Manohar Parrikar. ANI

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 15

As Manohar Parrikar took oath as Chief Minister of Goa on Tuesday, his 28-month stint in the Ministry of Defence leaves behind unfinished business.Two of these stand out–the new policy called the ‘strategic partnership’ policy of inviting foreign defence equipment producers to ‘make in India’ and the implementation of the long-delayed pay hike for armed forces.

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It will need a time-bound push by the next Defence Minister to take these over the last hurdle or else it could have a severe impact on military readiness and morale, respectively.Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has been tasked with the additional charge of the Ministry of Defence (MoD). It looks like a stop-gap arrangement as Jaitley is surely not expected to handle two large and critical ministries simultaneously—MoD spends some 12 per cent of all union budget—the biggest by any ministry.The 7th Central Pay Commission (CPC) for the Armed forces–pending since September last year when the rest of the Central employees were given salary hikes–needs to be sorted. The forces had pointed to six key anomalies which had been discussed and put on a file for a final resolution before the poll results were announced on March 11.Parrikar can be credited for initiating things like identifying some 50 projects which are of critical importance.The ‘strategic partnership’ will form the core of ‘make in India’ in defence. On this hinges the production of new submarines, helicopters and fighter jets–all three listed as products to be made under the new policy. The navy is running short on subs and the selection process to make the next generation ones is pending. The three forces need some 800 helicopters which also hinge on the strategic partnership and so does the production of fighter jets–some 300 are needed to be produced in the next 10 years.The strategic partnership is a unique policy which will allow the foreign investors to tie-up with Indian partners to produce defence equipment in India. Parrikar before resigning had tied up the loose ends on February 25 to lay down the path of selecting an Indian partner.Sources said it would have a model by which the MoD would nominate a group of Indian companies for a particular type of equipment. The credentials, financial standing, capital assets and capacity to produce of the Indian companies will be all available to the foreign partner, meaning thereby that the MoD will give the foreign partner the choice of selecting the Indian partner.The strategic partnership will form an important part of the Defence of Procurement Policy (DPP)-2016, which was the first step towards making fundamental changes in the way weapons platforms are acquired in India. This included the Buy IDDM (Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured) category; this has the clause to have 40 per cent of stuff made locally.The MoD is a slow-moving behemoth, which the next defence minister will have to keep pushing at ramping up production of the locally made fighter jet Tejas, buying new rifles, bulletproof jackets, modernising tanks and inducting artillery guns, to name a few.