Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday inaugurated an ambitious mission, “Raksha Gyan Shakti”, to promote self-reliance in Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in defence.

“The DRDO should introspect to make themselves more nimble towards innovation,” Ms. Sitharaman said. after formally launching the mission.

She observed that there is a “pre-conceived” notion that defence sector is difficult to break in as it has a long gestation.

Under the mission, the target for the year 2017-18 is to train 10,000 personnel of Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSU) and Ordnance factory Board (OFB) on IPR and facilitate filing of at least 1,000 new IPR applications.

Ajay Kumar, Secretary, Defence Production (DP), which is spearheading the mission, said the Director General of Quality Assurance (DGQA) is the lead agency and has already created a separate vertical for this under the rank of Additional DG.

Stating that the country has made significant progress in indigenous manufacturing but design capabilities need to be improved further, Dr. Kumar said, “As long as we are reliant on Transfer of Technology (ToT), we cannot talk of self-reliance.”

He noted that India has accumulated several technologies gained through Transfer of technology (ToT) agreements but for any design adjustments in the platforms, we have to go back to the original manufacturer.

“We are at a stage where design or IP accounts for over 50% of the cost. In some cases it is 70-80%,” Dr. Kumar said and added that typically when indigenisation results in cost savings of about 50-70%.

Between March and October this year, 5,283 people have been trained and 204 IPRs have been filed. The first level of IPs will be filed with the Controller of Indian Patents which would then take them up at the global level.