today’s reports are to be believed, this shortage has not been plugged. Repeating for effect: For six years the army and the ministry of defence have been unable to buy something as simple as bullet-proof jackets.
Why the delay? These jackets were supposed to cost only ₹50,000 per unit back in 2006. Even if the prices have doubled since then the expenditure would be less than ₹2000 crores. Does the ministry not have ₹2000 crores to spare? They have, in-fact, been returning /transferring thousands of crores of money meant for weapons/equipment procurement to other areas. So there’s enough money to buy these things.
So what really caused the delay? It appears that the answer is pure, unadulterated agmark grade bureaucracy. And its not just the babus in the ministry of defence alone. The army, too, has its own babudom of sorts. They routinely change specifications or arrive at specifications that are impossible for any vendor to meet. If a vendor somehow magically clears the army’s specification requirements and trials they will then have to overcome the babus in Ministry of Defence. Double-whammy. In the case of the bullet-proof jackets too, we are told that there has been revision of technical parameters and re-tendering.
The list of programs in which the army has changed specifications mid-way is long and includes Akash missiles, Arjun tanks, EW systems and more.
The case of bullet-proof jackets is ample proof of just how broken the system is. Bureaucracies and lack of an industrial base are leading to unacceptable delays. The problem can thus be summarized in three points:
1. The forces come up with ‘difficult to procure’ grade specifications for equipments: there have been examples where no vendor has been able to match tender requirements.
2. The tendering and evaluation processes take so long that the forces change their minds about what they really want and tinker with the requirements leading to re-tendering.
3. Local vendors and DRDO cannot ever hope to satisfy the requirements of the forces because the R&D effort (and lack of industrial base, experience etc) causes a few years of delay by the end of which they discover that the forces have changed their mind (refer point #2!)
The only way out is to build a solid industrial base for arms manufacturing and getting our forces to closely work with the industry. Meanwhile, those bullet-proof jackets are needed urgently.