What Is Atmanirbhar Bharat And How To Achieve It

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PM ‘s Address To Nation

On August 15, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressedthe nation fromthe Red Fort on the occasion ofIndia’s 74th Independence Day.
In the one-hour 26-minute speech, he focused on the themes of “Aatma Nirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India)”, “Vocal for local” and “Make in India to Make for World“

Atmanirbhar Bharatis the vision of the Prime MinisterNarendra Modiof making India a self-reliant nation.
The first mention of this came in the form of the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharata Abhiyan’ or ‘Self-Reliant India Mission‘ during the announcement of the coronavirus pandemic related economic package on 12 May 2020.

Atmanirbharor self reliance means putting ban on imported goods and boycotting every foreign product.
आत्मनिर्भरयास्वावलंबिकाअर्भहैआयानििवस्तुओंपरप्रनिबंधलगािाऔरहरनवदेशीउत्पादकाबनहष्कारकरिा।
OR
Atmanirbharmeans to promote and give preference to indigenousproductsand ensuring that these products match their imported counterparts in cost and quality.
आत्मनिर्भरकाअर्भहैस्वदेशीउत्पाद ंक बढावादेिाऔरवरीयिादेिाऔरयहसुनिनििकरिानकयेउत्पादलागिऔरगुणवत्तामेंअपिेआयानििसमकक् ंसेमेलखािेहैं।

MoD’S recent announcement to gradually ban imports of 101 defence items looks in harmony with the first approach.
MoD wants to achieve self reliance in defence sector by replacing imported products with domestically manufactured products.

Although imports of these systems will be banned but imports of their critical sub-systems will go on.
Indian defence industry will make systems based on imported sub-systems and parts.

Our present demand of a light combat aircraft like Tejas is limited. We want only 100 such fighter aircraft currently.
But in the process of making an indigenous fighter aircraft we invested huge amount of resources over last four decades.
And still after so much investment of time and money the light fighter is nowhere near complete indigenisation.

Almost 70% of the aircraft’s systems still needto be imported.
Tejas LCA is poweredby an imported General Electric 85kN F404-GE-IN20 turbofan engine.
RADARused in Tejasis imported from Israel.

Indigenization of a defence products doesn’t happen in one five-year election cycle. It could take two or three of election cycles before we see real results.
Technical advancement in any sector requires decades of researchand development.
In addition to this, it demands huge investment in setting up manufacturing facilities for production of these products.

In 1980sIndia opted the second approach.
India permitted its PSUs to have a joint venture with foreign companies to acquire technical knowhow and global managerial skills.
Within two decades these joint ventures started mass production of low cost high quality products.

In 1980 India built a total of 30,500 , high cost, low quality and scarce cars.
Maruti Udyog Limited was founded by thegovernment of Indiaon 24 February 1981.
In 1982, a license andjoint ventureagreement was signed between Maruti Udyog Ltd andSuzukiof Japan.

At first, Maruti Suzuki was mainly an importer of cars.
10 years later it had produced its millionth vehicle, a low cost and high quality product for Indian consumers.
Maruti assembled the vehicle and left the issue of indigenisation to its vendors who regulated it strictly on issues of quality and cost control.

Suzuki began asa minority partner in the PSU.
At that time PSU was led by administrators appointed by government.
Managerial skills and work ethics adopted by Suzuki changed these babus into world class industrial managers

Secretary, defence production should be easedout of his role as a nominated director in the boards of the various defence PSUs.
The government should strategically divest from the DPSUs and allow the private sector much greater room.
Defence-grade products, which are not needed in the kind of numbers that private industry can support, should be imported.

Within days of Centre’s ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ initiative:
Two leading brands Samsung and OnePlus have decided to locally manufacture most of their televisions in India
The country’s largest television brand Samsung will now make in India almost 85-90% of the televisions they sell in the country.