As it is, it is India that continues to remain the world’s largest arms importer year after year. The awkward march on the world stage as the largest arms importer makes India exposed to world pressures, both strategic and domestic, especially to its wayward local arms industry. Reports reveal that “India's weapon imports are now three times larger than its neighbours China and Pakistan as well as cash-rich Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The latest data on international arms transfers released by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) shows India accounted for 15% of the global arms imports from 2010 to 2014. It said that between 2005-2009 and 2010-2014, India's arms imports increased by 140%. In 2005-2009, India's imports were 23% below China's and just over double those of Pakistan."
The primary suppliers of weapons to India are Russia and the United States besides Israel. India has set up a target of 75pc self-reliance in defence production by the year 2020-25. If this happens, it will lead to a decline in foreign arms purchases from primary arms exporters, both Russia and the United States. While the Indians have been seeking technology transfers on a large scale, they have not been very successful in effectively absorbing the technology. The sharp increase in arms imports shows that they have apparently failed to apply crucial lessons to modern weapon development.
On the whole, in the fiscal year 2014, the US arms sales worldwide totaled 34 billion dollars, up by four billion dollars over the previous year. Meanwhile, according to President Vladimir Putin, in 2014 Russia sold more than 15 billion dollars worth of weapons while new orders were at around 14 billion dollars.
It has been reported that the US accounted for 29 percent of the total world arms sales from 2009 to 2013. On the other hand, Russia accounted for 27 percent during the same period. The Russian market was limited to several countries while the Americans sold weapons to more countries as compared to the Russians. According to SIPRI, between 2009 and 2013, Russia supplied 75pc of the weapons imported by India.
In the context of arms trade, arms suppliers seek to offset reduction in weapons development expenditures through sales besides winning and influencing allies. This holds particularly true for a giant weapons importer like India. After a tough competition, India recently chose the French Rafale fighters in its multi-billion dollar Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) and selected the US C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft over Russia’s Il-76 aircraft. Like other indigenous products, the Indian Light Combat Aircraft has not been very successful in tests, prompting some irritated Indians to claim that Russians could be behind scuttling India's fighter aircraft programme in the 1970s so as to sell the MIG fighters to the Indian Air Force. However, this has never been confirmed.
Historical reviews of the Indian weapon imports show that India does not have a long term weapons procurement strategy while it also opposes the domestic private sector from intervening in defence manufacturing. There seems to be no innovative break with the past and no aim to supply the armed forces with weapons so as to maintain strategic flexibility. There have been several reports of intense lobbying for senior positions at the Indian defence ministry and even armed forces personnel calling on Indian politicians so as to have a pie in the massive yearly Indian weapons procurement programme. If there is a well-meaning, long term, strategic procurement policy in place, such jockeying for lucrative posts and behind-the-scene corruption scandals cannot happen. The Bofors scandal is one example in which top Indian leadership was found to be involved.
It is also true that foreign envoys in India are posted with the mandate to try and sell weapons by luring the top Indian armed forces officers, bureaucrats, politicians, especially those belonging to the Ministry of Defence. Because such foreign diplomats are welcomed by the top Indian brass, consequently the Indian Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) is ignored by the policymakers.
One interesting example is of the Indian Army which is forced to buy a truck from a shell company in the UK at 10 times the cost of the truck because the agreement has been drafted in favour of the concerned company. The Czech truck is now manufactured in Thailand and is said to be an obsolete technology.
The complex nature of India’s arms buying spree and absence of future equipping strategies shows that New Delhi will continue to oblige the world powers by buying ridiculous quantity and types of weapons in the years to come. But then a fusion of exotic weapons purchased from several countries has seldom been a successful idea.