Originally published : https://www.eurasiareview.com/26102025-accountability-by-design-reforming-indias-defence-procurement-for-strategic-credibility-analysis/
Delays and cost overruns in Indian defence procurement are not just bureaucratic inefficiencies. They are symptoms of a deeper structural malaise: the absence of clear accountability across the acquisition chain.
While policy frameworks such as Make in India, Atmanirbhar Bharat, and Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) have reshaped the rhetoric around procurement, systemic flaws persist in practice.
At the heart of these flaws lies a single, under-addressed truth: accountability is missing from the design of India’s procurement architecture.
The Accountability Deficit
Defence procurement in India operates through a complex web of ministries, directorates, PSUs, and vendors. Each entity performs its role — acquisition, testing, certification, or production — but none bears direct responsibility for outcomes.
This diffusion of responsibility leads to a culture of procedural compliance rather than mission delivery.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has, time and again, flagged how major defence projects suffer from time and cost overruns due to unclear ownership and poor coordination.
In its audit of major acquisitions, the CAG found that over 60% of capital projects faced delays ranging from one to seven years. Yet, rarely do these failures translate into institutional learning or accountability measures.
The procurement process, governed by the Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP), focuses on process sanctity rather than performance outcomes. File movement and committee approvals often become ends in themselves.
The absence of defined responsibility for slippages — whether by a PSU, a testing agency, or a procurement directorate — means delays are systemic, not exceptional.
PSU vs Private: The Output Gap
Public sector undertakings (PSUs) dominate India’s defence manufacturing ecosystem, but their performance metrics are often out of sync with operational needs.
A CAG review of HAL’s production programmes highlighted repeated delays in aircraft delivery, with the Light Combat Aircraft Tejas and Sukhoi-30 upgrade programmes both overshooting their original timelines by years.
Private players, though agile and technically capable, face hurdles in entering the ecosystem — from delayed clearances and restrictive qualification norms to a lack of assured orders. Unlike PSUs, private firms are judged by commercial delivery schedules, but the playing field remains skewed.
The result is an output gap: PSUs get protected despite underperformance, while private firms remain peripheral despite efficiency. Accountability, therefore, must extend beyond the MoD bureaucracy. It must be enforced across the industrial base, public and private alike.
Testing, QA, and Certification: The Hidden Bottlenecks
One of the least-discussed choke points in defence acquisition is the quality assurance (QA) and testing ecosystem. The Directorate General of Quality Assurance (DGQA) and other testing bodies operate in silos, often with limited alignment to production timelines.
Multiple CAG audits have flagged how protracted QA procedures delay the induction of systems already cleared by the user or DRDO.
For instance, the induction of the Dhanush artillery gun faced prolonged delays due to overlapping trials and certification stages, even after technical acceptance.
Internationally, defence contracting models such as the US Defense Acquisition System and the UK’s Smart Acquisition approach integrate testing, certification, and production through concurrent engineering frameworks.
These models tie vendor payments and project extensions to specific accountability clauses. In contrast, India’s sequential and fragmented process creates built-in inefficiencies.
Building Feedback into the Design
The Indian Army — the end user of the majority of defence procurements — often enters the picture too late in the acquisition process.
Its feedback during design and development stages is either diluted through committees or deferred to user trials, by which time, cost, and design rigidity make changes impractical.
To build accountability, the Army must have an institutionalised role not just as a tester but as a co-designer. Early integration of user feedback into project management, backed by clear milestones, can prevent the costly cycle of redesign and rejection.
The Integrated Capability Development Plan (ICDP) introduced by the MoD was a step in this direction, but its implementation remains inconsistent. Accountability must therefore extend to project governance itself, through empowered programme managers with clear performance-linked mandates.
Accountability by Design, Not by Audit
Reforms must move from reactive audits to proactive design. Every stage of the acquisition chain — from Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) to delivery — should have built-in accountability metrics: Defined ownership for each delay or cost escalation. Transparent timelines published in public domain dashboards. Performance-linked incentives for PSUs and penalties for slippages.
Integrated programme management offices (PMOs) that co-locate military, scientific, and industrial representatives.
Such structures would transform procurement from a process-driven to an outcome-driven system.
Reforming the DNA of Defence Procurement
Procurement reform cannot succeed through slogans or policy resets alone. The real reform lies in institutional design: embedding accountability at every layer. Without it, even the most ambitious indigenisation goals will remain paper plans.
India’s defence readiness depends not only on what it buys or builds, but on how responsibly it does so. Until accountability becomes as fundamental to procurement as budget and policy, the cycle of delay and dependency will continue, compromising both operational sovereignty and national credibility.
