Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
found 15 eligible including Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Godrej & Boyce, Tata Power SED
(Strategic Engineering Division), the Mahindra group, and Tata Motors, together with in-
formation technology companies such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro, Infosys
and HCL, and various public sector corporations that do not come under the DPSU classi-
fication.
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The private sector had been demonstrating its ability to produce the necessary sophistic-
ated engineering as early as the 1950s and 1960s. That was when Godrej & Boyce, one of
India's oldest family groups, built aluminium shells and research equipment for India's first
nuclear reactor at Trombay. By the mid-1980s, it was making rocket parts for the country's
space programme, along with L&T, a leading engineering construction company. These
two firms had skilled welders, fabricators and engineers who enabled them also to become
competitive internationally on pressure vessels and process equipment for the oil and pet-
rochemical industries, which led to work on rockets and similar projects. 'We had skilled
workmen who could do anything, fabricating sheet metal with precision machining and
high-tech welding,' Jamshyd Godrej, chairman of the family-controlled company told me
mundane office safes, filing cabinets and other metal products, and even made the world's
last manual typewriters.)
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These two companies, and others such as Tata Power SED, developed similar skills and
could therefore have been the basis, decades ago, of a flourishing international defence
manufacturing industry, along with shipbuilders and others. This was stymied however,
primarily by the defence establishment's opposition and its appetite for readily available
imports. Significantly, India's development and production have thrived in areas such as
nuclear science and rockets - as the Mars launch showed - where imports were not pos-
sible because of international bans on high-technology co-operation that continued till the
2009 deal with the US.
Indian companies had not been welcome in the West to participate in strategic pro-
grammes because of international worries over leakage of dual-use technologies, and
America's space agency, NASA, would not consider working with them, explained Godrej.
That boycott was strengthened by bans imposed after India's two nuclear tests in 1974 and
1998, and so 'we were isolated', he said. Illustrating the private sector's potential, the com-
pany is now contributing to building the Indo-Russian Brahmos missiles and supplying
space and defence customers in the US, Europe, UK and Israel, in addition to India.
There was an early breakthrough for companies in 2006, when the army awarded two
$20m contracts for rocket launchers to be used in its Pinaka missile system to Tata Power
SED and L&T. This was the first time that private-sector Indian companies had been ap-
pointed as prime contractors on a defence project, however small, with overall responsib-
ility for system integration. Tata and L&T had begun design work on the launchers for the
