The Defence Ministry on Thursday announced plans to make the country's leading military research organisation, the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), more accountable and leaner. Another initiative, to be announced later, will also make it more commercially oriented.
Despite impressive credentials in several spheres, the DRDO, however, has an equally patchy record of delivering on its promises and satisfying the expectations of the armed forces.
It is hoped that the formation of a Defence Technology Commission headed by the Defence Minister, hiving off of the DRDO monolith into seven speciality centres and the fusion of some laboratories with others doing the same work but under other Ministries, would address some of the issues underscored by a report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee.
A human resource expert will be hired to suggest a more project-oriented organisation and a commercial arm which would be more effective in marketing technologies developed by the DRDO. The organisation, an attractive career option till the 90s, has been hit by attrition and needs a different orientation to its personnel management policies to retain good talent.
In order to accommodate the principles set out in the Defence Procurement Policy, the DRDO will initiate the process of selecting partners from industry.
The changes have been made on the basis of recommendations made by former Science and Technology Secretary P. Rama Rao which were fine tuned by a committee headed by the Defence Secretary.
In a show of confidence in the DRDO, the government approved the development of second generation Arjun tank and Akash surface-to-air missile. The Army has ordered 124 Arjun tanks after a prolonged sequence of trials but the number pales in comparison with the indent of over 1,000 T-90 Russian tanks.
The DRDO Director General will henceforth be known as Chairman and centre chiefs will be designated Directors General.
The Chief Controllers of Research and Development (CCsR&D) at the DRDO headquarters will report to the “Chairman.”
The Chairman will also head the DRDO Management Council with seven Directors General and four CCsR&D and Additional Financial Adviser (R&D) as members.
The new commercial arm would be a private limited company with a seed capital of about Rs. 2 crore. It would deal only with spin-off products and technologies meant for civilian use.
