Remember the laughter,
the joy,
the hard work,
and the tears.
And as you reflect on the past year,
also think of the new one to come.
Because most importantly,
this is a time of new beginnings
and the celebration of life.”
Prabhu Dandriyal
Express Investigation: Delayed Research; Delayed Organisation – Part – Six
While there could be a thousand and one reasons to explain the Defence Research & Development Organisation’s dismal success rate in defence projects, no rocket science is required to explain why it can neither attract — or retain scientific talent.
In latest testimony before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, available with The Indian Express, the DRDO admitted that 1,404 scientists had left for greener pastures in the last 10 years which, incidentally, coincided with the information technology boom in the country. Worse, this exodus has progressively eroded nearly 10 per cent of DRDO’s technical strength during these years. The DRDO confessed to the Committee on June 7: “The problem is not of the numbers and not of the lack of training but of retaining the scientists.”
In the same breath, however, DRDO said that the “reason” for the attrition was that a large chunk of the 1,404 left on “personal/domestic grounds” – an unbridled expression that could encompass anything from fatter pay packets to the exasperation of working on stalled projects within a sarkari structure. A 16-point list of incentives for its scientists, including royalty-sharing schemes, upgrading allowances, providing financial assistance for laptops and conferences, proposed to the ministry by former DRDO chief V K Aatre in July 2001 languishes in the recesses of the South Block.
Five years later, on July 12 this year, DRDO testified to the Committee that nothing has moved. “DRDO is striving to meet the rising expectations of scientists to attract and retain them in the organisation. Proposed incentives have been submitted to RM (Defence Minister) through RRM (Minister of State for Defence).”
The lack of success, quite apart from compensation at DRDO, is also a dampener in attracting talent. (See table). It is no wonder, therefore, that the IITs – some of the few institutions at which DRDO holds campus recruitment programmes – sends almost none of its students to the organization when they graduate.
Says Professor Y P Singh, formerly Head of Electrical Engineering at IIT Kharagpur and now consulting for a DRDO project: “DRDO was never a preferred place for our students. Most development there is reverse engineering and hardly any original work. Somehow, they have got lost. There is no dearth of talent in the country.”
His remedy: If DRDO could get even a handful of talented youngsters and took good care of them in every way, there would would be no limits to what could be achieved. DRDO today is, therefore, attractive for an internship or a short-term stint for a promising young scientist – there is never a shortage of research resources and equipment – but probably the last place he or she would look at for an enduring career in cutting edge research and development.
That all of DRDO’s biggest programmes are led from Southern laboratories, mostly in Hyderabad and Bangalore, from 1996 onward, the organisation has provided easy pickings for the IT and industrial R&D base there. DRDO chief M Natarajan himself testified on June 7, “A number of MNCs are establishing R&D centers in India, many in the cities where DRDO has a cluster of laboratories and establishments.”
What Natarajan wouldn’t say is that DRDO is also afflicted by a bizarre level of stagnation, in which project directors spend a decade or more on projects, undermining both growth at the lower levels, and a freshness of perspective vital to keep programmes on their toes. The problem is well known – what lies beneath is not. So DRDO scientists are no longer just leaving for better salaries. Groups of scientists and engineers from DRDO are coming together now to form high-tech startups with seed funds from venture capitalists. Salaries are low, but what’s driving them – “entrepreneurial aspirations” (See box).
According to an official estimate, in 2005-06, 42 scientists left DRDO to join startups run by their contemporaries. But a glance at the 16 incentives being asked for, now in the hands of Defence Minister AK Antony, is a revelation of what DRDO scientists want:
* Enhance professional update allowance for scientists from Rs 5,000 to Rs 20,000, reimbursements of Rs 1,000 for internet access and telephone for all scientists, in addition to a Rs 80,000 laptop grants for all scientists, air travel and field trial duty allowances of Rs 500 per day and a Rs 1,000 hard station posting allowance.
* Enhance study leave to 36 months and total absence of 48 months for doctoral degrees among its staff, a study leave living allowance of Rs 3,000 per month, financial assistance of Rs 1 lakh for scientists at international conferences (which they should be allowed to attend once every two years), a reward of Rs 10,000 for scientists who get their papers published in international journals, grant of sabbatical leave for a maximum of 24 months in two spells after a minimum 10 years service.
* Royalty sharing scheme on the lines of CSIR, reward schemes for scientists who get their products inducted into the services , authorisation for individual consultancy to the private sector for three days every month and permission to hold an adjunct appointment for a month every year.
Even if these are approved, experts say, the larger problem remains: the lack of original work in DRDO’s labs, as IIT’s Singh underlined; the bureaucratic structure, the lack of accountability at all levels on project delivery. The same reasons as the ones behind its failure to deliver on projects.
Amitav Ranjan Posted: Tue Nov 14 2006, 00:00 hrs New Delhi, November 13:
The Arjun tank has no future. It still cannot fire straight. The T-90, a far superior tank, can kill the Arjun. We would not cross any border with these tanks.
Strong words, from Brigadier D K Babbar, the Army’s pointsman for the Main Battle Tank (MBT) Arjun project at the Mechanised Forces directorate until he retired last year from the 94th Armoured Brigade. Babbar, who spoke to The Indian Express, has reason to be disillusioned. So has Army chief General J J Singh who was more diplomatic last month: “We will see where we can use it to get optimum use.”
It’s not going to be easy.
Over 30 years after Project Arjun was sanctioned by Indira Gandhi’s Cabinet to make a home-grown battle tank that would address the armoured deficit identified during the 1971 war, the Army is now faced with a troubling prospect: inducting a lumbering, misfiring, vintage design tank like the Arjun, and that, too, in large numbers.
This, after DRDO over-shot Arjun’s project deadline by 16 years — from 1984 to 1995, finally closing the project only in 2000 — and the cost over-run is almost 20 times the original estimate. This is the highest percentage over-run for any DRDO project.
With five pre-production tanks forced upon the Army’s 43rd Armoured Regiment in 2004 and 23 tanks to be handed over shortly, MBT Arjun is about to be pushed into full-rate production outside Chennai, with the Army bound by its commitment to buy 124 for two regiments, all of which are to be delivered by 2008.
Still having 58 per cent of its content imported – including its engine, the integrated gunner’s main sight and tracks— the Arjun tank was put through confirmatory trials in the Mahajan ranges in July but the Army wasn’t holding its breath.
Consider these: At a mammoth 58.5 tons, Arjun is a full weight class over the Russian T-90 and nowhere near as agile.
• In May, the Defence Ministry publicized the Army chief’s inauguration of a product called Bogie Flat Arjun Tank (BFAT) built by Bharat Earth Movers in Bangalore. What it didn’t say: these were specially built rail wagons wide enough and reinforced to carry the massive 3.85-m-wide Arjun. For, the tank will crack the existing freight wagons.
• According to the Army’s latest trials, the decade-old problem of overheating persists. Two of the tank’s main subsystems, the fire control system (FCS) and integrated gunner’s main sight, which includes a thermal imager and laser range-finder, are rendered erratic and useless by the Arjun’s abnormally high peak internal temperature, which moves well beyond 55 degrees Celsius. This is in testimony to the Parliamentary committee.
• Following failed trials in summer 1997, which were criticized in a 1998 CAG report for a series of malfunctions, transmission failures and overheating, and an exodus of scientists from DRDO the same year, the tank’s production cost shot up steeply. Its unit price in 1997 was Rs 10.8 crore. It’s official unit price now: Rs 16.8 crore.
Former chief Gen Shankar Roy Choudhary had promised his service quick inductions, only to be faced with yet another extension by DRDO. In the same period, the Sino-Pak Al-Khalid tank was productionised and had begun inductions. When contacted, Roy Choudhary said: “I was a strong proponent of the Arjun tank but its performance was disappointing.”
• On October 12, Minister of State for Defence Production Rao Inderjit Singh told The Indian Express that it was decided — after the recent trials — that the production-series tanks will be stripped of their indigenous tracks and will have imported ones. So will the first few tanks that roll out of the Heavy Vehicles Factory outside Chennai. In other words, after three decades of research, Main Battle Tank Arjun cannot stand on its own “indigenous” feet.
• The project, according to testimony provided in January by the Defence Ministry to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, has produced virtually nothing. DRDO admitted to the same committee in June that it would be able to develop an indigenous engine, gunner’s main sight and tracks only if the Army places an order beyond 124 tanks. However, the Army has no such plans, making it uneconomical and non-feasible to reduce import content.
“License production of the above items may be feasible with enhanced order quantity for Arjun tanks and may result in reduction in import contents,” admits DRDO. It is, therefore, no surprise that the Army will progressively begin inducting between 800-1000 T-90 Bhishma tanks, which will be built under license from Russia, from 2008, making the letter ‘M’ in Arjun’s prefix not just superfluous but bogus. Why?
“It is important for the Army to maintain combat superiority over its adversaries. There have been delays and slippages in the MBT Arjun project,” Army Headquarters said in written replies to The Indian Express. Five months ago, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence said, “The Committee also desires that accountability for delay in production of the Arjun Tank may be fixed.” But the Arjun, which has cost the exchequer Rs 305.6 crore so far (representing one of the largest ever cost-overruns in percentage terms), has the influential DRDO high command unfalteringly behind it. DRDO chief Manthiram Natarajan, chief architect of the Arjun programme and a 2002 Padma Shri, has been associated with the programme since its birth in 1974 and became Programme Director in 1987. When contacted, he said, “Defence scientists are conscious that there have been time over-runs on some of the projects. But even today, it is much more cost efficient than tanks of same calibre being produced elsewhere.”
But DRDO is undeterred. With the Army’s armour perspective plan drawing out 60 regiments by 2020, DRDO told the Parliamentary panel that it’s now developing what it calls Tank-X, a hybrid consisting of an Arjun gun turret mounted on a T-72 chassis. Two tanks have been prepared, and DRDO has said it will shortly offer them to the Army for an evaluation. No guesses for why the Army isn’t terribly excited.
Express Investigation: Delayed Research; Delayed Organisation – Part – One
Amitav Ranjan
Posted: Sun Nov 12 2006, 00:00 hrs
New Delhi, November 11:
Make India prosperous by establishing a world-class science and technology base…provide our Defence Services the decisive edge by equipping them with internationally competitive systems and solutions… design, develop and lead to production state-of-the-art weapons systems…
That’s the “vision” and the “mission” the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) has proudly spelt out for itself.
An investigation by The Sunday Express into official records that include detailed testimonies by the Ministry of Defence to a Parliamentary Standing Committee — its report is yet to be tabled in Parliament — shows that if there’s one thing this behemoth of 50 laboratories with a staff of about 33,000 has developed to almost perfection, it’s this: wrapping itself around the flag to hide a record of delay and non-delivery in virtually all major weapons programmes.
At a time when China is rapidly modernising its armed forces through international collaboration and acquiring advanced technology from abroad, the DRDO has become a prisoner of its own misleading slogan on self-reliance. In preventing the armed forces from buying urgently needed weapons with brave talk, “we can make it here”, and failing to deliver, the DRDO has introduced uncertainty into the government’s defence planning.
According to latest official records, obtained by this newspaper, in 12 of its showpiece projects, none of which is anywhere near completion, the DRDO has overshot sanctioned estimates by Rs 6,013.43 crore in just the last 10 years. The projects include the crucial guided missile programme, the Arjun tank, the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA Tejas), the Samyukta communication system and Kaveri jet engine.
To put this in perspective, this cost overrun is larger than DRDO’s budget of Rs 5,356 crore for the current year. And this is reflective of just 12 projects. It speaks nothing of 427 others, all in varying states of drift. And yet DRDO claims, “Global level R&D and any world-class defence product can be brought out in competitive time and cost.”
These were the words used in a September 22 presentation to the Standing Committee especially in the year of the organisation’s biggest symbolic failure, the Agni-III strategic missile.
But if cost overruns were not enough, consider this: Records show that for all major projects, DRDO’s average time overrun is 10.11 years (see chart). For example, a 16-year delay for the Arjun tank and 12 years for just Phase I of the LCA Tejas.
Responding to a written questionnaire from The Sunday Express, DRDO chief M Natarajan, who has also been involved with one of DRDO’s biggest failures, the Arjun tank, says: “This is a complaint which I hear very often. But one should understand these are all R&D projects. All advanced countries face similar situations. If you say that we are always late, then it would not be fair to us. We generally deliver the goods on time.”
If that were true, Natarajan must have had a trying time explaining that on October 29 at the very first DRDO presentation to new Defence Minister A K Antony. Drawing comparisons with the China-Russia relationship, Defence Secretary Shekhar Dutt reportedly wanted to know why there were such “massive delays” in DRDO projects and persistent technological gaps.
Former IAF chief Air Chief Marshal S Krishnaswamy was more direct. Called in a year after he retired to give testimony, he told the Parliamentary panel: “For improvement in DRDO’s working, it is essential to make fundamental changes in organization and structure with accountability to the user and to do work in time.”
Krishnaswamy couldn’t have been more spot on. For, although DRDO defended its performance by blaming the three services — they change their requirements while development is in progress, they spend too much time on trials — here’s just how bad the current situation is: In the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th Plans, with DRDO’s failures a compelling factor, according to the Defence Ministry, the country has spent an average of 24.25% of the Defence budget on imported systems to fill in holes caused by DRDO’s non-delivery. That translates into roughly Rs 42,376 crore since 1991-92.
Even the “self-reliance” index, the one plank the entire DRDO justifies itself on, has remained static for the last 15 years. Ironically, in 1991, it was President A P J Abdul Kalam, then DRDO chief, who charted out a plan to push self-reliance up to 70% by 2005. Today’s self-reliance index, according to the Ministry’s own estimate: 30 per cent.
Kalam, in fact, started the Self-Reliance Implementation Council (SRIC) in 1992 and monitored it to check for slippages and gaps. But that was more an academic exercise than anything else. For five years now, the council hasn’t met once.
Papers are only “activated” when Parliamentary questions are asked. In what has the armed forces on tenterhooks now, on October 29, the DRDO recommended to Antony that a “certain percentage of defence acquisitions be earmarked exclusively for DRDO and indigenously developed products.”
The total cost of 439 projects currently in progress with DRDO adds up to Rs 16,925 crore, with just 17 of those adding up to Rs 13,560 crore, most of them on time and cost extensions. In September, DRDO asked, in its testimony to the
Parliamentary committee, for an assured allocation of Rs 1,50,000 crore at the rate of Rs 10,000 crore per year for the next 15 years starting 2010.
It’s time Antony asked the DRDO a few questions, beginning with the Integrated Guided Missile Development programme. There is no indigenous weapons project as prestigious as this, neither is there one that matches its record of repeated and expensive failures.
Every project has to fructify within a given timeframe, otherwise it will just begin to drift and lose focus
Air Chief Marshal S Krishnaswamy
DRDO needs greater accountability. We have not been able to get the maximum out of DRDO, even though self-reliance should be our core
Gen V P Malik
Shiv Aroor
Posted: Fri Jan 19 2007, 00:00 hrs
NEW DELHI, JANUARY 18:
Rejecting the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO)’s assertion that its internal workings are adequately monitored, the Government has set up an independent and external committee of experts to conduct a comprehensive review of the DRDO and produce a report by the end of this year to suggest how the organisation be made more efficient and professional.
The dismal track record of the DRDO, highlighted by The Indian Express through a series of investigative reports in November last year, had found an echo in Parliament with Defence Minister A K Antony promising a new system of accountability to keep delays and cost over-runs in check.
The eight-member committee has been asked to conduct a thorough review of DRDO’s administrative, financial and personnel procedures and audits of scientific research work undertaken by the organisation’s laboratories. It will keep tabs on whether the interests of armed forces are being served, monitor time and cost overruns of weapons programmes, draw a roadmap for synergy with private industry and foreign consultants, and recommend strategies on utilising offsets that will now be part of all foreign weapons contracts.
Committee chairperson, Professor P Rama Rao, a former Secretary at the Department of Science & Technology and currently Dr Brahm Prakash distinguished professor at the ISRO, told The Indian Express from Hyderabad: “I will begin applying my mind on the task as soon as the government letter reaches me.”
The other committee members are former financial advisor at the Defence Ministry A K Ghosh, former HAL chairman Dr Krishnadas Nair, Samtel Group chairman Satish Kaura and Professor T P Ghoshal from Jadavpur University. The three representatives from the armed forces, all retired, are former DG Artillery Lt Gen C S Cheema, former IAF vice-chief Air Marshal Ajit Bhavnani and Vice-Admiral Pravesh Jaitly, formerly the Navy’s chief of materials.
With the creation of this committee, the Defence Ministry has finally acted upon a crucial recommendation made by the Vijay Kelkar committee almost two years ago, that DRDO’s functioning as a research body needed to be under the purview of a panel of independent experts.
The committee’s mandate is significant considering that the DRDO, last year told the Parliamentary Standing Committee on
Dear all, Wish u and your family a very happy diwali & prosperous new year. May God fulfill all your wishes in wealth, health & happiness in your life.
Regards,Prabhu Dayal Dandriyal 21-Sunderwala, Raipur, Dehradun-248008 Phone – 2787750, Mobile- 9411114879, e-mail id prabhu@dandriyal.com ,