Cutting Foreign Buying for Atmanirbharta Fine, But These Policy Changes Needed First

In the thick of the border tensions with China in mid-2020, India went ahead with this major procurement while gearing up for a long haul through many icy winters of eastern Ladakh. Under the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) —a pact between India and the United States—the country bought hundreds of sets of extreme cold winter clothing from the US for its troops, who were steadily getting deployed at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in tens of thousands.

The rushed, emergency procurement in the aftermath of the bitter Galwan Valley clashes happened because no domestic vendor was manufacturing these clothing systems back home—even as they have been a critical gear of the Indian troops at the Siachen glacier for over three decades—possibly due to lack of adequate research and development, and orders.