India is making all out efforts to shed its not so pleasant reputation of being the largest importer of defence hardware through a slew of pro-active measures aimed at encouraging the domestic defence industry to take up the challenge of producing high end fighting equipment required by the Indian defence forces. Initiatives such as” Make in India” and “Skill India” are sought to be harnessed to help the country attain the much sought after defence self-reliance.

     In order to bring in critical defence technologies that the country has not been able to master, Indian industries cutting across the public-private sector jurisdictional boundaries, are being incentivised to join hands with global defence and aerospace enterprises to float joint ventures. Not surprisingly then many Indian private enterprises including Tata Group, Mahindra, Reliance Industries, Bharat Forge and Larsen and Toubro (L&T) have joined hands....