But better remuneration is just one side of an intricate polygon of reform that DRDO admitted in June to be working on. The other crucial aspect is DRDO’s involvement with the services. The Navy, the smallest of the three armed forces, has the best depth of relations with DRDO but the less said about the Army and IAF, the better.

Experience has shown that programmes in which the agenda is set by senior serving officers, as in Navy’s avionics and sonars, have always performed with the greatest prudence — delivering on time, and cutting away losses when viability was severely undermined.

In June, as a start, the Standing Committee on Defence directed the DRDO to draw up a list of unviable projects that could be terminated.

But there is a consensus that synergy with the services is one way out of the present mess. Says Gen Shankar Roy Choudhary, former Army chief and member of the Standing Committee on Defence: “Coordination and interaction need a great deal of improvement. DRDO should make sure that officers from the services are part of design teams, and not looked upon as outsiders. Even today, they are accepted very reluctantly. I tried to do my bit in my time as Chief, but somehow it did not work out. This should be an immediate area of reform.”

Choudhary’s recommendation is an echo of what was officially proposed by the Defence Ministry’s Task Force on the “Reorganization of Higher Defence Planning”: a three-star serving officer should head the steering committee of DRDO programmes and the Armed forces personnel embedded with these programmes be recognised as integral members of the DRDO design team. None of this has been implemented yet.

... contd.