Small Arms of the Indian State: a Century of Procurement And
INDIA ARMED VIOLENCE ASSESSMENT Issue Brief Number 4 January 2014 Small Arms of the Indian State A Century of Procurement and Production Introduction state of dysfunction’ and singled out nuclear weapons (Bedi, 1999; Gupta, Army production as particularly weak 1990). Overlooked in this way, the Small arms procurement by the Indian (Cohen and Dasgupta, 2010, p. 143). Indian small arms industry developed government has long reflected the coun- Under this larger procurement its own momentum, largely discon- try’s larger national military procure- system, dominated by a culture of nected from broader international ment system, which stressed indigenous conservatism and a preference for trends in armament design and policy. arms production and procurement domestic manufacturers, any effort to It became one of the world’s largest above all. This deeply ingrained pri- modernize the small arms of India’s small arms industries, often over- ority created a national armaments military and police was held back, looked because it focuses mostly on policy widely criticized for passivity, even when indigenous products were supplying domestic military and law lack of strategic direction, and deliv- technically disappointing. While the enforcement services, rather than civil- ering equipment to the armed forces topic of small arms development ian or export markets. which was neither wanted nor suited never was prominent in Indian secu- As shown in this Issue Brief, these to their needs. By the 1990s, critics had rity affairs, it all but disappeared trends have changed since the 1990s, begun to write of an endemic ‘failure from public discussion in the 1980s but their legacy will continue to affect of defense production’ (Smith, 1994, and 1990s.
[Show full text]