New Delhi has ceased making statements on the issue of terrorism. It is now issuing warnings with hardware and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh made that very clear on Saturday. On Wednesday, he repeated his pledge to India's zero-tolerance policy on terrorism "is not just a statement for us but a line of action" in a public address in the capital, a statement that has since been picked up by the day's most widely circulated quotes across the country's domestic wire news feeds and regional dailies. He was not to be outdone by his successor, who assured India would not just go to the door but would enter the house to deal with terrorism, following Operation Sindoor as evidence that it is not rhetoric but action.

As well as the words the timing and setting are important. Singh was not speaking at a security conclave or a closed-door briefing; he was addressing a wider audience and it was clear he was trying to reach two audiences at once: one the domestic public who seek reassurance after months of tension on their border, and the other, Islamabad, which he spoke to without naming, as was the wont of Indian officials after Operation Sindoor, which changed the rhetoric of deterrence in South Asia. The Business Standard and other news outlets framed the comments in a similar way on Saturday afternoon, using the words "firm message to Pakistan," as if the ministry's press office had a very special message they wanted to relay word for word to newsrooms.

The bite to the statement this time is an economic structure that Singh has placed on it. He also linked the security posture with the turnaround of India's defence manufacturing industry, which has reached a record high of Rs 1.78 lakh crore with a 15.6 per cent rise over the previous year's Rs 1.54 lakh crore, and is more than double the level of five years ago in 2020-21, which was at Rs 84,643 crore. If the number is looked at in 2013-14, it was Rs 43,746 crore, which is about 4 times the amount in a span of 10 years or so. It's even worse with exports, which increased from a negligible Rs 686 crore in 2013-14 to a record Rs 38,424 crore in the just-ended year, up by nearly 63 percent in 2024-25 alone. Now, Indian military hardware is also being exported to almost 80-90 countries, depending on which government's figure you believe, and the ministry plans to turn Rs 3 lakh crore into the production target by 2029 and Rs 50,000 crore into exports.

It is worth a pause to address the public/private dichotomy in that number. Though it still accounts for about three-quarters of total output, the share of private sector has since been increasing, and currently stands at nearly 24 per cent or Rs 42,000 crore worth of production annually, the highest ever. In terms of exports specifically, the balance is much closer to even, as DPSUs and private companies are now sharing the pie almost equally, whereas a few years ago it was largely with private exporters. It's important, it's an indicator, that equilibrium is starting to look like an industrial ecosystem and not just a few state run giants, with more exporters, more export licenses being processed, and faster turnaround for authorisations.

The economic ones were merely a part of Singh's bigger argument, which was about strategic autonomy. He was clear: If a country is reliant on other nations for its weapons, ammunition, navigation systems, missiles, radars and drones, it has forefeited some of its military and strategic independence, whether it recognizes it or not. This is the less loud, more resilient argument behind the headline about Pakistan – the one that says that deterrence without local capability is borrowed deterrence – and borrowed deterrence can be withdrawn, postponed or made conditional by the supplier. The Defence establishment of India seems to have learnt that lesson from decades of leasing platforms and the current exodus (however fast the pace and how many the numbers are) is a genuine effort to bridge that gap.

There was no such thing as an independent sense of Operation Sindoor's success without operating in tandem with India's growing presence from the Indian Ocean to the Indo Pacific, as well as PM Narendra Modi's recent visits to Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. Defence diplomacy, in his view, has gone beyond joint exercises and now extends to technical interaction and cooperation, industrial collaboration and defence supply chain integration, redefining India as less of a regional power dealing with a hostile neighbour and more of an aspirant to become a part of the global defense manufacturing ecosystem.

But it is too charitable to interpret all this as an accomplished fact and not wishful thinking. Despite the rise in exports, India continues by the most independent trackers to be one of the world's biggest arms importers, and a significant proportion of the increase in the number of DPSUs exported was from a smaller number of transactions, fewer of which provide detailed data on destination countries and product types than other countries reporting on arms exports do. The policy of self-reliance is not a contradiction with the existence of a still-hybrid supply chain, indeed, it is not even the same but in the year 2029, the government will need to see if it achieves the production target of Rs 3 lakh crore and the export target of Rs 50,000 crore, before calling the transition true.

The point isn't one that's in question. As Singh said on Saturday, “Zero tolerance” should not be interpreted as a slogan; it is a doctrine that is being enforced by hardware, industrial policy and battlefield precedent, and that Pakistan and the entire region are being asked to take literally.