Make in India: Will strategic partners spur defence manufacturing?

Many believe private Indian partners will be reduced to being assembly house of a foreign OEM

On Monday, a meeting of the defence ministry’s top procurement body, the Defence Acquisition Council, or DAC, failed to clear a new policy for nominating private companies as strategic partners, or SPs, for building major weapons platforms for the military. This is expected to come up before DAC again, with some changes, later this week. 

The contours of the new policy had been spelt out on Thursday to chief executive officers of private defence firms, who were briefed by the ministry. Under the new policy, six Indian private firms that met stipulated financial and technical criteria would be selected as