There was something quietly significant that happened in Jabalpur this week in the midst of what appeared to be a routine ribbon-cutting for a shed to overhaul tanks. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who had stood at the 57-year-old Vehicle Factory where Shaktiman trucks were built with the aid of German technology, unveiled numbers which need to be looked at more seriously than the dazzling ceremonial treatment they received. Production for the domestic defence has increased from around ₹46,000 crore to ₹1.80 lakh crore today, which is almost 4-fold the previous figure, he said. In the same period exports have increased from less than ₹1,000 crore to nearly ₹39,000 crore.

These are not trivial numbers, in an era of a world arms market on its fastest growth in decades. They are not the only ones, however, and it's too early to conclude that India has reached the stage of being a defence manufacturing power.

Begin in the context of the number. The ₹1.80 lakh crore figure includes production from the ordnance factories, defence PSUs and, more recently, private companies that have taken to the business since the industry was opened up for license. Ten years ago, this was an almost blank slate for private sector involvement. What matters more than the multiplier than the other is the fact that today, companies that manufacture from artillery propellant to drone swarms and small arms components make up increasing share of that total. In India, the public sector units always have faced issues like delayed delivery, cost overrun, quality of delivery etc. since the days of Bofors howitzers.

But a lot of that culture has been altered, albeit somewhat and regionally at the edges of defence corridors in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu under the commercial pressure of the private entrant.

It's the export number that has to be taken with a grain of salt. Rs 39000 crore looks great until compared with the arms sale volume of a real top-notch arms exporter in a year. The United States, France, Russia, Germany and China are the major exporters of arms and India does not export anything in the same league. Indian exports to the outside world continue to be dominated by patrol vessels, ammunition, small arms, personal protective equipment, radar systems, and components, such as the Dornier Do-228 aircraft, and not by high-priced fighter jets or submarines, as is the case in other parts of the world. Armenia, an unlikely destination, has been among the top buyers, along with the United States and France, with the victory largely due to the presence of artillery and rocket systems sold in the backdrop of Armenia's stand-off with Azerbaijan a reminder that while India has won a few battles, they are mostly opportunistic and not the result of depth in frontline technology.

This is recorded on the import side of the ledger and the contradiction becomes self-evident. India has consistently been one of the biggest arms importers in the world over the last 20 years or so, as revealed by the data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which has seen the proportion of total imports fall from approximately eleven per cent in the late 2010s to around eight per cent in the last five years tracked. Russia is still the single biggest source of military hardware for India despite the dramatic drop in its share, and this decrease is not a result of India's overt policy of shifting away from Russia but is primarily due to the war in Ukraine and Russia's exposure to Western sanctions. France has slipped into second place, in part by the Rafale jet and Scorpene submarines and the United States and Israel have also gained ground.

That is, India has not replaced its dependency with diversification but diversified its dependency. The two trends are occurring at the same time domestic production is moving forward while imports of the latest and greatest systems are increasing because the systems India cannot produce on its own are the ones that cost the most and have the greatest strategic significance, such as fifth-generation fighters, advanced jet engines, some classes of air defence and submarine propulsion.

It is noted that India was for a while the world's largest arms importer, surpassed only by the USA, before being overtaken by China around 2007 and now ranks in the top five list of arms exporters in the world. It took Beijing around 20 years of consistent government investment, and the adoption of foreign technology and a tolerance for early failure in local schemes for its industry to grow. The path India is currently on seems to be the same, only a decade or two behind, complicated by an even more shaky public-private dynamic, and a government procurement system that even government reports have called a hindrance to faster replacement.

The Jabalpur plant itself is illustrative of this. These technology enhancements to T-72 and T-90 tanks are certain to be less glamorous, but it is a matter of real capability gap India has suffered from chronic shortcomings in the maintenance of its armoured fleet and the capacity to refurbish an ageing platform instead of replace it is a cost- and strategic-effort-saving proposition. Singh's own comments admitted that even though battlefields are changing with the use of drones, precision munitions and cyber and space-based solutions, modern warfare requires integration across all these layers and not relying on any one. That's actually a more truthful headline than the one that would have been for an export: incremental capability development in not-glamorous, export oriented categories, not a big jump into export-led domination.

This doesn't take away from the direction of travel. An export target of ₹50,000 crore by 2028-29 is possible on the basis of the current trend and the target of quadrupling exports from a low base within a decade is an indicator of the policy commitment to make Aatmanirbhar Bharat a reality and not mere rhetoric. The manufacturing shortfall is still very big though, between manufacturing more and manufacturing what really matters strategically, that is elements such as engines, avionics, submarines, top-end missile systems. The numbers quoted at a factory foundation ceremony are the signs of momentum.