CONTRIBUTION TO INDIA’S SECURITY

  1. Spear-headed the team that formulated India’s Defence Procurement Procedure during the period when Mr. Pranab Mukherjee was the Defence Minister.
  2. Proposed the defence offset policy and the various features that today form a part of the government policy.
  3. Was amongst the earliest to propose 100 percent FDI in Defence.
  4. Negotiated and signed the procurement of India’s only aircraft carrier, INS Vikramaditya.
  5. Negotiated India’s only operational large nuclear submarine, INS Chakra.
  6. In mid-2000, as a consequence of planning and implementation, succeeded in increasing the capital expenditure of the Indian Navy by 52.3% and that of the Coast Guard by 31%. Expenditure on intelligence equipment also increased by over 66%.
  7. Formulated and signed the first integrity pact in defence contracts.
  8. Negotiated and concluded India’s largest acquisition and indigenous construction of submarines.
  9. Record number of CCS approvals were obtained for critical defence acquisitions, including large shipbuilding projects that were languishing for want of approvals.

Offsetting Defence Offsets

The Economic Times

Sept. 20, 2018

Defence offsets are in bad odour today, due essentially to ignorance. In reality, the policy can help liberate our military-industrial complex stuck in perpetual infancy. The policy on offsets was first formulated and incorporated in the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) in 2005, drawing on the more efficient offset policies among those of 130 nations.
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The Sum of 2+2 India-US Dialogue

Indian Express

Sept. 19, 2018

India must negotiate every defence import to make the most of its signing of COMCASA.
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How not to Help Kerala

The Times of India

August 27, 2018

Shivshankar Menon and Nirupama Rao, two amongst the most prominent foreign secretaries India has had, are now in a dilemma – on how strongly to pitch for a change in MEA’s policy that is obstructing the flow of Rs 700 crore of aid from UAE to Kerala, to help rebuild their flood-ravaged home state. Confronted with this predicament, both have tweeted hinting at the need for some exception to be made in this case.
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Road map for a robust defence industry

The Hindu

March 31, 2016

After the Modi government came to power, one of the early reforms ushered in was the raising of the Foreign Direct Investment limit in defence from 26 per cent to 49 per cent under the automatic route.
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More Mollycoddling

The Indian Express

March 9, 2016

Latest sale of F-16s by the US to Pakistan carries a message for India.
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Defence cooperation could drive broader Indo-US ties in near future

The Economic Times

February 9, 2015

India, in many ways, is better placed than Japan or Britain after World War II to partner the US in safeguarding global security.
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Hope at last for Indian Defence

India Today

June 30, 2014

The Government's 100 per cent FDI in defence proposal could be a game-changer
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Time for some Retail Therapy

Hindustan Times

29 March 2014

For scaling up our military arsenal, India should try and acquire foreign defence units wherever it can
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What Barack Obama can do for India

The Economic Times

5th November 2010

After some years of gloating over India's dehyphenation with Pakistan in relations with the US, all we might have left to feel good about after President Barack Obama's visit to India is that he gave our neighbour a skip. Certainly, we don't expect that he will bring to the table anything that will set the Yamuna on fire.
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US Fetters Strategic Ties

The New Indian Express

16th June 2010

It has become ritualistic for American leaders to declare at the end of every meeting how important India is for the US.
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Lech Kaczynski: In Death too He Divides

Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi.

21st April 2010

At 8:56 Poland time, on the morning of April 10, an aging Russian made TU-154 carrying top leaders of Poland crashed into the Katyn forests, an area that was ironically witness to another Polish tragedy in 1940 -- the execution of 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia by the Soviet militia of Stalin. Both represent the loss of a generation of Polish leaders.
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Saving India-U.S. Partnership

MP-IDSA

19th July 2009

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed the U.S.-India Business Council in Washington D.C. on 17th June rekindling hope that India-U.S. relations could regain some of the traction lost under the Obama administration. She is now on a visit to India and it would be keenly watched for the actions she would take to match her words, especially since there is a growing uneasiness at the U.S. insensitivity to some of India’s important concerns. And the list of issues that could poison India-U.S. relations is getting longer.
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Essential elements of India’s Defence offset policy - A critique

MP-IDSA

January 2009

Offsets have been variously defined. In essence, offsets in defence, as in civil trade, are compensations that a buyer seeks from the seller for the purchase of goods and/or services. The demand for offsets in defence has exhibited an upward trajectory since the 1950s.1 It gained further momentum in the 1980s and has been growing ever since. From around 20 nations about two decades ago, this practice has now been now adopted by more than 130 nations.
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Getting the Defence Offset Policy Right

The Economic Times

5th December 2008

As defence offsets come at a cost, the mandatory offset policy would have to be dynamic for it to yield desirable results.
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NATO Expansion Hits Russian Roadblock in Georgia

Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA)

17th September 2008

The Russian military blitzkrieg to counter the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s dispatch of his Israeli and US trained and equipped forces to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia on August 7, 2008 took many by surprise. Moscow brazenly took the war straight into the Georgian heartland routing the Georgian forces in South Ossetia and expelling them from the other main Georgian separatist region of Abkhazia.
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No reason to be wary of India

Strait Times, Singapore.

4th September 2008

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